[PRCo] Re: Another trip

[Fred Schneider]

I was in Sapulpa once in 1959 ... saw the ex C&LE box motors and two ex Sand Springs Baldwin-Westinghouse locomotives sitting outside. While I was there the Frisco passenger train came through.  I had hitched rides north from the army base at Fort Hood, Texas (more than 300 miles away).  After seeing the trolley freight line, and having a breakfast in a local "downtown" restaurant, it was time to start back if I wanted to get to the base in the evening.   At that time, every city looked like some that are time warps today.

But the great story about that area comes from the army base or "kaserne" in Pirmasens, Germany.  I had a very good Germany friend who came on the base all the time with absolute immunity, or so it seemed.  He was about 19 at the time, and spoke both American English and the Kings English and, of course, Hoch Deutsche and the local German dialect ... four languages and absolutely fluent in each.  So fluent that he could think and dream in any one of them.  He used to go to all the movies in the base theater, the local teen age club for dependents, the PX, anywhere except high security areas.  .

But one night Helmut was stopped by the gate guard.  Helmut proclaimed that he must have left his ID card in the barracks ... he said he had only gone up to the PX (which was actually outside the base fence).  So the guard, somewhat more officious than most, ask where in the states Helmut came from.  Helmut announced, and you guessed it, Sapulpa, OK.  And the guard said, "I'm also from Sapulpa and I've never seen you.  Prove it"  Whereupon Helmut started tossing out names ... "Do you know _______ or __________ or _________?"  Bewildered, the guard said, "I don't know why I never met you before but you know all my friends.  Go on."   Helmut, when he picked his identity, had taken time to find some names.  You could actually be scared of him if he wasn't so benign.

And as Paul Harvey would say, "And now the rest of the story."   When I came home in 1961, Helmut had been drafted into the German army.  Then one night in 1964 I received a phone call. "HT. where the hell are you?," I asked.  "At my mother-in-law's.  In Chalfont.  Chalfont, Pennsylvania.  North of Philadelphia."   Turns out the Germans had assigned him to a joint missle training program in Fort Bliss, Texas because of his language skills.  He met and married an American army nurse ... how about that, fraternizing with an officer.  He went back and got an engineering degree from the University of Munich.  And today if you go through surgery in an American hospital, there is a good chance he designed the anesthesia machine.  He lives in Perkasie (along the old Liberty Bell Route), and works (or did work) for a medical equipment firm in Willow Grove.  I think he has two kids in the states.  And now you know there are also "War Husbands."

So where did the Birney in Sapulpa come from?  Are you posting a picture?

Justin hopes to get done with 14 this coming winter.  Then finishing 4398 is next in the chute ... he thinks that will take a year.  I question that.  And after that, if he has not grown tired of us and if the board doesn't change their collective mind, West Penn 832 is next in line.  Gives you some idea of which funds to donate to.   If someone put $100,000 into the W-832 fund, we know it would be hard not to do it.  (And damnit, I want to run it before I die because I remember the tracks in all the Allegheny River towns.)  All of these cars need more than just body repairs.  Like 14, the trucks, motors, wiring, all need to be rebuilt or replaced.  Big bucks.

Thanks Roger, for the trip report.  Even if someone complains, you have one who is happy to read it.


rogertrolley.1 at juno.com wrote: