Stories Are Sticky Notes On Life's Bulletin Board

Stories are Sticky Notes on Life’s Bulletin Board

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

The best stories weave together the past with imagination and emotion.   They tell us a lot about who we are.   Often repeated in family histories or at gatherings, titillating tales make us want to learn what comes next.  Somehow, they create a more personal connection than either a single anecdote or a string of facts.   All the better if they embed a curious mystery or two, or even so-called skeletons in the closet.    

   Besides their content, stories need an adept delivery.   Often a cherished holiday tradition, the best stories are told aloud with dramatic pauses.  The skill can be learned, but I submit it is something of an inborn personality trait.   If you are blessed to have a relative with this talent, you may forget what they say, but you will never forget how they made you feel.     

 Saving skeletons and skillful oral deliveries for another day, I am happy to share a mind picture of two characters whose story lines have entertained me for decades:  my maternal grandfather Albert G. Suttill and my paternal grandfather Henry Bowen.       

  Albert Suttill left behind just one memento, an ivory slide rule engraved with his name and the date January 7, 1914.    Known as “Bertie English,” and always in frail health, he died at 52 around 1950.   His treatises on mechanical engineering can be found in the annals of Cambridge University.  He designed the historic seal on Hood milk trucks, as well as one of the earliest stateside hook and ladder fire engines.

  A nervous disposition discouraged Albert from driving vehicles.  Yet he often rode an Indian motorcycle with my infant mom in a sidecar.  His temperament was overlooked by those who insisted he drive the hook-and-ladder prototype of his fire engine in a town parade.  When he crashed it through a department store window on main street, the parade sponsors probably regretted their decision.

There is more.   His early unpatented designs for the Austin mini were apparently stolen by his partner, never to be recovered.  Given such talents, the U.S. government had to protect him from being kidnapped by spies from a German submarine lurking off the coast of New Jersey during the first World War.  Mysteriously, while Albert Suttill possessed valuable technical knowledge, the actual operation of machinery intimidated him.   So why did he end up as a boiler company engineer in Massachusetts?

According to my mother, when he was a young boarding school student, Bertie English was bullied and knocked to the ground on a soccer field.  When he looked up, a tall American student pulled him up and scared off his attackers.  At this moment, he vowed  to move to America.

My paternal grandfather Henry Bowen lived a uniquely different life on the Maine coastal island of Chebeague.   His father Hugh co-owned a so-called “stone sloop”, and at 23 years old Henry was the cook.    These ships transported granite from coastal quarries to locations that included the Washington Monument.  Mainly Hugh and Henry repaired lighthouses and spindles or markers.   I have seen photos showing Henry’s name embedded in the concrete footings of coastal lights.

 A story from 1885 surrounds one spindle that was much larger than most found along the coast.  It was due to be set on a treacherous ledge, seldom exposed by the tides, about two miles north of Monhegan Island.    First, the Bowens had to purchase a steam drill to core out a hole in the rock where they could set the spindle.   A mistakenly closed safety value nearly blew up their vessel.  Then using a boom derrick, the Jenny Lind crew had to lower a four-ton piece of iron in place quickly, from an awkward distance, without tipping their sloop over.    Although they managed to do so, no doubt Henry thanked God more than once in the little church they eventually built on Chebeague. 

Stories are certainly a  captivating way of describing whole lives or episodes with their many conflicts and harmonies.  Whether in workshops or in life generally, I have found that stories send memorable messages.   Long after we have gone, the sticky notes we leave on our personal bulletin boards will define our legacy. 

The Lasting Legacy of Our Railroads

The Lasting Legacy of Our Railroads

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

Something about trains makes them utterly fascinating.  They are an iconic feature of our country’s history, serving since the mid 19^th century as a sturdy, economical, and appealing way to move us and our possessions across the countrywide.   

Today’s tourists adore them for their capacity to dramatize the past and the picturesque.  Intercity rail routes efficiently transport us to and from work.  140,000 miles of rails link 600 common carrier freight lines and generate $274 billion in American economic output annually.  Even after they disappear, the trains leave behind architectural gems that become everything from pharmacies to community centers.  And ever-growing miles of discontinued routes give us rails-to-trails.  But for many of us, above all else, trains produce nostalgic memories.      

 Growing up in the 1950s I remember some of the last steam trains huffing and clanking into our imposing granite station at the apex of town.  Later in the same decade, my Christmas present was an electric train that looked just like what I had seen.  My pals and I would argue about which kind of track worked better (American Flyer versus Lionel), and our dads shared our hobby enthusiastically.    

By the time I reached high school, diesels with plenty of amenities dominated the tracks west of Chicago.  A travel highlight for me was a cross-country “vista dome” trip with classmates to Montana in 1962.  As we saw virgin country under starry skies, while traveling in silver-sided comfort that featured dining tables and Pullman compartments, I was definitely impressed.

Many years would pass before I took another train ride, but in the meantime, I taught American history in public schools.  Thereby I came to appreciate the instrumental role of railroads as an engine of industry during the Progressive Era.  My students and I discovered the pivotal role of rails during the Civil War, and afterward in helping unify the country.   

Train stories carry an unsurpassable mystique.  Countless novels and films have built plots around train robberies, break-neck chases, and monumental disasters usually staged on wooden bridges.  Every time we start to forget “Murder on the Orient Express”, a remake appears!   One historian aptly described the American railroad’s imagery as comparable to the churches of Europe in the Middle Ages.

At the same time, trains explain many innovations we now take for granted.  Just to illustrate, consider the railroad’s unifying effect on how we tell time.  In post-Civil War days, historian Seymour Morris tells us, cities and towns across the country relied on the clocks of church steeples. There were 300 different times across the country, thus creating scheduling chaos for train travelers.   Railroad authorities tried to solve the problem with a daunting 600-page compendium of schedules.  Fortunately, an 1883 General Time Convention rescued the railroads by adopting the time zones we use today.   

Two personal impressions of trains leave me awe-struck.  First, work used require me to travel by rail regularly from Albany to New York City.  The expansive beauty of the Hudson River always kept me glued to the windows, followed by the shock of a bustling beehive known as Penn Station.

My second impression comes from a hugely entertaining chronicle titled “Last Train to Paradise”.   Written by Les Standiford in 2002, the book describes how a wealthy oil executive named Henry Flegler stubbornly funded a railway from Miami to Key West, despite crippling hurricanes, across well over 100 miles of scrub brush islands, mangrove swamps, coral kays and keys, and open ocean. Flegler put Florida on the recreational map in the early 20^th century, but by 1935 the Florida East Coast Railway had gone bankrupt.  A modern highway covers much of the railway’s old route.  I look forward this spring to learning firsthand about the remains and myths created by this “railroad across the ocean”.   

Hundreds of miles northward, we have our own historically celebrated railroad where I live near Arcade, New York.  The Arcade and Attica line, fully launched in the early 1900s, boasts a diesel and the last operative steam locomotive in New York state.  It carries passengers, cargo, and stages an array of appealing special events throughout the year.

 My personal reminder of railroad life comes from the wail of a distant whistle as a daily commercial freight train wends it way north around 4 a.m.  Although it may seem frustrating to wait as miles of boxcars rattle past a crossing, these leviathans remind me of their legacy as a driver of our American destiny.