POETRY: Brakeman on a Midnight Train

Brakeman on a Midnight Train
By Noble Collins

I was a brakeman on a midnight train
when steam and smoke and four good men
could take a load of steel
from Youngstown to Detroit
and did - twice a week.

Dropped off those flat cars at the Detroit switch-yard
and picked up a load of machine parts
to carry back to Ohio
all in one motion.

The pay was better, we heard, in Omaha,
where cattle cars lined up
to go to slaughterhouses in Chicago,
but that didn‘t seem prideful work, somehow,
and, besides, we had it pretty good.

Better than folks camping by coal fires
who had it pretty good
before The Great Depression came like a plague,
devouring everything in its path.

We saved them our best left-overs
for their stew.
There weren’t much else we could do.

We got regular wages
and a bonus for our shift,
so we had no complaints.

Except in miserable weather
when sleet or snow or icy rain
cut through all the wool and leather
a shivering body or red-raw hands
could safely wear -

climbing atop the cars
to turn the brake wheel - just so -
a little too much and the wheels would grab and slide;
a little too little and the train would coast
beyond the coal bin or the water trough.

That’s when we really earned our pay
“The Railroad Irish”
Born to railroad
the way fiddlers took to the bow
or quaffers to their pints.

Backbones as strong as the silver rails we rode on -
proud and sure as the locomotives.
No man would do the work we did,
and no woman would refuse us her bed.

Too many women were widows, though -
young ones at that-
living off of tiny pensions left when
a signal got confused or a step was too icy.

If a coupler wouldn’t attach properly,
you weren’t supposed to get in between cars
to fix the problem,
but the dispatcher would have harsh words for a delayed train,
and you would notice a little less in your pay envelope
next time,
so, of course, you fixed the problem.
But some didn’t.

Too many young men hobbled about
with stumps for legs.
Too many hugged with one arm.

But I was lucky
or good
or both -
Naw, mostly lucky.

And I rode that train -
Midnight to Detroit -
Midnight to Youngstown
until the day I died -.

Yesterday, in the sleet and snow and icy rain