I had only worked for the Burlington Northern for a few months. A young, novice brakeman crossing the Western Montana wilderness in the dead of a wintry night, a freight train caboose with a drunken conductor an environment that lapped at my innocence. A bottle dropped from the gondola as a raspy snore slowly seemed to keep rhythm with the clacking of the rails in an endless array of pulsing madness. I was at this point, alone! The burning embers shown through the grates as the wood stove, perched upon a platform, seemed to sway as if unencumbered by it`s restraints. A lantern`s glow cast eerie shadows that danced across the snow covered windows as a harsh wind fought to invade from every crevasse in the aging rail car of which I resided, a testament to a bygone era, pressed into service out of sheer necessity by the need of a crew to monitor the brittle steel upon which we rode in the minus forty degree temperature. But here I was! A prisoner to fate as we descended the steep grade as gravity tugged the overloaded 113 modules that made up the consist, a train, a collection of cars, and that night, a death wish on wheels. Air brakes hissed a shrieking pitch, steel groaned under the strain of enormous weight, radio chatter screamed warnings, an Engineer`s prayer loudly echoing through my earpiece as he fought to valiantly save the cargo...and our lives! The caboose began to buck, as if tethered to an unruly beast that yearned to escape it`s own demise and then... darkness! I came to as a voice asked..."Can I take your order?" Confused and disoriented, I slowly began to realize I was uninjured and had been thrown clear and slid down the rail embankment and across the parking lot into the drive-thru window of a Hardee`s in Cutbank, Montana. "Yes, I will take a large coffee and a porkchop biscuit," I answered slowly. "Will that be all?" "No. Do you have internet?" "Yes we do. The first three booths have laptops with internet access!" "I will be right in. I better post this to Facebook before no one will believe it!"...
Posted on: Wed, 02 Oct 2013 03:35:06 +0000