The Snowflake Chronicles

Train Tracks and Childhood Memories

19 Mulk 163 B.E. - Sunday, February 25, 2007

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

There were railroad tracks in my childhood. We called them train tracks, in Blackwell when I was growing up we had a right and wrong side of the tracks. Anyone who lived in the Smelter Heights lived on the wrong side of the tracks and everyone else in town on the right side. Sounds weird writing about it, but that’s how it was for decades before the Zinc Smelter closed.

My grandparents’ had a house in the Heights, that’s how were referred to it them. My parents lived on the other side of the tracks on College Avenue or Street (I can’t remember which). The street was called College because there was a community college in the town at one time. Anyway, to get back to what I was writing about.

It didn’t seem to matter to a lot of people that my parents lived on the right side of the track because my grandparents lived on the wrong side. I remember that Grandma and Grandpa Newland went to the Baptist Mission in the Heights. I went to Vacation Bible School there and I enjoyed some of the classes. I especially enjoyed the Bible Stories and the skits that occurred at the end of the summer classes. Everyone learned a Bible verse and had to recite it during the skit. It wasn’t actually a skit, but rather a display of what the children had learned and the project they completed. It was during one of these skits that I had my first attack of stage fright. I forgot the verse I was supposed to recite. I think the verse was John 3:16.

In Blackwell I went to grade school and Junior High. I didn’t particularly enjoyed Junior High. I was one of those who got picked on by the “in crowd”, so it wasn’t a pleasant experience. I don’t remember a lot of the names from then, actually just three or four students stand out in my memory. Other things stand out, but only a few of the students.

I remember the name of the girl who led the pack that bullied me and the other “outsiders”. I remember the girl that got pregnant and had to quit school. I remember the girl that broke her wrist at a football game, she fell down in the parking lot. I remember just one of the boys, but not for anything that happen while we were in school. He was drafted for Viet Nam, when he returned after the war (I’d moved back to Blackwell to live with my Grandparents) he was arrested.

Sometimes I think I’d like to go back and see the town, but I’m not sure. The only thing there for me any more is my grandparents’ graves. I don’t even think of it as my home town. It’s just the place I was born and went to school for a part of my life. I still do have some pleasant memories, but I’m not sure whether the pleasant memories out weight the other memories. Besides there are plenty of other places in the world I’d like to visit. So I’ll put Blackwell, Oklahoma on the bottom of my places to visit wish list. If I got a chance for a free trip and place to stay with a couple of thousand dollars of spending money, then I’d put it on the top of my list.