Dear editor,
Moran Day is Saturday, with the parade starting at 11 a.m.
Again this year, I will be on our trolley to explain the way Moran looked when I moved there in 1944.
It was quite the railroad town then. My dad started working on the M.K.T. in Jennings, Okla., in 1940. He worked on a bridge and building crew from Oklahoma City to Parsons for a couple of years and got transferred to the Parsons to Kansas City line. There were five men from Moran and their foreman from Oklahoma. They lived in bunk cars and had a dining car and a cook. They travelled to their job on motor cars. When they finished a job in one town, the locomotive hooked on to the bunk cars and put them on another siding for their next job. It wasnt ideal, but it was a job.
The Katy ran north-south through Moran and the Missouri-Pacific ran east-west. That called for a tower operator where the lines crossed at the south edge of town. The trains, of course, were steam engines and there was a water tower and coal and sidings on the north side of town. There were still passenger cars, dining cars and Pullmans on both lines. We got free passes but the farthest I ever went was to Corpus Christi, Texas and Colorado Springs. We went a lot to Oklahoma City to visit relatives or Kansas City.
Moran was a great place to live in the 1940s and 50s when I was growing up. It still was in the 1970s when my five children were in their teens. There were two full blocks both sides of Main Street and not an empty building.
I will tell you all about the many businesses on the tour. Im amazed I can still remember all of their names.
In the 1940s, Highway 54 came right down Main Street. Before Dutch Elm disease laid claim to our elm trees, the stately trees hung over the street like a canopy and everyone white-washed their trunks for special occasions.
Things changed in the 1950s when the new U.S. 54 bypassed Moran, Bronson and Uniontown and then Highway 59 bypassed Elsmore, Savonburg and Stark. Too bad there isnt a different word than progress to use.
Norma Sager-Stahl,
Iola, Kan.
