A couple of days ago in our look back in time column, mention was made of the Santa Fe Railroad’s announcement of 50 years ago to end passenger service in Iola, Humboldt and other towns on the line between Kansas City and Tulsa.
The loss of a federal mail contract sounded the death knell for four passenger trains that zipped through eastern Kansas each day, two headed north, two south.
The mail contract far outweighed, from all indications, pure passenger service, which amounted to less than a dozen people buying tickets each day in Iola.
In the late 1940s, my parents and I several times took the train to Kansas City for a day of shopping and for me to see the sights of the big city. Going by car was out of the question; we didn’t have one.
We also took the train to and from Iola to visit my grandparents.
Then, for a while, David Taylor and I were patrons.
David, with whom I graduated at Humboldt in 1961, and I would catch a train for Kansas City every once in awhile for a couple of weekend games featuring the old, and then hapless, Athletics at Municipal Stadium. We’d fork over a quarter to spend the night in a YMCA, and hop the Sunday evening train for home.
David died of a kidney disease a few years later, far too young and before more modern medicine might have saved his life.
I’ve other memories that surface whenever trains are mentioned.
Mail sometimes was loaded aboard trains in Humboldt, along with eight-gallon cans of milk bound for Pet Milk in Iola, and just as often it was picked up with an iron hook from a short tower just north of Humboldt’s depot, when a stop wasn’t needed.
My buddies and I occasionally would bike to the depot to watch the mail being grabbed as the train sped past. Once, mail bag and hook didn’t mesh. The result was letters strewn over a quarter mile of track.
We found the incident amusing. The station master, who had to pick up letters and small packages, didn’t — and growled at our hooting.
Trains were pervasive in my youth. Living just three blocks from the Santa Fe tracks, the mournful sound of a whistle in the distance late at night and the rhythmic clickety-clack of steel wheels against the tracks lulled me to sleep many a night.
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