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We Democrats
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6155 Flatt Woods Rd.
Simpson, Illinois 62985

Forty Years and Nothing's Changed

by Ron McBride
December 29, 2006

I realize that for those of you under 50 this is probably a yawn away from the delete button, but it was prompted by my wife, Marie, recalling that it was exactly 40 years ago today that she first rode on a train. The plan was to visit my mother and father in Manteno, Illinois.

We lived in Grand Tower, Illinois at the time. I was employed at Woolworth's five and dime in Carbondale, home of Southern Illinois University, as an Assistant Manager.

It was on a Friday, and as an assistant manager I was required to be in the store from open to close. Only 10 days before Christmas, and the next day being Saturday and one of the two biggest shopping days before the holiday, I was distracted, and not concerned with my wife's ability to cope. After all, she married me, so she couldn't be dumb.

Anyway, I was busy and couldn't accompany her to the train station. She really did need help. We had a one-year-old daughter and a one-month-old son at the time. Between the suitcases, diaper bag and Christmas presents for her in-laws she was in overload.

Our plan was she would take the kids to see my parents and seven brothers and sisters in Manteno, IL, deliver the presents, and come back on the Monday train to Carbondale. I would take off Monday to meet her train.

In theory it would work. In theory. First, with two babies and everything else, she asked her Dad to take her to the train station. Since Marie had never traveled like this before, her father said he would take care of tickets and baggage. He got the tickets, but he forgot to check the bags for her, and she didn't think about them since she was so nervous with the kids and her first train ride. You guessed it, she left without the bags.

Now, she knew that the train ran from Carbondale to Kankakee, where my parents were to meet her and take my family home. Her father was not the most patient man, so he hugged them all, said goodbye, and headed back to Grand Tower.

They announced the Chicago Train was boarding, but since they didn't mention Kankakee, only Centralia, Effingham and Chicago, Marie and the kids sat there waiting.

Another train came and went. Finally with the baby crying, and our daughter getting fussy, Marie, went to the ticket counter to ask about why the train was three hours late. When they told her it had left on time, that she missed it, she began to cry.

Once the tears slowed, she went to the public phone (black hard plastic hanging on walls back then) in the lobby of the train station. She was calling the store to tell me what happened, and have me come get her.

In the mean time, the Store manager had told me an hour before Marie called that since I had been there before the store opened that I should go home, but to be there at 6am the next day, as we had some displays to put up for the Saturday rush. You see Saturday was the big shopping day before the Malls and Wal-Mart were on the scene.

Driving home, I figured hey, no wife no kids, I would stop for a beer, even though I was only 19, I passed for 21, and could get served at a bar on the way home. So I stopped, and while there, ran into a couple guys I know and we played some pool, had a couple more beers, and I headed home.

Meanwhile the train station ticket window had closed, but the lobby remained open all night. Marie and the kids were scared, lonely, and had no way to contact me, neither her parents nor I having a phone back then. When the ten o'clock train arrived going north, Marie took a deep breath and marched up to the conductor who was helping people off the train, asked if this train was going to Kankakee, and was told it was.

To make this long story short, she arrived in Kankakee at 4am Saturday morning, called my parents, who did have a phone, to come pick her and the family up. They did.

Then later that morning she called the train station to ask about getting her bags that she thought had came on the previous train, and was told there were no bags. She lost it.

Finally, when Mom got her calmed down, and my sisters had taken the children into the living room to watch television, Mom called the sheriff's office in Murphysboro, which was county seat of our home county at the time. Since Grand Tower didn't have a police officer, they agreed to send a car to our house to tell me about the problem.

Of course, by then, I had already gone to work. The officer left a note on the door for me.

Later in the afternoon, my father in law came into the Carbondale store and told me that I needed to call Marie right away, that there was a note from Sheriff's office that said it was an emergency.

I immediately called, thinking about all kinds of things happening, train wreck, robbery…. you can't imagine all that went through my head.

Marie started telling me what happened and started crying again. Mom got on the phone and finished the story. I looked at my father in law and asked him where he sent Marie's bags. He blanched and his eyes got big, "Oh, my God, they are in the trunk of the car." He rushed out and opened the trunk. I finished the phone call and went out where he was standing stark still, struck dumb.

When I approached he turned to me with tears in his eyes and said "My baby," and couldn't finish.

Later that morning I sent Marie $40 (only made $75 a week as Asst. Mgr. then) by Western Union, and told her to buy what she needed. Even though I worked in a store that sold clothes it didn't dawn on me what things cost. Somehow she managed to get diapers and clothes for her and the kids for a couple days, and made it home with no hitches.

Today we are laughing at how naïve we were back then, and Marie said, "You haven't learned anything. You are just as naïve now, thinking that you could with no money start this WeDems thing."

As usual she hit the nail on the head. When faced with problems forty years ago we assumed the best course was just to plow on ahead. Today the best course seems to be to plow on ahead.

Forty years, and nothing has changed, we are still looking to the future as we did then, only now without the health and youth, but with experience and determination.

And that, my friend, brings me to the end of this story. Let each of us pack our bags, check them twice, and forge ahead into the future. Uncertain though it maybe, it's our future and ours to design.

It's never too late,

Ron
www.WeDemocrats.org