The Chair: Volume II: Faith, Hope, & Love

By Robert McKenzie

A grand epic saga by Robert McKenzie, The Chairspans centuries, touching the lives of 22 related mothers and daughters, their stories witnessed by a simple pine chair. Resolute, strong, loving, and fiercely protective, these women must strive to pass their values to new generations in a world of racism and sexism, politics, scandal, fashion—even the rise and dominance of baseball. They live in privilege and poverty, with faith and despair, relishing every moment of love even as they suffer abiding grief.

Volume I: Lightning, Thunder, & Glory spans the 1600s through WWI, while Volume II: Faith, Hope, & Lovefollows these women’s descendants into modern times and beyond. An authentic and uniquely American novel, The Chairconjures the very hallmarks of history, yet navigates the simple intimacy of everyday lives to reveal who and why we are. Everybody sits, so find your own seat and discover The Chair.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fresh Ink Group
• Release date: Oct 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781947867932

Book preview

Acknowledgements

In no particular order, I include the following. There are hundreds more I am sure that should be included. Movie directors are shown in the second paragraph.

Robert Burns, Ernest Hemingway, Larry McMurtry, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Lee Burke, William Shakespeare, William Faulkner, Joseph Wambaugh, Mark Twain, James Michener, Louis L’Amour, John Grisham, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Elmore Leonard, Dan Jenkins, Richard Henry Dana, John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, Patrick Oliverio, Jim Bouton, Jerry Kramer, Robert Frost, W. Somerset Maugham, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Willie Morris, Phil Jackson, Anne Frank, Vincent van Gogh, Theo van Gogh, Edgar Allan Poe, Ron Chernow, Stephen King, E.B. White, David McCullough, William Manchester, Winston Churchill, Raymond Chandler, J. Frank Dobie, Lisa Martino, William L. Shirer

Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Otto Preminger, William Friedkin, James Jewell, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, Clint Eastwood, Sam Peckinpah, George Stevens, John Ford, Sergio Leone, John Huston, Orson Welles, M. Night Shyamalan, Edgar G. Ulmer, The Coen Brothers, Robert Aldrich, Steven Spielberg, Michael Curtiz, Peter Bogdonavich, Hal Ashby, David Lean, Ron Howard, Richard Attenborough, Robert Evans, Robert Zemeckis, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra.

Chapter 12

Herm

Herman Herm Walter Flomdich, (pronounced FLOM-ditch) was born on December 30, 1933, in Detroit, Michigan, moved to Wheeling, West Virginia at age two, and because of his father Raymond’s jobs as both a Fuller Brush™ salesman, and an insurance agent for American General Life Insurance Co.®, both door to door cold call sales jobs, lived all over the Tri-State area throughout West Virginia, Pennsylvania, in Moon, Cranberry, and New Castle, in Ohio, in Akron, Youngstown, Miami, Steubenville, Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, always in rent houses, and attended numerous Catholic schools, graduating from St. Xavier on W. North Bend Road, seven and a half miles north of the Ohio River, where he would go down to on the north bank and watch the boats and barges go by, waving, and sometimes, tossing rocks at them, though knowing he could not possibly hit them, some heading to New Orleans, or back up to Pittsburgh as he dreamt of lands and people far, far away. His mother Alice was going to call him Marcus, spelled Marcvs, after Marcvs Aurelivs Antoninvs, but decided on Herman instead, after while seven months pregnant witnessing a very loutish woman whom she did not know after church run around after her two-year-old boy screaming Markie! Markie! Markie! Markie! Get back over here now! Markie! Markie! Markie! Markie!

After 9 o’clock mass, I suddenly became nauseous seeing this woman’s teeth, tongue, and big mouth as she screeched like nails on a chalkboard, chasing around after her kid, and I threw up in the fountain yard, dry heaving over the grass, barely missing the shoes of the new junior priest, Father Macallan, who was greeting parishioners at Ste. Anne de Détroit on his first Sunday, although I had fasted for communion and had an empty stomach, except for the host I had swallowed a few minutes before, she said.

The Beginning Point of the U.S. Public Land Survey is the point from which the United States in 1786 began the formal survey of the lands known then as the Northwest Territory, now making up all or part of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the survey being the first major real estate survey undertaken by any nation. The now The Great American Northwest comprised of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon is not to be confused with these earlier American established settlements on the frontier. Remember, at one time, Pittsburgh was considered Los Angeles, it was so far from The East. This is where George Washington, early on, made his bones, part of his role and responsibilty being to survey lands and kill Indians for the English crown. Ask around.

It used to be in Europe, after the Romans left, after battlin’ the Gauls, Visigoths, Huns, and Saxons, and also in other places, such as Africa, too, you’d go to war with an ‘empire’ right next to you, usually over not having enough pigs, goats, or cows to slaughter in yours, mostly from some kind of an animal plague, maybe a princess stealing away with a neighboring archduke, reports of someone having poisoned a river with dead bodies now floating your way, or rumors of ‘witches casting spells’ bein’ seen nearby, blast’em for a while in a vicious onslaught, and then, if you were victorious having killed half the enemy, including inhabitants of towns, villages, and hamlets, you were then free to torch and burn them to the ground, if you wanted to, though losing a quarter of your army, you’d own a new land of milk and honey, and plant a few trees and build your own new fortress made from the wood in the nearby forest, meadow, hill, or dale. You’d put up a few flag markers and construct some outposts, they looked like closets, and station a few sentries at various points on the perimeter, and the imaginary line between them point to point would become the new ‘de facto' border. Later, guys would come out with compasses, step off a few paces, place stakes in the ground, and mark down locations and go back and draw up new maps. If you lost, they’d come back at you en masse with peasant settlers with scythes, sickles, shovels, hoes, and pitchforks, including yeoman farmers, sheep herders, gardeners, and older millers always looking for a great creek to spin a water wheel and grind some flour into bread for fifty or a hundred miles and lay claim to all that, although a lot of people did not want to relocate anywhere to the east most of the time, James Reilly, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, the water, earth, and biological science and civilian mapping agency which collects, monitors, analyzes, and provides scientific understanding of natural resource conditions, issues, and problems said.

The beginning point now lies underwater on the state line between Ohio and Pennsylvania. Because it is submerged, a monument commemorating the point is located on the state line between East Liverpool, Ohio, and Ohioville, Pennsylvania, adjacent to the nearest roadway. The area around the marker would be designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965.

Herm began his college studies at Wayne State University, but was not comfortable with the anthropology curriculum, or really college its ownself. After joining the Army, and serving two years in Korea, as a private in a supply depot, where he received a Purple Heart for having had his foot run over by a supply truck while loading mail from home destined for the troops on the firing line up on the front, Herm returned to the university and switched his major to business administration. While completing his college degree, he got a job at the Chrysler Plymouth® car dealership, pushing DeSotos™, and managing the used car business, too, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, an hour’s drive east of the school. One of his sales tactics was to look for beat-up cars, write down the license numbers, find the owners, and make his pitch to buy their autos at their homes. He earned $11,600 selling cars in 1956. That was a fortune back then, he said later. That’s when he was offered the management of a Chrysler dealership soon to open in Ann Arbor. He then got bounced out of that gig for lack of sales as management, during the booming times, closed the dealership, claiming there was an economic downturn, which made absolutely no sense at all because there were ten to fifteen new, and five or six used, cars being sold each day.

They killed the golden goose, that’s all I got to say about it, Herm said leaving the dealership after being informed of the news by management over the telephone.

Herm loved baseball. He remembered as a kid when We’d pick teams. For first ups, the bat handover fist or flip a quarter, or a dime or nickel, even a penny, four cents would get you a bottle of pop or whatever at Mr. Gerhardt’s grocery down the street. Or you could simply toss a bat up in the air and whoever the knob end of the bat pointed to closest was first ups. Sometimes, if you won that, you wanted to be the home team. Last bats. You could choose that instead of first ups. I always liked to bat last. If there were enough guys we would play ‘flies up’ or ‘500’ or ‘pitcher’s hand’ with maybe five guys or six guys a side. No catcher. Right field was closed. If a lefty was batting, he would close left field. For 500, it was 100 points for catching a fly ball, 75 for snagging a one hopper, or 50 for fielding a ground ball. If you caught a fly ball and then called ‘Home’ you would try to throw it to home plate and as long as it rolled or bounced directly over home plate you got another 100 points. Then you would get to bat. We would play ‘Throw him out strike him out.’ Batter stands in there never hitting the ball pitched at’em, intentionally swinging and missing, and the catcher would catch the ball and fire it down to second tryin’ to throw out a runner on first trying to steal second. One of the guys will always be both the first and the second base umpire. You would hold the runner at first by tryin’ to pick him off. That may have been the most intense game. ‘I’m the fastest! No, I’m the fastest! You don’t know anything! Get out of here!’ If you were not a good runner, you might be the catcher because you generally had a good arm and regularly played catcher. Catchers were usually ‘husky,’ but not fat. Pitchers and catchers knew most of the major league rules, like the double switch. And the infield fly rule with a man on first and second or however many outs there were, I could never remember. But we never used it. Didn’t matter. We loved it. Baseball all day from after breakfast till the sun went down. And soda pops and potato chips and Mom’s might bring by, sometimes not always, sack lunches with bologna sandwiches with raisin boxes or a banana. The girls will usually come by in the afternoon to watch and talk with their friends and ride back on their bicycles. Of course, we would show off for the girls. Sometimes we would let the girls play. But not always. I didn’t mind. You could do a double play having an infielder throw it to the pitcher to get the force on a guy into second and the pitcher throws it back to you as long as you are standing on any base, second or first. This usually worked best with a second baseman fielding the ball. The pitcher could throw it back to you at second for the second out, because obviously you did not have a true first baseman, the second baseman covering the whole right side of the infield, with behind him, you’d to put a marker behind to determined where the closed right field began. You hit it into right field over his head past the marker, you were out! Usually it was ten or fifteen guys at the most who showed up. You could even play ‘3 on 3’ if you closed center and right field. You’d place a line of rocks in Left Center to do that. It was always dusty and hot. Your hands would get sweaty, so you would pick up some dirt, spit on your hands, and rub your hands together which made some kind of a goo that was just right for gripping the bat.

Having left the dealership, dismayed and disappointed, but still determined, Herm got on with General Motors® as a Delco™ rep, pushing car radios. Somebody’s cousin had called Mitch Bland, one of Herm’s former salesmen about a job in Moline, Illinois. Herm then finds himself at the GM parts warehouse in Moline, working nights, having recently gotten married, eventually becoming the swing shift supervisor at the auto parts warehouse distribution center, a significant upgrade in both pay and rank, where the railroad, on a side spur track, would deliver automotive resale parts every afternoon except on Sundays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

The Rock™ Leaving Chicago, through La Grange, Naperville, Plano, Mendota, Princeton, and Genesee, the Rock Island Line®, the mighty ‘Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad’® would arrive usually each day at 1:45 PM, stay for one hour as it was unloaded and then swing around circling the warehouse returning north to the main line across the Mississippi River to Davenport, Iowa there on the other side and after a few hours, return along the same route to Chicago, bypassing Delco’s spur track. Sometimes, though, because of monotony and boredom, and overly concerned about the cleanliness of the spur track, Herm would order a couple guys each day to walk the track near the warehouse to look for debris, and to shoo off any strangers or suspicious persons. Herm was always trying to claw his way up into middle management. It was a good job.

Well, the Rock Island Line is a mighty good road

The Rock Island Line, it’s the road to ride

The Rock Island Line, it’s a mighty good road

Well, if you want to ride you gotta ride like you find it

Get your ticket at the station of the Rock Island Line

In 1963, Herm’s team won the company safety award for, as he called it the fewest limbs lost during the fiscal year. He was most proud of that, although he knew it was bogus, having sent Connie Cash Diedrickson home one afternoon after a pallette of Delco batteries on the loading dock fell on his hand. Bloody, and with the bones of his left thumb and forefinger sticking out as if he was a monster in a macabre Lon Chaney horror movie, Herm doused Cash’s hand in mercurochrome, then wrapped it up with shipping tape, so as not to have to crack open the medical emergency supply box, which required a report to be completed and sent in to corporate headquarters, and after saying Here’s $25 bucks, go on, go home, and don’t say nothin’ to no one, holding his hand upright, blotting it with a cloth industrial glove, while walking him out of the building. Later, Cash’s hand became infected, requiring the amputation of both thumb and finger a month or so later.

The award usually meant a $100 bonus at the end of the year for each of the shift supervisors. And $10 dollars, along with a certificate for a Hormel™ ham, or Butterball™ turkey at any local participating grocery store chain for each employee in the warehouse. Hey, a hundred bucks is a lot of money, especially in these times, Herm once said.

The award was actually called The Cy Bernberger Award for Safety, and was named for an assembly worker who was able to quell an auto plant fire, suspiciously started during a 20 minute sick out of the union assembly line workers in Pontiac, Michigan in 1949. Bernberger, with a heads up move, simply opened the valve in the large storage tank, allowing over 5,000 gallons of water to whoosh across the plant floor in seconds as if the tide from the ocean had just rolled in. He was fortunate because none of the cars or manufacturing or assembly equipment was damaged. Some say it was a grease fire started from pouring the lard and waste from the employee cafeteria and dispensary from that morning’s breakfast and someone threw a lit cigarette on the grease near the drain. Later, however, two cans of coffee emptied into one of the dumpsters out back was supposedly have been determined to have smelled of gasoline. However, while turning the valve, Cy’s left forearm somehow got caught in the spinning wheel, and as the force of the water began turning the wheel uncontrollably, it sheared his arm off, just above his right elbow, and it then flowed down the plant floor spinning wildly.

A few workers scrambled after the arm as it flowed across the floor and Jim Suttles caught it. An ambulance was called, and as the plant employees and management applauded Cy for his efforts, although it was learned around 3:00 o’clock that Cy’s arm could not be reattached by doctors performing emergency life saving surgery. The United Auto Workers® filed a multi-million dollar claim and class action suit against GM, but the arbiter ruled in favor of the company, it having been determined that Cy had never once attended any of the bi-monthly safety presentations or classes, even though they were not mandatory. Essentially, any worker in the plant, including any laborer, assemblyman, shop steward, cook, mechanic, dockman, janitor, clerk, or freight forwarder, was required to be certified if they were deemed eligible to be designated, at management’s discretion, a safety warden giving directions, usually pointing to emergency exits during a fire drill, responding to any emergency at any time while onsite and on the clock. It was part of the duty RIGs and included nominally those times of travel using your own personal car, in the event you made a delivery to a repair place or gas station in town, not at all like airline pilots and flight attendants, in the union contract at that time.

Herm would on the button at 4:00 o’clock PM each day update the 5’ x 7’ SAFETY IS YOUR BUSINESS sign next to the employee time clock that read It’s been ___ days since our last on the job injury (OJI). It’s been ___ days since our last fatality, with those metal numerals with the holes in the top to put on hooks. As guys would walk by starting work, Herm would shout Turkleson, where is your safety helmet? or Monetti, where are your steel toed shoes? Don’t come crying to me when a forklift runs you over. and Gloves, Stevens, gloves! How many times do I have to say it? Gloves! Lucero, where are your goggles?

From an annual General Motors catalogue addressed to him personally from Detroit, Herm had the responsibility, and wide latitude, in choosing from a vast array each year of GM clocks, wall and desk calendars for the offices. Even playing cards were available. Some of the decks would have both current and historic cars in the deck. A Cadillac was an Ace, a Corvette was a Jack, a Corvair was a Joker. Herm would always telephone Detroit and the office of the Purchasing Manager, Paper and Office Utensil Supply, Mr. D.D. Donaldson, to verify an order, or make a last minute change to an order, and notifiy of receipt of all orders in good shape and call again if the orders were on time. Herm mostly though, wanted to talk to Dolores, his secretary, who had a squeaky perky smiley voice.

He called her Dee, after Dolores told him Oh, Mr. Flomdich, call me Dee.

Okay, Herm replied. Dee, as in Dee-lightful.

The two eventually met during a GM vendor convention in Detroit, where Dee agreed to go out to a bar for a few drinks and go to a Cincinnati Royals and Detroit Pistons game at Cobo Arena. Any chance Herm had of getting laid was summarily ended once he threw up on his, and her, shoes, splattering her dress and nylons, too, along with his cuffed pants and Florsheim™ penny loafers, of course, with pennies in them, having had too many Early Times™ neat, and nut mix in the bowls on the bar before departing for the game at 7:30.

Dee was able to get some corporate seats, great seats three rows behind the Cincinnati bench. Herm was heckling the great Oscar Robertson with The Big O? The Big No! over and over. Robertson, who already had twenty-four points, six assists, five rebounds, and three steals midway through the 2nd quarter, during a timeout while standing at the Royals bench shouted back Go easy, big man, it’s gonna be a long night! I’ll be here for you! while laughing. Dee ended up taking a cab at the half back to the hotel, as everyone from out of town, and many managers and their secretaries from the Greater Detroit area, having been put up for 2 nights of the 3 day corporate convention and convocation.

I did find him nice and a good-looking guy, but he wouldn’t stop talking at the bar and he got drunk. I almost did not go to the game with him, but I knew the seats were so good, so I took a chance. Obviously. At least he offered to pay for the dry cleaning for my dress, she told her friend and co-worker Charlene Van Meter, who worked down the hall from her completing vendor orders, at breakfast the next morning at the hotel. Herm apparently did not show up until lunch, having missed the morning session.

Herm made it back to the warehouse and his orderly, prescribed, one by one, scheduled, and busy day. He liked being busy. And in control of things.

Norman Blark, a manufacturers rep from Carbondale who sold various safety equipment, gear, and accoutrements for warehouses, school districts, and industrial works, would come by for coffee, two creams, two sugars, no saccharine please, always in a white ceramic Delco cup with Delco saucer, every couple of months, had dropped by one late April afternoon, to shoot the bull with Herm, and, this time, introduce the latest in parking lot striping paint, the new safety emphasis now including fluorescent gold paint with crushed glitter glass to shine day or night in lieu of the standard white flat paint, although there were only thirty parking spaces at the warehouse.

Herm said, Norman, I will keep it in mind. It looks like a pretty neat concept. By the way, I want to let you know those curtain plastic strips hanging from the loading dock doors have turned out pretty good for us. It really helps keep the flies and mosquitos out. Plus, as you said, they really are very easy to slide over when we have incoming and outgoing freight traffic from trucks and trains on the docks. Herm found Norman an interesting guy, cheerful most of the time, not just while trying to pawn off some new product to Delco.

They started talking about baseball and the Cubs and Cardinals this ‘64 season.

Cardinals might take the pennant this season, Herm started.

Norman seemed somewhat agitated.

What, you disagree? You think Los Angeles can repeat?

Shaking his head and fidgeting, crossing now his right leg over his left, then back again with his left over his right, then putting his feet on the floor, pulling up his socks, and then looking up, combing his hands through his dark brown hair, and then rubbing his mustache It’s not that.

What’s bugging you, Norman?

Ah, nothin’ Herm.

Come on, spill the beans.

It’s not much but driving around selling piecemeal items hoping someone will buy them, well, it’s really starting to get me down. I’ve been doing this for six years.

But you’re really good at it. They pay you a lot, right? You and Janine doin’ okay?

It’s Jenny. But, yeah, we’re fine. My boy Russ is doing good in school and just made centerfielder for the high school team.

Well, then what’s wrong?

I was asleep at the Holiday Inn® in Galesburg a week ago and then I heard fire trucks sirens blaring and rolling up, and I jumped outta bed, put on my trousers and jacket at nearly 3 AM and walked out in my barefeet and saw the main office and restaurant where over the other side of the motel was on fire. I had tossed my suitcase out by my car, and leaned against it, started putting my shoes on, and looked up to see a llama then racing through the parking lot among all of us millin’ around and we were all okay. At first, I did not know it was a llama, but I heard someone, no more than one hundred feet from me shout ‘That’s a llama, get out of the way!’ so that’s when I knew it was a llama.

Uh oh….

I just got this overwhelming feeling that it’s all for nothing.

We all feel like that from time to time. You just had a shock.

Something just ain’t right. I am drivin’ around lookin’ for meaning.

You aren’t going to follow a tent revival are ya? I hear there’s a lot of that goin’ on now.

Norman got up and shook his fist and started to grunt I just can’t make it this way. Everything now is a question. And I don’t have ANY answers! His face was blood red and the veins in his neck were about to explode.

Calm down, man. You want a drink? I have some of your Bombay™ gin around here, down in the cupboard in the kitchen. I can get you some ice water if you prefer.

No thanks. Sorry, I just got overwhelmed with the nothingness of it all. Norman sat back down.

The what?

The stark reality for me now is that it is empty everywhere.

Man, you got to take it easy.

They looked away from each other, both turning to see Delco clock on wall with minute hand on six-hour hand between four five as red second hand sweeps up nears top at twelve. Light from four-square paned window was on wall up behind left over Herm’s shoulder now that clouds had passed.

Norman and Herm looked out the window.

It might rain tonight. Front coming in they said on the radio earlier.

Another minute passes by, says Norm. It’s getting late. I better get going.

Sit here as long as you like.

Herm got up, went down the hall, returned with another coffee for Norman, handed it to him carefully with two hands and another Delco paper napkin underneath. Two creams, two sugars, no saccharine.

I’m gonna hit that diner up the road.

Just take a few minutes.

After a short while, Norman got up, told Herm thanks for the coffee, and for listening.

Herm began shuffling a few papers on his desk as he stood up. He placed the brochure and pen and key chain Norm brought from Friebisch Industrial Products—the gold glossy paint info and trinkets marketing stuff, and reminded Norm Hey, don’t forget, we got that vendor exhibition in Detroit in late July. It’s scheduled around the Tigers, too. I’ll get us box seats behind homeplate for the Yankees.

The two shook hands, Herm walked him out and watched Norman get in his red with white top 1962 Buick™ Wildcat, back out of the slanted parking space one of thirty, that might now very well need that new gold paint Herm thought. Norman rolled down his window, waved, and yelled Thanks! See you soon, Herm waved back, Don’t forget, Yankees in Detroit! and Norman rolled out onto the highway heading north, honked his horn twice, waved again smiling, and roared off, and quickly was out of sight.

Ten minutes later, Norman Blark was dead, having run his car off the road, careening through a small ditch, and headfirst into a large oak tree, thrown through the windshield with his right foot stuck in the red steering wheel, trying to avoid at 55 MPH, the posted speed limit, a Mack™ truck from Everson Supply Co. full of New Jersey Yellow™ gravel that had run a stop sign off to his left. He never had a chance.

Herm wondered the rest of his life What if I had not offered him more coffee?

The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, CRI&P RW, sometimes called Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway, reporting marks and stock ticker symbols CRIP, RI, ROCK and is also known as the Rock Island Line, or, The Rock.

By the the end of the decade, The Rock would operate 7,183 miles of road on 10,669 miles of track, report 20,557 million ton-miles of revenue freight and 118 million passenger-miles.

Herm played poker with the engineer and train fireman who’d arrived safely, on time and on schedule at 1:45 PM this late October Saturday the 17th with the freight on The Rock’s Quad Cities Express freighter, the sister route of the Quad Cities Flyer passenger train, that was being unloaded onto the docks in the warehouse. The fourth in the game would always be the guy who hustled the most that day, but that Herm could beat. But that didn’t last long. Herm ended up having to bribe someone, anyone, with extra time off or easier duty to convince guys to play cards with him. Today it was Ray Mahaffey. Omaha, Texas Hold’em, or 5 Card Stud. Herm always sat in his same lucky chair, the one from his office no one else would ever be allowed to sit in while he played poker, same chair, one he told the engineer and fireman was made sometime ‘round way back even before the start of the Civil War. I don’t know exactly where from. Looks like it’s been around though, doesn’t it?

Yes, it was fromCivil War, mostly referred to from what I recall War of Rebellion.

Ha, Flomdich, yeah, sure, maybe General Grant sat in it once. Why is everything so dramatic to you? Where’d you get that old damn thing? the engineer, a fella named Geoff Mobley, from Cleveland, with a big black gray beard that looked like one the Smith Bros. cough drop boys would be proud of, asked while busting out a flask full of God knows what from his Levi’s deep indigo bib overall jeans outfit, made specifically for train engineers, taking a big swig, and gasping Ahhhhh as the first hand of 5 Card Stud was dealt.

At an art and estate sale by chance in Milwaukee at L.L. Lowenjack’s gallery. He is a famous artist, Herm replied. For twenty bucks.

I never heard of him, Mobley said.

He does all kinds of famous weird modern art stuff. I just happened by his gallery because it was across the street from the Hilton hotel I was staying at for a GM Delco conference. He had many paintings on sale. I didn’t really like any of those, but I saw an antique chair tagged for sale at $50. I offered him $15, but he took $20. He said it was in the army and many places over many years. I expensed it to the company.

How did he know that? Mobley asked.

I don’t know, but I liked it, Herm said. I took it back on the train and kept it with me all the time onboard. It’s been in my office here ever since.

You’re crazy, Herm, fireman Bennie Coleman, originally from Ogden, Utah, and a devout Mormon said.

Herm looked over at Ray as he dealt, and recalled the first ass chewing he gave him, which, in retrospect now was more of a chastisement, rather than an ass chewing.

Mahaffey, do you know for sure that crate to be 74 pounds and 5 ounces? Or do you only think that crate to be 74 pounds and 5 ounces? I can send you right now to the postal room to do it all over again, you know that don’t you? Herm once told probationary newbee, Ray Mahaffey.

I’m going to open me up a steak and seafood restaurant, Ray had said earlier once right after graduating from Riverdale High School in Port Byron. But he never did, instead applying for a warehouse job in Moline.

You sure about this? Why are we doing this? Bobby Dirks whispered while cutting through the trees and towards the rail spur.

I told you, man, I checked it out now for weeks. The engineer and his fireman are inside playing cards with Mr. Flomdich and one of the warehouse guys. Once the train arrives for an hour they unload the train, usually in twenty-five minutes, Neal Mathis said. Like I said, remember, they got all kindsa stereo equipment on this train. Philips™, Thorens™, and Garrard™ turntables, Quad-ESL™ and Acoustic Research™, and Advent™ speakers, and Harman Kardon™, Kenwood™, and Pioneer™ sound systems. All kindsa brand names.

Do you know it’s a federal offense? I can’t believe we’re out here doing this. What are we gonna do with all this stuff? How’re we gonna sell it? Chip Lampley asked.

There’s always the box each month on the Thursday train from Chicago that has the diamond stylus needles for the turntables. That stuff’s priceless. There’s Chinese and Dominicans I know in Chicago that’ll want this, Neal replied.

C’mon, Neal, we was just kiddin’ around playin’ pool and pinball when you came up with this grand scheme.

Chip shut up! You know you owe me. You do. Here’s your chance for a clean slate. Barry is parked right back over there the other side right now a thousand feet by some hazardous barrels. He needs to not touch that toxic waste. He is always tumping over stuff. I think it’s an affliction he has. No one will see him. He has his aunt’s beige Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser™ ready to go. Don’t you dare quit on me now, man.

There wasn’t really a plan, but the whole idea was to grab off as much stereo equipment as possible off the train.

The Rock! Leaving Chicago, the Rock Island Line, the mighty ‘Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad’, Barry Nevenzell said while sitting alone in his aunt’s beige Vista Cruiser reading a Mad Magazine™, looking out to see some hazardous waste barrels across the way, thinking of The Quad Cities Express" that would soon be along with its blazing sleek shiny platinum and red lightning locomotive sometimes with over a mile train of cars, carrying gasoline, automotive parts, processed fresh and frozen food products, coal, furniture, including new and antique, old chairs, tables, desks, and lamps, cows and chickens, and whatever else, heading down from Chicago into Moline, then off on the spur to the GM Delco parts distribution center and warehouse where Herm was playing poker with his train pals, and Ray. The Rock would then, after offloading at Delco, circle back around warehouse to connect with main line on its way to Davenport across the Mississippi. GM had the 1 ½ mile side spur track built southwest of Moline to accommodate this train, with the same standard gauge 4 foot 8¹⁄2-inch track as the main line, the same width as all of the rest of the railroad tracks in America. The Rock shared in the cost to maintain it, paying for 75% of the upkeep. GM had its own rail cars. Rail inspectors, and detectives, from The Rock would ride a high-rail car, a pickup truck on a rail wheel chassis that could race along the tracks keeping tabs on irregularities, peculiarities, odd or unusual features or habits, the unobvious, things like a switch signal turned maybe two degrees, which meant it was not locked, or a spray paint marker on a rail not made by railroad personnel, or some tire tracks seen in the mud by a breaker box.

Every afternoon I sat there saw Herm go out to inspect walk along track to get away from it all first low hum vibration on track, then lonely first moan, second alarming blast, last one-minute splendid symhony announcing its arrival as king rollin’ down track steel bridges shiver shake, they just could not wait, harmonic pitch back forth rocking squealing wheels heard for miles around as babies would sleep through it all.

The train was carrying two boxcars sealed with Sandman (a sleep sand) being transported from the Great Lakes Naval air station North of Chicago, on the train all the way to Galveston, Texas. This sleep sand was originally developed in first as a powder, like flour, in an almost dusty form by Union Carbide® after World War II. There was no practical use found for it in Korea because most of the fighting was inland and in and near the mountains, and transport and access was problematic, and if it were applied, the winds could blow it in any direction, perhaps back onto American troops. Another iteration became a granular, like sugar, a sparkling dark brown sand, which became active immediately once released onto any surface within minutes. The intent is to place it on the ground, specifically on beaches and adjacent towns throughout Latin America and countries in the West Indies. The specific target is the Cuban army, or operatives, nearby island or northern South American countries. Code Name: Brown Sugar.

The plan was to have some available on various Navy ships patrolling the Caribbean in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The Sandman product was officially designated by the Department of Defense as S-Check and was disguised for transport as a quick fill and dry sidewalk crack repair product packaged in 60 lb. cement bags and labeled Hard Rock™. Only approved hazardous waste trained crews were assigned to handle it at all times. Even while it sat dormant in barrels in warehouses prior to packaging at unknown locations. Only four packages would be placed on a 4 X 4 palette.

Active ingredients included Diphenhydramine Carnauba Wax, Crospovidone, Dibasic Calcium Phosphate, FD&C Blue 1 Aluminum Lake, Hypromellose, Magnesium Stearate, Microcrystalline Cellulose, Polyethylene Glycol, Polysorbate 80, Silicon Dioxide, Starch, Riboflavin, Titanium Dioxide. It was essentially industrial-strength Sominex™.

‘Sandman,’ is going to be used as an industrial strength ‘sleeping pill’ in granular form, packaged in sixty pound bags, a sand to quell the expected invasion of a Caribbean island, possibly two or three, the Cubans are trying, McGeorge Bundy, aide to President Kennedy told him as he was briefed in late August, 1963, per Pentagon records released under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and approval in 1981, triggered by Sominex™ requesting approval of a maximum strength sleeping pill by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in 1979, and Senator Henry Scoop Jackson (D-WA) making an inquiry as to the origin and history of the product development of Sominex in 1980. Kennedy reportedly had rolled his eyes at the announcement of the plan, having politically survived recently both the Bay of Pigs Invasion debacle and the Cuban Missile Crisis, but then simply nodded and began rocking back and forth in his rocking chair and lit up a Cuban cigar.

After November 22, 1963, Brown Sugar, Sandman, S-Check, became part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s arsenal. S-Check, as it was known also during product development by Monsanto Corporation®, as Union Carbide had discontinued its involvement in the sleeping pill business in 1949, is on a Rock Island Railroad train from Chicago, through Moline, transferring at Davenport onto an ATSF train, onto Kansas City, down through Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston, to Galveston this The Third Saturday in October™, 1964, also the term for the annual college football game between Alabama and Tennessee, this day being their first road football game of the 1964 season, Alabama beating the rival Tennessee Volunteers The Vols, 19–8 at Neyland Stadium, David Ray giving the Crimson Tide an early 3–0 lead after connecting on a 30-yard field goal in the first quarter, then extending their lead to 16–0 at halftime with a pair of second-quarter touchdowns, the first a one-yard Steve Sloan run and the second after Wayne Cook blocked a Tennessee punt that Gaylon McCollough returned 22-yards for a touchdown, the Vols cutting the Tide’s lead in half to 16–8 with a seven-yard Hal Wantland touchdown run and two-point conversion in the third quarter, with a 23-yard Ray field goal in the fourth quarter providing the final 19–8 margin in the Alabama victory, Tom Fisher starring defensively for Tennessee with a blocked field goal, a blocked punt and an interception of a Sloan pass in defeat, Alabama coach Paul Bear Bryant and Tennessee coach Doug Dickey shaking hands on the field after the game, the victory improving Alabama’s all-time record against Tennessee to 22–19–6, and raising their record on the season to 5-0, the Associated Press® (AP) later presenting the AP Trophy to Alabama because of their 10–0 regular season record and #1 finish in their AP poll, the Arkansas Razorbacks also having a 10–0 regular season, but finishing #2 in the final AP poll, though on New Year’s Day, the Crimson Tide, with now Joe Namath at quarterback being stopped at the goal line on a quarterback sneak, losing to the #5 Texas Longhorns 21–17 in the Orange Bowl finishing the season with a 10–1 record, Arkansas beating the defending national champion Texas, then #1, at Austin in October, finishing its season undefeated, 11–0, with a 10–7 win over the seventh-ranked Nebraska Cornhuskers in the Cotton Bowl, there being no further polls, Alabama’s national championship being unaffected, despite Arkansas’ undefeated, untied season and its win over a common opponent, the United Press International (UPI) poll in 1964 also naming its national champion before the bowl games were played.

The U.S. Coast Guard will then secretly transport Sandman