The Short Cut

By William C. Larmore

We farm kids living Wapello County, Iowa, in the 1920s did not have much time to play, especially those like me who had no siblings to help with farm and family tasks. In the winter, the chores, both morning and evening (eight cows to milk in my case), took up a lot of time, while school at the Ash Grove single-room grade school near Dalonega sort of gobbled up the rest.

Naturally, all of us loved summer. It meant no shirt! Bare feet! Ball games! Swimming! Fishing! You durn betcha! But there was another reason as well. A covey of us kids from more or less adjoining farms (only about a mile apart) had got addicted to the railroad. The what? Yep. That’s what I said. The railroad!

The Rock Island passenger line ran parallel to the main body of our farm for several miles. One bright summer’s day in 1925, or around there, several buddies and I thought about walking the track, looking for things that had fallen out of the open passenger car windows. We found a slough of stuff that first time, so we did it often from then on.

After a train passed, we would walk at least a mile of track both ways east and west from the bridge over the Ottumwa Road near the Eagle crossing and then get together to divide the loot. There were pencils, pens (sometimes Waterman), knives (now and then a Barlow), and sometimes some scattered change. Once in a while, we found a silver dollar and once an Ingraham one-dollar pocket watch that still ran. Jake Watkins got it because he found it.

We found all sorts of ladies’ things, too, like combs and brushes that smelt good and lots of them little hand mirrors, usually busted. After chow time on the midday passenger run, we would now and then find a good, still tight-packed sandwich lunch which some poor geezer had knocked out the coach window while he reached for the salt.

Anyway, that’s what I was doing one red hot July afternoon about 2 p.m. when the skunk and I shared our mutual shortcut.

I was down at the Rock Island track about a quarter of a mile from our house. The fast special had just gone by in a roaring cloud of smoke and cinders, most coach windows open and melting passengers fanning, and I was climbing the track shoulder to get up there and see what fate had left me on the track. I thought I was alone this time, but all of a sudden I heard a holler from Johnny Baxter down on the other side of the track. I knew it was Johnny because he had too many teeth in his mouth so he always hollered an awful bunch of mush. I didn’t want to see him bad enough to climb the big mess of dirt between us that held up the track, but nearby was a whopping big old open metal drain pipe that went clean through the bottom of the whole right of way and out the other side. That was a shortcut easy way over to Johnny.

I hollered to my dog Jimmy, and we started through the pipe, with me bending double to fit in. I had a lot company in that old pipe besides little Jimmy dog. There was a mess of other small critters in there with me, some live, some not, but all smelled defunct. The farther I went, the worse it smelled.

I was having to crawl through dirt, bones, bugs, spiders and ‘skeeters in the bottom of that rusty old pipe, and I decided I just didn’t want to see old toothy Johnny that bad. I was about to squinch around and go back when I realized that I was not alone in there. Something else pretty fair-sized loomed up against the light in the far end of my pipe, and the thing was coming toward me fast. I stopped flat, but it came steadily on, waddling like a fat dog. It was mostly just a blob in that big dark old pipe, but I knew what was really shaped like that critter. It was a skunk! My little white dog Jimmy (always with me), which I had ever before believed would give his life to protect mine, nearly tore off my left leg turning around to get out of there. In fact, I didn’t see my protector again for the rest of the day.

Anyway, I flattened myself against the corrugated side of the old pipe and almost quit breathing as the fat little feller, tail hoisted, got to me, sniffed my leg and stopped. How he could smell anything else than his own perfume, I still can’t see, but I guess mine wasn’t a lot better ‘cause I’d had my last bath ‘most a week before. Too, skunks are said to be real shortsighted so maybe he couldn’t see me clear, but anyway, he sniffed again, sneezed—and apparently decided I was just another skunk and then went on his way with his big gun unfired.

I owed him a lot for that, and I will never forget him. Thanks to a skunk, I learned two valuable lessons inside that rusting old railroad pipe which were to serve me well later, especially in WWII. One: never, ever deliberately put yourself in a tight place. Two: watch out for shortcuts.

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William Larmore lives in Marietta, Georgia.