When the Smoke Cleared, the Boys Had Become Gentlemen

I’m pretty sure my cousin Ray and I were 15, which would have made Eddie, Ray’s younger brother, 13.

Pretty young, but after a lot of pleading, Ray’s and Eddie’s parents and my mom decided that the three of us could go to Denver on the train.

After all, my father and Ray’s and Eddie’s uncle, who lived in Denver, would be there to meet us at the station, so why not. Besides, in the enlightened year of 1942, what could happen?

Naturally, we would travel the three days to Denver in a chair car. We each had $6 for the diner, but to make the money last as long as possible our mothers had prepared something for us to eat on the train.

It amounted, thanks to a minor communications failure, to two large, nearly identical boxes of nutbread. To add a little variety, Ray’s and Eddie’s dad had stopped at a market on the way to the station and bought us a dozen oranges.

Freedom, money in our pockets, food and the open road. What more could the three of us need?

I don’t think we were even all the way out of the station when I produced my contribution to our great adventure. In those days, men of the world smoked pipes.

Having worked as a delivery boy at Delany’s Drug, I had sold myself three identical pipes and a large package of very aromatic Rum and Maple smoking tobacco. My cousins were thrilled.

Having a pipeful, we decided, was something men did after a meal “to sweeten the stomach.”

So, though we had eaten just before being taken to the station, as the train was passing through Glendale en route out of Los Angeles we each had a couple of pieces of nutbtread, covered with butter.

As we were finishing, the porter came through the car, noticed our brown paper bag and stopped. He spread the top of it with an index finger.

“You boys got a lot of citrus there?”

None of us had ever had any experience with black people before. Ray and Eddie, wide-eyed,just nodded. I didn’t.

In the early planning stages of the trip, a friend of my mother’s, John Burnett, a retired railroad man, had stopped by the house.

On hearing of the proposed trip, he offered to share his vast knowledge. He had then given us such unwanted information as buffeting capacities for rolling stock, or how hard a coach could be hit before every one inside would be mashed to a paste.

That almost sent my mother up the wall.

He had also given me a short course in train etiquette. Part of which was to tell me that the train would be staffed for the most part “by Negro boys” and that all porters were to be called George.

“They just love it when you call ‘em George,” he said. “Then, you take care of ‘em at the end of the trip. Tip ‘em a dollar.”

So to the porter’s inquiry I answered, “Well, George, we packed us a little fruit, to snack on.”

He gave me a long, hard look. “Well,” he said, “you better finish your snacking before the Arizona border. Can’t take any citrus fruit across the state line.”

Having no clear idea how far it was to the border, the three of us started eating our dozen oranges.

It was twilight before we finished. We went to the observation car, opened the heavily aromatic Rum and Maple Tobacco container and loaded our pipes.

Shortly after lighting up Eddie looked up at both of us, announced that he thought the tobacco stank and the whole idea was dumb. He handed me his pipe and went back to his seat to read comic books.

Ray and I smiled indulgently at each other, chalked it up to Eddie’s youth and went on smoking and watching the scenery flash by.

I noticed that Ray, who was leaning against the back observation car ironwork, was facing into the wind. As a consequence, he seemed to be smoking about three times as fast as I was and the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe was burning bright red. My pipe, on the other hand, kept going out. In fact, I was smoking matches more than anything else, while Ray seemed to be competing with the front end of the train in smoke production.

I knew what was happening.

And there was a demon, down deep inside me giggling like an idiot. Ray was the star of his school’s baseball team. I’d made my baseball reputation as the only one trying our for third base who’d ever ducked a line drive.

Ray was a top track man and the captain of his school’s basketball team. All our lives Ray had bested me at everything.

At last, with all my extra thumbs and left feet, I’d found something I could do better than Ray, smoke. A small victory, but sometimes you have to take your victories where you can find them.

“Hey, Ray,” I said, trying to keep a straight face, as he grew noticably grayer. “I’m going to stay here and enjoy my pipe for a bit, but if smoking is making you kind of sick, maybe you ought to go in.”

Wind Whipped Up

He looked surprised. “Sick? ‘Course not. I’m going to stay here and enjoy,” he gulped a couple of times, “my pipe, too.”

The train raced through the early evening, whipping up the wind and the coal in Ray’s pipe glowed like a demon’s eye. Puffing or not, the smoke seemed to be billowing from every aperture on Ray’s head and boiling up out of the collar of his shirt.

Finally, after turning to a color somewhere between gray and green, he just turned, knocked the dottle out of his pipe, was sick over the back rail and went back into the car. I followed him in.

Ray headed for his seat, noticed that Eddie was having another slab of nutbread covered with butter, made a quick turn and walked on toward the restroom at the end of the car.

“What’s the matter with Ray?”

I told Eddie I didn’t know. I was beginning to feel a little guilty. Not much, but a little.

It got colder later, and though the three of us had been forced by our parents, in spite of all our objections, to wear our sweaters, we were too cold to sleep. I volunteered to go for blankets. I found the porter at the end of the next car.

“George,” I said. “We need . . . “

The porter held up his hand to stop me. “My name’s not George, he said. “Why do you call me by something that’s not my name?”

I could feel my face turning red as I stammered out the only answer I had. He listened very carefully until I was through, then he nodded.

Mean or Stupid? “Then, the truth is you just don’t know any better. Well, this Mister Burnett who gave you all this advice is not your friend. He’s either mean or stupid, so don’t be taking any more advice from him unless you want to grow up to be mean and stupid, too.

“I think your momma wants you to grow up to be a gentleman. You know what a gentleman is?”

I nodded that I did know but he told me anyway: “A gentleman is someone who doesn’t hurt anybody, who makes you feel better for knowing him, not worse.

“When you call me by some name that’s not mine, you make me feel bad, like I’m not important enough for you to learn my name, like I’m less than a man. I’m a man and I feed my family with the work I do. And I’m more ‘cause I’m a railroad man. I take care of this train and the people on it. You need something, you come to me, but you treat me the way you’d treat any other man. And you call me Mister Johnson.”

I must have stood there in some kind of shock because he looked at me for a long time before he said, “You can go, now.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“You want something?”

“No, sir,” I said, remembering the blankets too late.

Blankets Handed Out

An hour later he came through the car, his arms laden with blankets, handing them out to the passengers. Ray, still gray-faced, had his eyes closed. I closed mine down to slits and pretended I was asleep.

Mr. Johnson stopped by our seats, handed Eddie a blanket. Eddie responded with a “Thank you” and a bright smile and pointed to his sleeping brother. Mr. Johnson helped Eddie spread a blanket over him and started to move on. Then he stopped, set his load down and spread a blanket over me, before continuing down the aisle.

In the morning Ray was well. As he folded the blanket he thanked me for everything I’d done taking care of him and all.

Eddie just grinned. I said nothing.

For breakfast the three of us went to the dining car, only to find that there was nothing on the menu we could afford except coffee and orange juice. Because we were all on the edge of a citrus rash from our oranges of the previous evening we settled for a cup of coffee each, to which we kept adding cream and sugar until the waiter came over and took them off the table. We topped off breakfast with nutbread back in our chair car.

I took no joy in the fact that Ray couldn’t eat any of it.

The train stopped in Albuquerque. Nobody explained why. It just stopped.

There used to be a little sign in the bathrooms of passenger trains, that read: “Passengers will please refrain from flushing toilets while the train is standing in the station, if you please.” It could be sung to the tune of “Humoresque.”

Enough people had ignored the sign to oblige the various health departments along the right-of-way to ask the railroads to lock all bathrooms while the trains were in the stations.

Bought Food

Forced by circumstances, we disobeyed one of our parents’ most adamant directives--we got off the train in Albuquerque. A lot of other passengers did the same. In addition to finding a working bathroom, we also discovered that there was a counter in the station that sold food. We got three ham sandwiches, a couple of Nehis and a Hires. We were trying to pick out candy bars when Eddie announced, “Hey, everybody’s gone!”

Except for the ticket clerk, the station was empty. We ran outside. The train was gone. We ran 20 yards along the platform and stared down the track to the point where the rails converged.

There was no train.

We sat down on a bench in shock. The ultimate catastrophe about which we had been warned had occurred and we were too old to cry, though Eddie’s eyes did seem to be getting a bit shiny.

“I’m going to ask the ticket man,” Eddie said.

We got up and were trotting back into the station when Mr. Johnson appeared. “You gentlemen--holding up the train. Come along now, quick.”

We ran with him through the station to the tracks on the other side. We had simply gone out of the wrong side of the station. Our train was there. The porter hurried us up the steps, waved toward the engine, followed us in, pulled up the step and closed the door. With a lurch, we pulled out of the station.

“The bag of sandwiches,” said Ray, leaning his forehead against the door as close to tears as I’d seen him since his school had lost a basketball game in a playoff. “We left it on the bench.”

We had nutbread for dinner.

Trip Was ‘Neato’

The next day my father and Ray’s and Eddie’s uncle Bill met us in Denver.

“Have a good trip?” my father asked.

“Just swell,” I answered.

“Neato,” said Ray. “It was just fine.”

“Except for when Ray got sick,” said Eddie.

Ray looked stricken.

“Sick?” asked uncle Bill.

Mr. Johnson stepped down from the train right in front of us with a couple of familiar looking pipes in his hand. “Wasn’t anthing, sir,” he said. “Sometime the young people get a little motion sick early in a trip. He’s fine.”

“Pop,” I said, “this is Mr. Johnson. He helped us out.”

“I appreciate you taking care of the boys,” my father said. “It can be a wonderful learning experience, traveling across this great country of ours.”

“They learned a lot,” Mr. Johnson said.

“Due, in no small part, to our fine railroads and the good people like youself who work on them,” my father said. “I see you’re a pipe smoker.”

Mr. Johnson glanced down at the pipes in his hand, then at me and put them in his coat pocket. “Ah, yes sir.”

“Still, in times like these,” my father said, “a smoke’s a smoke. I wonder if I might offer you a cigar?”

My father smoked the cheapest of cigars, but Mr. Johnson just smiled, accepted the stogie and tucked it into his pocket. “Much obliged. They’re fine boys. No trouble at all. They have the makings of real gentlemen, sir, just like yourself.”

We said goodby again, shook hands all around and left the station. I remember wondering whether Mr. Johnson had cared about the cigar, which could not have cost more than a nickel. I suspected he was just too much of a gentleman, himself, to look at the label.

I remember, too, of being conscious for the first time, of just how much of a gentleman my father was.