The sounds of the old train whistle and noise of steel on steel as the wheels of these long black trains negotiated the mountains of Western North Carolina tracks are firmly engraved in my memory. Even though the nearest train track was several miles away, the familiar noise and echo of their labored engines as they struggled up the steepest grade (the Saluda grade between Tryon and Saluda, NC) this side of the Mississippi broke the morning silence. I never rode a train until my senior year of high school when the juniors and seniors took a train ride to Washington, DC as part of our school activities. We worked hard for two years making the money for the trip and boarding the train in Spartanburg, South Carolina began for us an excellent adventure.

Before our trip to DC which was to coincide with the Cherry Blossom trees bloom in DC, there was a derailment of a train on the Saluda grade near an area that offers some relief from the steep incline near a place along the tracks known as Melrose, NC. Several boxcars had gone off the track and the accident required a team of railroad men to come and do some extensive work fixing the tracks. We had driven down Pearson Falls Road and were going to the Fork Creek community to a church when we came upon the accident site. What I saw that day is a part of our American history that is forever gone but forever ingrained in my memory. The crew repairing the tracks that day reminded me of the old song John Henry. If you remember the song, it goes,something like this, "John Henry was a steel driving man", he was a bigger than life individual on the order of Pecos Pete,Paul Bunyan and others.

Thes men were huge black men. They worked in tandem using a song to keep the rhythmn as they drove new spikes into railroad tracks. It was awesome! The sweat glistened and rolled off their foreheads and bodies but their work that day was like that of a well oiled piece of machinery. We did not stay to see the completion of the job but the track soon became serviceable again as a result of these men's hard work.

The trains that once moved much of the commerce along the Saluda grade are now non-existant. There is talk about using these old tracks as bike trails or walking trails but whatever becomes their ultimate end, what I saw that day surely was a part of history that will never again reappear. I am so thankful for the memory..