The Bent Page

In the previous post, I mentioned my short story Big Iron Holiday. It takes place in December of 1918, just after the end of World War I. Thanks to another blog, I found a link to the Library of Congress site, which has now digitized a number of panoramic photographs. I found these two that were relevant to the story. The first one shows Mauch Chunk, PA, USA, which is just up the tracks from the Central Lunch shown in the previous post. The town is now called Jim Thorpe, named after the famous athlete. This view shows the railroad tracks, canal, and a little piece of the town. If you look closely, you can see the clock tower on the courthouse, the same courthouse where the Molly Maguires were convicted. (Sean Connery was in the movie of the same name for those who remember.)

The next photo is not from Pennsylvania, but it does show a train wreck and the salvage crew at work. This is the type of job supervised by the character Ellsworth Botcher.

This was quite a violent wreck. The locomotive on the right side of the frame has its cab crushed. No doubt the engineer did not survive. Luckily, it appears that nothing exploded. Steam explosions are among the worst.

People forget how many train wrecks there used to be as well as how many people died in them. These days it’s more likely that a plane crash makes the news. However, in general, traveling is a thousand times more safe than it was in the days of Ellsworth Botcher and his pal, Ned Fry. Nonetheless, be careful out there. Or there will be a crowd around like this one shown below:

Another big THANK YOU to the Library of Congress for keeping track of all the books, photos, and paperwork that they do. If I worked there, I would never leave.