There's More Than One Way to Get Home for Christmas By Frank Dewey

I had been looking forward to getting home to Washington, Indiana, for the 1989 Christmas and a one-week vacation for quite a while. The plan was to work a normal day on Friday, December 23, at the General Office Building in Jacksonville and then catch a 7:00 PM Delta flight to Atlanta and a 9:30 PM flight from Atlanta to Evansville where I would rent a car for the fifty-mile drive home to Washington. That would get me home about midnight or shortly thereafter. Even when I would walk through the door at that late hour, I knew my mother would be up waiting for me.

That was the plan, but the weather forecast was not looking favorable. For the last few days, the weatherman had been talking about a winter storm coming out of western Canada and working its way east across the United States. They were talking about rain or snow on the leading edge and then extreme cold following it. I was hoping to get ahead of all that. And, it looked pretty good when I packed by bags in the car that morning. I even put my heavy coat in the suitcase since I would not be needing it in the mild temperatures of that day in Jacksonville.

When I left my Service Design office on the thirteenth floor of the GOB, it was just starting to rain. And, the temperature was starting to fall. I arrived at JAX early for my flight, but to a full airport, as you would expect on a Friday night before a Sunday Christmas.

About the time we should have been boarding, they announced that our flight would be delayed because the airplane coming from Atlanta had not taken off yet. Then they announced the same thing at regular intervals for about the next hour. I was starting to worry about my connection in Atlanta, but the gate agent assured everyone that all flights out of Atlanta were delayed so we should still be OK. We finally took off about 10:00 PM.

As soon as I got to Atlanta, I checked on my outbound connection and sure enough, it had left about fifteen minutes earlier. Since that was the last flight of the night to Evansville, I was stuck in Atlanta for the night. Unlike the current airline service, Delta put me up for the night in a nearby airport hotel and gave me vouchers at airport restaurants for two meals. I got to bed shortly after midnight and woke up at 5:00 AM to attempt to get on the standby list for the next Evansville flight. As I remember, the first flight was out at 7:00 AM, but there was no space on it. There was another flight scheduled about 10:00 AM and another at 1:00 PM. As the time got closer to 10:00, they announced that the Evansville airport had closed because of being snowed in. There were several people at the gate in the same situation as I and we all started to ask about flights to Indianapolis, Louisville or St. Louis. One by one, those airports closed down as the storm moved east. Some of the people were talking about renting cars to drive to Evansville, but that did not sound like the safest way to insure getting home. The reports on the airport television were sounding worse and worse as the storm heading east.

Then, I remembered that 122, the Atlanta to Chicago intermodal train, should be about ready to depart. I quickly called Tilford Yard and talked to Forrest Wiley, the Atlanta Assistant Terminal Superintendent. He told me that they were loading the last of the trailers onto 122 for an on-time departure at 2:00 PM. I asked him if there was somebody who could pick me up at the airport and get me onto the train before the departure. He said he would be over to pick me up in thirty minutes. When I went up to the Delta Customer Service desk to tell them to cancel my reservation and see if I could get my bag, the agent said that they could not get me the bag but would put it on the first flight into Evansville after the storm. He asked how I was going to get to Evansville. I told him I was going to catch a train to Evansville.

Some of the people behind me heard that. Almost in unison, they said they did not know there was a train from Atlanta to Evansville. I had to explain to them I worked for the railroad and would be riding a freight train. Some of them still wanted to see if they could ride with me.

Forrest was waiting for me when I got outside to the pick-up point. He said I had enough time to drop by Sears to get a winter coat since I did not have any luggage and my heavy coat was in my bag. Then, we stopped at a McDonald’s on the way to the intermodal ramp at Hulsey. I think I remember buying a bag of hamburgers, fries and drinks for about ten dollars. Back in those days, ten dollars at McDonald’s could buy a lot of food and I had enough for lunch, dinner and breakfast the next morning. When we got to Hulsey Yard, Forrest introduced me to the crew of 122 and I went back to the second unit to settle in. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it was one of the ten BQ23-7 locomotives that the Seaboard System had purchased in 1978-9. The unique and very ugly units were designed to house all of the members of a freight crew on the locomotive to allow for doing away with the caboose. This meant I had plenty of room; but as I learned as the night went on, the unit leaked cold air through every door and window. The heater could not keep up with the fast falling temperatures.

It was just starting to rain as we left Atlanta. By the time we got to Chattanooga, the sun was down and the temperatures were near freezing. The rain was starting to mix with snow. I fell asleep somewhere between Chattanooga and Nashville, but woke up when we stopped for the crew change at Kane Avenue in Nashville. I could see that it was snowing hard and sticking to the ground. I woke again to find morning light of Kentucky showing deep snow and it was continuing to fall at a rapid rate. By the time we stopped in Evansville, we were about a couple of hours off of the scheduled arrival at 5:15 AM and the snow was deep. Frank Coakley was the Trainmaster on duty.

He came down to pick me up and drive me to the yard office. I told him that I needed to get to the airport to rent a car so I could drive to Washington. He said that would be a good trick since the airport had closed yesterday at about noon and was still closed. I began to call car rental companies, starting with the company that had the reservation I had made earlier. There was no answer. I tried several others and finally got someone at Hertz. The young lady said she had cars available, but no one who could clean them off. I told her to hold one for me and asked Frank if he would drive me to the airport. When we got on the Lloyd Expressway, I found that the snow was really deep. We were about the only people on the road.

At the airport, my brother-in-law, who lives outside of Evansville, showed up in his four-wheel-drive Jeep. I did not have any gloves, so he and I shared his gloves to get the rental-car windshield cleaned off. He let me borrow them to get home to Washington. I took off on Indiana highway 57 to drive home. The snow was still coming down and there had been no plows out to clean off the highway. I took my time and made it home in a little more than two hours. Normally, the trip only required an hour.

The temperature in Washington was at or below zero for most of the week. I got my luggage on the Monday following Christmas. It was on the first plane into Evansville as promised. I had taken a train and beat that first plane by two days.

Meanwhile, back in Jacksonville, the town virtually came to a halt as they had their first white Christmas in recorded history!