FOLLOWING THE TRACKS

Following the Tracks and Dealing with SnowBy Ada BrownellI thought I was going to retire. After all, I’ve been writing for publication since I was in my teens.I was bored with retirement in a hurry, and I still had things I wanted to do. When I told people about some of the adventures we had working for the Rio Grande Western Railroad, they asked, “Why haven’t you written that story?”So, I kicked retirement aside, and made my way back to my desk.We married in October 1953. Les asked me out when I was barely 15 and he was 19, and already working as an agent–telegrapher for the railroad. Daddy would have chased him off, but he was my brother-in-law’s brother.I wasn’t any ordinary 15-year-old kid. I’d been cleaning houses and taking care of children since I was in the sixth grade. Then I helped my aunt manage her small motel, even painting and updating rooms and the exterior.When Les asked me for a date, he had about a half dozen girls chasing him because our church didn’t have many guys. I was the youth leader. Sometimes I sang solos during regular services, so I was noticed for more than my red hair and freckles.I was surprised when Les asked me out, and kept being surprised at how determined he was to make me his wife. My older sister had been engaged at least three times, so when Les asked me to marry him, I thought, “That’s once.”He sent me telegrams (he could send them free) that I picked up at Fruita’s railroad depot every week when he worked out of town. He wrote letters too.So we dated about a year and had a beautiful wedding. Then we began living all over Colorado’s majestic mountains, and even ventured into Utah, into the multitude of places where the D&RGW needed a telegrapher.We spent our first anniversary at Pando, near the top of Tennessee Pass, and lived in a log cabin across from the depot.In Avon we moved into agent’s quarters in the railroad station, but within reaching distance of the dispatcher’s phone, and we could hear the click of the telegraph key’s sounder from the living room. The bay window where Les worked sat only about ten feet from the tracks.In Malta, we lived in a railroad boxcar, with a lean-to mud-room and living room built on. Some small railroad towns had no company housing and few rentals available. When we arrived in Thompson, Utah, only one house was up for rent—a dilapidated shack covered with wind-blown tar paper on one section, and rusty corrugated metal on the remainder. No bathroom. An ancient wood-burning cook stove sat in one end of the two-bedroom building. We used old stove for heat and cooked on our gas range.My rich Uncle Bill, a builder, dropped by to see us there. I was mortified. He looked around and grinned. “I could build a house like this for about fifty bucks. But take a picture of this, and when your kids grow up and want to borrow money tell them, “We started out the hard way.”We eventually bought a beautiful 50 X 10 mobile home and parked it on railroad land.I started a Sunday school in the five years we lived in Thompson—population 98, four bars, a uranium mill, an acid plant, a school, and no church. We had sixteen faithful kids, and on Easter, some parents came.We drove 38 miles to Moab to church on Sunday nights. Les worked on Sunday morning.Later, we lived in two-mile-high Leadville, Colo., and one night our water froze. Les was bumped, and working somewhere else, so I rushed out with a fake fur coat over my nightgown to thaw it out, and got stuck out there because the door froze shut. I found out the next day the temperature had been 30-some degrees below zero.We had many other “near disasters,” but when you’re following the tracks of Jesus, He’s always beside you. Les worked for the railroad more than forty years. We moved twelve times the first three years we were married, and since chalked up more. God sent amazing people into our lives everywhere, and Jesus walked with us every step, even calling us to unexpected ministries and joy.We’re in our 80s now, married 66 years.*Copyright Ada Brownell 2020

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