Old Days

“The movie wasn’t so hot It didn’t have much of a plot We fell asleep, our goose is cooked Our reputation is shot” “Wake Up Little Susie,” Everly Brothers Don Everly passed away at age 84, part of a duo that profoundly affected pop music. Born into a coal mining family, Don and Phil sang with their parents before recording a string of teen melodramas during the 1950s, such as “Wake Up Little Susie,” “Bird Dog” and “Cathy’s Clown” that were about falling asleep as a drive-in, worrying about a rival stealing your girl or having such a crush that you’d do anything that pleased her. Rumor was, the Everly Brothers grew to despise one another, but they made beautiful harmony and influenced countless successors, including Paul McCartney and John Lennon and Seals and Crofts. My favorite live band at Bucknell fraternity parties covered Everly Brothers songs, sometimes substituting dirty words, such as “Stick it in me, baby” for “Stick with me baby.” Toni and I saw Don and Phil live opening for the Beach Boys about 30 years ago, and they still had it. Warren Ellis, who wrote an article that I published in my 1920s Steel Shavings (volume 8, 1982) commented on a Facebook post about the magazine. I responded: “I remember you as an A+ student and the article, “Asleep at the Throttle,’ about Hungarian-born railroad worker Stepen and an accident he averted while employed at Inland Steel Co. as a locomotive fireman.” He came to America from Canada in 1922 at age 27 after his entire family had perished during World War I. An employment agency found him a job in Indiana Harbor. Initially he shared a room at the Inland Hotel but moved after a roommate stole his razor and clothes before vanishing. Before becoming an engineer, initially Stepen worked 72 hours a week as a locomotive fireman tending the engine, shoveling coal, feeding water to the engine, and making sure the engine didn’t get overheated. Ellis described an incident that occurred during the mid-1920s while Stepen was on the “graveyard” shift: The engineer had a very peculiar habit of taking little naps while driving the train. Stepen not only took care of his fireman’s duties but also kept a close eye on the signal lights. If any change occurred, he would have to wake up the engineer. On this one run they were hauling limestone, which became rather smelly and dusty after a while; there were times when you could not even see in front of you. Furthermore, the train had to enter a tunnel at a curve in the tracks at an angle because the tracks were on a hill. A very, very tricky run, as Stepen put it. Even so, the engineer fell asleep. One night, Stepen looked up, almost a second too late, and noticed the lights were signaling the train to stop. He had to put on the brakes himself because there was no time to wake up the engineer. The train jerked quickly to a standstill with a loud bang. The engineer awoke just as the train started to lean on one side. One of the cars was half hanging off the track and had been pushed into the wall of the tunnel, creating a rather large hole. The limestone had to be reloaded onto another car. For the next few hours while repairs were being made, not much limestone was hauled through the tunnel. Stepen very rarely had to watch the signal lights when working again with this engineer. He said that for some reason the man broke the habit of taking naps at the throttle. I recall my surprise when I first started teaching and a student probably in her early 50s stated that she had listened to a radio broadcast of Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 solo flight over the Atlantic Ocean. No wonder to current students, events of the 1960s and 1970s seem like ancient history. Probably most former students who remember me are of retirement age. One of them, Vickie Voller, I play duplicate bridge with. The other day, I repeated something I recall that IUN Psychology professor Herman Feldman told me a half-century ago: if you’re early to appointments, you’re compulsive, always right on time you’re obsessive, and if habitually late, passive-aggressive.