I worked the Christmas vacation one year at an orange packing house. My job was loading boxes of oranges into mostly semi trailers.
A couple of times it was boxcars. There was a railroad spur right beside the packing house.
I still remember just how much more a boxcar would hold than a semi. They were much larger than one might think.
Shocking that the boxcar still exists after 80 years...
I have my own memories of Merle. Have known him my whole life. Knew Buck and Bonnie too Buck was the nicer of the two.....like a whole lot nicer. Lol
And to think, none of the family thought to complain and demand welfare... If I could afford it, I’d like to convert an old train car into a house.
Once, on a long visit at my dad’s house, he had me helping to build a second private retreat for himself, located about a mile from the house for the entire family.
He made it super insulated, with homemade double pane windows and old asbestos insulation from junked refrigerated rail cars, and then the outside finished with salvaged, 100 year old adobe from 1800s adobe houses which are much larger and thicker than modern ones.
The house in those pictures doesn’t look like it was made from a boxcar to me.
My daddy showed me how to put a penny on the track. You’d have to search for it because it would actually stick to the wheel and may end up 3 or 4 feet away.
We lived in a house beside the tracks. There was a small yard, a gravel street then the railroad. The front door was about 50 from the tracks. When a train came past everyone had to quit talking because you couldn’t hear. It would shake the house. After a while you’d sleep right through it.
Tracks ran about 100 yards behind my grandfather’s house...I wish I could hear again those cars going over those tracks late at night...This 60 years ago...Before the seamless tracks...clack, clack, clack, clack............
it would put you to sleep....
I just added Keyword: merlehaggard (just above comment #1). Clickable, it leads all the way back to 2002 articles about him :)