Today I awakened at 7 am sharp and could not go back to bed. Sunday is usually a great day to sleep in but that was not going to occur.

I ended up taking breakfast at The Summit restaurant in Soda Springs at about the 7,000-foot level in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Great breakfast!

I shot some photographs of the Donner Lake area and spied a Union Pacific train heading downhill past Shed 47, which is on the south side of Donner. I shot this next photograph in Norden as the UP train headed downhill in dynamic braking mode.

“Downhill” became a recent issue with another train where two Harsco employees recently lost their lives. I decided I would hike to this spot, to see if I could approach the area for photographs. This decision cost me four hours hiking, 7 miles over rocky ballast, and yielded an area not unlike that of a ghost town.

Two men died here. I could smell the diesel fuel all over. The winds blew and the pines shed their needles. Two light generators sat unattended. Pizza boxes were discarded about. A cardboard box marked “drinking water” sat atop a generator. I afforded myself a few of these bottled waters. Like most derailments I’ve seen, wheelsets sat pushed aside. At first blush, the train on which they were riding began to accumulate speed downhill and efforts to scrub this speed yielded no results. Perhaps by my accompanying photo you can see that the train derailed to the right on a curve to the left.

Union Pacific managed to re-open the two damaged tracks. The track on the left is the downhill or westbound track. The right track is for uphill traffic. A slow order is in effect for this area.

Of the cars present, I could see that those remaining had burned horribly. Whilst I was examining the wreckage, an eastbound #6 California Zephyr Amtrak passenger train passed at 10 mph under a yellow caution flag.

No doubt, each and every passenger, and every crew member looked closely at the wreckage remaining at this site where, clearly, two persons perished.

Passengers note this with amusement; train crews shake their heads and speculate: could this have been me? What will my family say upon my passing?

UP purposely opens the trackage as quickly as possible so that commerce can continue.

And the trains keep rolling.

BZ

My father was born on April 13th, 1920.

They married on April 24th, 1942, in Lake Tahoe amidst no one other than themselves — to the chagrin of their respective families.

From there my father was shipped to the 8th Air Force for his requisite tour and then back to California. It was decided that he would become an instructor in the B-25 Mitchell at Mather Air Force Base.

He said that, whilst there, he came across Jimmy Stewart who was more of a man than a greater percentage of others he encountered.

My mother died on May 14th, 2002. She ran out of air.

The rains of 2006 are beginning.

BZ

My grandfather, on my father’s side, served in World War I.

My grandfather’s name was Verto Alley.

He was born on March 13th, 1896, and passed away at the age of 82 years, 7 months, 21 days, on November 4th, 1978.

My father told me, even now, that his goal was to at least match the number of years on this planet by his father.

My Dad has survived any number of operations and, despite them, turned 87 this year. He has managed to survive his own father by 5 years.

As far as he is concerned, according to what he told me, everything past 82 is gravy.

In 1917, Verto was just 21 years old. Before that, he attended the Kansas City School of Law in 1914 at the age of 18.

Despite the potential of his attending law school, and his passing of high school at a remarkably young age, he served in World War I.

The photo at the right is what he carried during the war, of his then-girlfriend and later his wife, Kay Johns.

How glamorous and romantic is that?

That would be like pilots carrying photos of their girlfriends covering certain instruments on each flight they mastered.

On the earth, “ground-pounders” carried photos of their gals in the liners of their helmets.

Navy pilots carried their gals in their cockpits.

This specific photo carried my grandfather through World War I.

I knew my Grandmother as Katherine. I see that Verto called her Katy.

He did whatever it took to get him through.

He survived the war, married Katy, and my father was the result plus two uncles:

Richard: my father;

Bill: the youngest (and went down on the carrier Yorktown during WWII);

Jim: still lives in Highland Park, TX today.

There will be another post.

BZ

Instead of writing about the meaning of Veteran’s Day as I suspect many will today, I wish to show you the men who served my country and whom I call my family. As I collect and write this post, I am listening to the soundtrack from the HBO series Band Of Brothers, inspiration that, to this day, makes my eyes water when I hear its orchestral notes — such as they are now, though I continue typing.

(Please note that, depending on how many photographs Blogger will allow me to publish at one time, I may have to break my thoughts into a number of smaller posts.)

Charles A. Johns served in the Civil War for the North. He was my great-grandfather on my father’s side. Here is a photograph of Charles Johns taken shortly after the Civil War itself. He had a brother named Lafayette Johns.

Charles Johns served his nation during the Civil War as a Second Lieutenant, Company “K”, the 9th Regiment, of the Kansas Volunteers Cavalry. He was promoted to 2nd Lt. at Topeka, on the 22nd of November, 1864, by Kansas Governor Thomas Carney.

I have Charles Johns’ original promotional papers as well as his original discharge. His discharge is on the right, and indicates that he served three years in the war and was honorably discharged on the 24th of June, 1865, at DeValls Bluff in Kansas, under Government Order #83. Further, his discharge papers indicate he was born in Germany, was 25 years of age upon discharge, 5’9″, light complexion, blue eyes, sandy hair and, by occupation, when enrolled, a “clerk.”

The photo on the left is from a hand tinted original photo I have of Grandpa Johns from the 1920s.

Clearly, my family had served in the Civil War on the side of the United States. Reparations? Besides not being a viable plan and a ridiculous idea on its face, I and the line of my family owe no reparations to any one for any reason.

If anything, those desiring reparations owe my family, me and my future kin extended reparations for fighting on the proper side over 131 years ago.

Blogger has now limited the photos I can upload so it is time to conclude this post.

BZ

It’s a good day for the United States Marine Corps: Happy 231st Birthday to our USMC fighting men! Marine Commandant Mike Hagee writes here about this day and what the Marines mean to a free United States.

It was a bad day for moviegoers: Jack Palance died today at the age of 85. His family said he was actually 87.

Palance, a wonderful “bad guy” in the movies, kept me enthralled with his work and was one of the most down-to-earth actors around. He received his Oscar for 1991’s “City Slickers” and, besides being a WWII veteran, was a heavyweight boxer.

Anyone remember the ’91 Oscars when Palance dropped to the floor and whipped out a number of one-armed push-ups in front of millions of television viewers?

It was a bad day for my area where, not more than five miles from my house in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a train derailment occurred yesterday in which eight persons were injured and one man was killed.

Today, a second man feared missing, was found dead in the wreckage. The first man was crushed horribly; the second was burned beyond recognition in the ensuing fire.

The train was not a standard Union Pacific freight train, nor an Amtrak passenger train — the sights usually seen on the rails adjacent my house.

Instead, it was a Harsco Track Technologies rail grinding train, on contract to the Union Pacific Railroad. A rail grinding train usually consists of two custom diesel-electric locomotives on either end, with various cars in the middle to include a water car, fuel car, two cars for the crew and the actual grinding cars. Six of the ten cars derailed and chewed up over 1,400 feet of track.

A Placer County Sheriff’s Department representative, Lt. Chal DeCecco, said “If you look at the crash site, it looks like excessive speed was a factor.”

The yin and yang of Life.

BZ