A week ago I spoke to the local chapter of the National Association of Retired Veteran Railway Employees, telling the adventures we had when my husband worked as a telegraph operator for the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad in the mountains of Colorado.
I told about living in a boxcar when we were in Malta. We lived in the depot in Avon (that's nearr Vail)., where we could hear trains going uphill for miles, even with a helper engine on the rear, but when they went down the mountain we heard a little rumble, the depot would shake and the train was gone. That was before Centralized Traffic Control and Les handed up messages to moving trains with a Y-stick, his pants flapping in the wind, telling the engineer where to go into a siding, adjust speed, or warn about danger ahead.
The railroad brought our drinking water on a motor car.
We lived on the top of nearly two-mile-high Tennessee Pass, across from Camp Hale, and one soldier who got off the train said, "Mountains this way, mountains that way. Mountains over there and over here. The only way out of this place is up!"
In two-mile-high Leadville Les had been bumped and worked out of town. That's where I got stuck outside at about 2 a.m. in only my nightgown and a big fake fur coat trying to thaw out the freezing water pipes. We had about two feet of snow on top of our mobile home and it was melting from the warmth inside causing water to dribble down the sides and freeze the door shut while I tunneled underneath. Lucky my mother in law was there. I woke her up and she pushed and I pulled until I got back inside and dressed warmer. I found out the next day it was 30 degrees below zero.
We moved 12 times the first three years we were married. We stayed in Thompson, Utah, population of about 100, for five years. But we enjoyed our years living different places and meeting people.
Les’s telegraph bug has a special place in a glassed-in display cabinet in our youngest son’s home in Florida now. His old lunch pail with his initials scratched on the side sits beside it.
This is how i ended my speech: We admire railroad relics and visited a number of train museums across the country, including the Casey Jones museum in Jackson, Tenn. Our favorites are old steam engines, the muscled beasts that streaked across open land like an Indian’s arrow and like a mountain goat around the high peaks. Les has a small collection of HO model engines.
The real engines are the ones that bring back memories. the rhythmic puffing along the tracks, the whistle’s cry like a lonely coyote in the dark of night, as the train carried passengers, mail, cattle, sheep, oil, coal, uranium, war artillery, and vehicles.
We admire the old railroad relics. It’s sad in some ways to see the once powerful “iron horses” taken on one last trip, and like a tombstone, they stand there for us to remember the great things achieved when a locomotive could burst to life with fire in its belly.
In many ways we’re like an old engine. We’ll come to the end of the line on earth someday. But we’re different from man-made machinery. We were created to live forever. Jesus said whoever believes in me will never die. So although our bodies may someday lie under a tombstone or in an urn, the person we are will live on.
Furthermore, there will be a whistle—or more accurately a trumpet blast, that will echo around the world calling our bodies to rise to new life.
This is more than the restarting of a refurbished train engine. The Apostle Paul wrote, “Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’” (1 Corinthians 15:50-54).
I have written a book, Swallowed by LIFE: Mysteries of Death, Resurrection and the Eternal.
No one will get off this earth alive in his mortal state. But evidence shows we’re more than a body. Just ask the person who lost a hundred pounds, an individual with someone else’s heart pumping his blood, a patient who has had part of his brain removed, or the soldier with no legs.
We are more than a body. Study regenerative medicine and you’ll understand the experts estimate our skin rebuilds itself every seven days or so, and with the exception of our neurological system, almost every single cell in our body is replaced every seven to ten years. So we don’t have the same body we had last year, let alone the body in which we were born.
As a former medical reporter for a daily newspaper, in this book I reveal how science shows us that death is swallowed by life every day. I also examine the words of Jesus Christ concerning eternal life, as well as testimony from witnesses about His death and Resurrection. In addition, I tell the story of a man who was clinically dead, but revived; I interviewed medical professionals and did other research about life and death.
I told ___ (the president) I would tell you about my book along with our story about telegraphing along the Rio Grande Railroad. If you are interested in a copy of Swallowed by LIFE they’re sold at Barnes and Noble.com and Amazon.com for $12.95, plus shipping and handling.
Love for the railroad still pumps in my veins, and it’s much more than pointing out the “choo-choo” to children. Railroading is an adventure!
