the disappeared

The house my father grew up in is also the house that I grew up in, through age 12. For a while after they married my father and mother lived in their own (rented) house, but soon after I was born they moved back in with his parents. I don’t know the reason, but I assume that, since both my parents worked full-time (when Daddy wasn’t in prison), they could rely on my grandmother to care for me and then, later, my sister. This she did, faithfully and lovingly, and her memory remains a blessing to me and to my sister. My grandfather was an engineer for the Frisco railroad, and in many respects the railroad dominated my childhood. The freight yard from which he departed on his long runs across the country — the East Thomas Yard — was less than a mile from our house, and Grandma would always take me in her station wagon to drop him off and pick him up. Sometimes, for reasons unknown to me, we would have to drive to Carbon Hill, Alabama to pick him up. (I think crew-changes happened…