One of my fondest memories was counting the pennies for my Grandmother Marie as she balanced the books at the end of each day. I was so proud when she finally trusted me to do the counting. Grandmother ran the concession stand at the Santa Fe Union Station in Phoenix. The country still ran on trains. Those days the trains came into the Phoenix Union Station with the same regularity as at the sister Union stations in every major city in the country. People, freight, livestock and automobiles could be seen rumbling past out the grand old station windows that faced the tracks.
The station in Phoenix has been boarded shut for years. The railroad lines through Phoenix were odd and were subsequently abandoned. The direct line from Topeka runs through Flagstaff on its way to Los Angeles, the line to Phoenix wasn’t really connected to the east or the west coasts directly. It was a spur line created solely to service the explosive growth of the Valley of the Sun, Phoenix. To catch the main line, you had to take the local from Phoenix out to Wickenburg and continued on to Ash Fork, where you could catch the main line to the east or west coast. Recently I read that the old station was being restored to be used as offices. I think Grandma Marie would be pleased.
It was a grand old station with a multi-arched front facade, polished concrete floors, high ceilings hung with large glass dome lamps and fans. How well I remember running my hands over the smooth oak benches with a narrow armrest every 6 feet or so that filled the luminous hall. One wall was lined with a row of phone booths. My sisters and I checked often for forgotten change behind the small silver door where the change came down with a clink. Some days we were lucky and found a silver dime.
We loved getting to go to work with Grandma Marie. A day at work with Grandma meant getting to sit on the counter of the concession stand next to her as she leaned her elbows on the counter. From our perch we could survey everything and everyone that came through the station. There would be the quiet times in between the arrival of the trains, when the old station was silent like a church. One of the older homeless men that hung around the station might be dozing on the benches. Pigeons might gently fly through the lofty ceiling. Grandma loved the pigeons and the people.
Then the hustle and bustle would begin to pick up as passengers, well-wishers and porters began to gather for the arrival of the next passenger train. Porters pushed large handcarts overflowing with trunks, cases and hat boxes from the front doors out the back to the platform. Most people were pretty well turned out in those days at the station, as a trip on the rails was considered a luxurious way to travel.
Then the train would arrive with the engineer’s sounding of the whistle, a sound that we craned our ears to hear as the train approached the station. The great beast snorting steam would fill the windows, the platform and at least a block along the tracks, the train. We girls loved the trains. I don’t think even with the hundreds we saw, dozens we rode on, even all the trips with the engineers up in the cab at the roundhouse with Grandpa Joe, that the trains ever lost their magic for us. Somehow, they always seemed majestic and formidable, a ticket to places unknown.
Grandma sold everything at the concession stand from ice cream in cups with a wooden spoon, to plastic Indian headdresses and rubber tomahawks, souvenir Arizona key rings and collector spoons, to sandwiches cut on the diagonal, chips and sodas. The ice cream with the wooden spoon was our favorite treat earned by sweeping up, taking out the trash or the honor of counting the change at the end of the day.
We did get into trouble with Grandma from time to time. It had to do with the older homeless men who sort a lived at the station. We knew them by name. They were our friends. It was a time when it was considered rude to look down on any human being, especially one who was “down on their luck”, as Grandma would say our friends were. We would sit with them, and they would tell us stories. They were kindhearted gentlemen to us. We adored them and they adored us. Trouble would start though, when we would come back to Grandma’s with extra money to buy something we wanted that she would not let us have. Somehow, she always knew that one of our gentleman friends had given us what little money they had. She watched us with her stern eyes as we marched back out into the lobby and sheepishly gave the money back.
It was a different time then; I remember the men at the station treated with respect and dignity and people who came to my Grandparent’s house were given food and an odd job to do. People were just people, and everyone deserved to be treated well, we were told. I think my Grandparents remembered too well the hard times of the depression and the wars to turn anyone away hungry. A friend recently told me that the “Hobos” would make a mark on the fence or telephone pole near the house were a woman was known to share a sandwich or a piece of pie if you knocked on her back door.
I often wonder what happened to that attitude of helping each other out in times of need. They seem to be gone like the trains that used to run through Phoenix Union Station. Grandma would not be pleased with this turn of events. She would put her hands behind her back and sternly tell us all to share what we have with our brothers. I think she had something there. I still think of her every time I count change or give something to help someone less fortunate out.
From the Second Edition of “Back Roads, Scary Critters and What’s for Dinner” by Jodi Johnson to be published by backroadspublishing.com this fall.
Caption: Union Station, Phoenix, AZ circa 1958
