I'm Never Going Back To My Old School

The 50 year reunion of the Depew High School class of 1968 is rapidly approaching. I will not be in attendance. While I do visit my Mom once a year, that is about the sum total of my interest in returning to the place I grew up. I have few fond memories of high school, but a lot of latent trauma from being harassed by the jock and moron contingent. I moved away to get away, and the thought of somehow putting on a happy face with people I hardly knew or were never friends with does not enthuse me in the least bit. I no longer have the energy or interest in that sort of subterfuge.

I don't think so.

Someone recently posted a picture on the reunion Facebook page of a hallway of lockers with the words, "You're gonna miss this. You're gonna want this back. You're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast." Right. I really miss getting choked every morning by the cement headed jock sitting behind me in homeroom. I certainly miss the terror of the hallway outside of the drafting classroom where cretins meted out corporal punishment at random. I have a soft spot in my heart for the social order where football players and cheerleaders were our demigods to be worshipped and adored. No, high school sucked for a lot of us. It was an uncomfortable time at an awkward age where many of us struggled to find our role in the bad movie known as high school. The plight of the high school nerd is the recurring theme in many movies and TV shows. There is usually a revenge component where the nerds get the last laugh. My revenge was moving on and never looking back.

Depew High yearbook photography staff. One of the few things I really enjoyed during my senior year. Me on the far left.

Everytime I do return home I imagine what it would be like if I hadn't left or had I returned to live there. It creeps me out. I've had a rich life that I don't think I could ever have experienced had I not broken the surly bonds of small town life in the suburbs. I don't begrudge or wish to denigrate those who find these sorts of gatherings as milestones in their lives. They obviously experienced high school from a much different perspective than I did, or perhaps they have amnesia. I know there's a morbid curiosity factor in reunions, but I have no interest in seeing aged versions of people I probably don't remember and won't recognize.

I'm skipping class on this one.

Being the class clown had its advantages. Humor got me through a lot of miserable times.

You Can't Fight City Hall

A quixotic person is defined as one having or showing ideas that are different and unusual but not practical or likely to succeed. The word is derived from Cervantes character Don Quixote, starry eyed dreamer and tilter of windmills. I've always been an idealist and have never shied away from a challenge, especially one that has an air of impossibility attached to it.

I mentioned in a previous post that aside from an abiding love of all things railroad, I am equally enthusiastic about architecture. While I chose not to pursue it as a career (a choice I never regretted) I became an independent scholar on the subject, particularly the engineering aspects of buildings and structures such as bridges. The same forces of tension and compression apply to both. A major railroad terminal is the perfect melding of art, architecture and engineering. The planning for these structures requires thought be given to the movement of people in an efficient manner as well as the safe and efficient movement of trains in and out of the station. The process of creating what is essentially a heart that pumps people and trains in and out every day required the skills of not only engineers who understood the intricacies of railroad operations, but of architects who could render these buildings into massive monuments proclaiming the power of the railroads that built them.

The Chicago & North Western Railroad built such a building. Known as the Madison Street Station, or the Chicago Passenger Terminal, it was located on Madison Street just west of the Chicago River. Other grand stations had preceded it, including the North Western's own Wells Street Station, but THIS was a building for the ages. It was the first station to use electrically operated track switches controlled from two interlocking towers, amongst other technical innovations. Preparations for the building required extensive land clearance and a complete reconfiguration of the railroad's track system. The architects chosen were Messrs. Frost and Granger, chosen for not only their skills as designers but also for the fact that they were the sons-in-law of railroad President Marvin Hughitt. The building was actually overbuilt in anticipation of a growth in railroad passenger traffic that never materialized. When it was completed hosannas were sung. It served the railroad from its opening in 1911 until the early 1980's.

This is where I come into the picture. I was working at the North Western as a fireman in commuter service and the station was my home away from home. By the time I began my employment in 1974 the station was a bit timeworn. The interior of the grand waiting room had been carved up with elements like a grand staircase to street level being covered over with a restaurant/coffee shop. The lower levels where passengers once entered the station were blocked off and filled with offices of the commuter division. But these defacements could not overwhelm the remaining beauty of the arched vaulted ceiling of the waiting room. The upper level offices and rooms that held passenger amenities had long since been abandoned. They became my haunts, especially my secret hiding place on the station's roof. My own little retreat above the bustle.

My employer was not doing well financially, which was de rigueur for many railroads of that time period. Bankruptcies were rampant and the C&NW was looking for a quick cash infusion. Their solution was to sell the station to developers who would demolish the building and replace it with an office building with a train station. I was aghast to say the least. Actually I was pissed beyond belief. I found a few kindred souls and we formed the Friends of the North Western Station and embarked on a campaign to have the building declared a landmark. Our intrepid band of misfits stood outside the station with petitions and contacted the city's Landmark Commission to begin the hearing process to save our beloved station. We had support from the media, the architectural preservation community, historians and so forth. We thought it would be a slam dunk at the hearings. This is where the reality of Chicago politics steps in.

The first rule of historic preservation is to never wait to try to save something until someone wants to tear it down. These folks have already spend a considerable amount of money and gathered political clout to achieve their ends. As a preservationist you are merely a gnat buzzing around their big plans. I gave a passionate presentation before the commissioners complete with slides. Then the developers rolled out the big guns. First the lawyer for the developers who also sat on the city zoning board. Then the noted and respected preservation architect who called the building a "second rate building by second rate architects". I truly hope his departed soul is suffering someplace warm. Lies were proffered and it became apparent that the deal had been struck some time before and we were just going through the required niceties prior to the hammer falling. Needless to say the vote went against preservation, the station was demolished and Chicago got a nice shiny new skyscraper. The North Western was eventually merged out of existence which gave me some small solace. By then I had departed the railroad.

The whole experience left me bitter. I felt the city I had adopted as my home had betrayed me, but I eventually came to realize this tragic tale is just part of the continuum of historic preservation in Chicago. Don't love anything too much because chances are it will be gone tomorrow. We do not honor those things that made this city great, we just want to replace them with "second rate buildings" that disrespect the ideals of urbanity and civic pride. When we're done remaking the city into just another Houston we can stand back and wonder where exactly we are and how we got there.

I Was Working On the Railroad

I spent 30 years, on and off, as a locomotive engineer. Oddly enough it was not the career I envisioned for myself, but the seed for it was planted in my childhood. I wanted to be a lot of things when I grew up: a pilot, an architect, a cartoonist, or a TV producer. I tried a couple of them with moderate success, and ending up at the railroad was sort of an accident of both desperation and that little seed.

I was fascinated by trains as a kid. I had the ubiquitous Lionel train that went up around the bottom of the tree every Christmas. I was a free range child and often wandered to places where I could watch trains. Bailey Avenue was a short walk from my grandparent's house on Kelburn Street. There was a bridge over some train tracks where I could stand and watch the comings and goings of Pennsylvania Railroad freight trains. My grandparents took us to a park in Buffalo where an old steam locomotive was on display. In that innocent age you could climb on it to your heart's content.

When we moved to the suburb of Depew there were more railroads and more trains. Depew was once the home of the one of the New York Central's largest shops. The village was started by one Chauncy Depew, President of the New York Central Railroad. It was also the focal point of 4 railroad lines that bisected the town. I wandered and explored those tracks, and took out every book in the village library about trains that I could find. My favorite was "Trains, Tracks and Travel by T.W. Van Metre. and I don't think I ever let anyone else have a chance to read it I renewed it so many times.

In my senior year in High School I was a staff photographer on the yearbook. I used a camera and the photo lab for an project on the railroad landscape around town. It won first prize at the senior art show. Look Ma, I'm an artiste! I wanted to study architecture in college, my other great passion after seeing Louis Sullivan's Prudential Building in downtown Buffalo. My college choice ended up being determined by how far away I could get from my family, which was the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Not for architecture but for industrial design. Now I was in railroad heaven, and my Freshman photo project was documenting abandoned rail yards and train stations. Unfortunately that was NOT the assignment and my instructor was not pleased and my final grade reflected that. I continue to read books and magazines about trains, but it never occurs to me that I should work for the railroad.

Four years of college, three credit hour to graduation and I drop out. I work for a short time for animation company that ends up going out of business and that's where the desperation part of my story comes in. An old college friend and former roommate does work at the railroad. He tells me to show up at such and such a place on such and such a day at such and such a time and the railroad will hire me. Its 1974 and the seed has sprouted. The journey has begun.