Next Stop "The Holy City"
I used to walk alongside Old Betsy Road
On the abandoned railroad bed where once upon a time
The Old Betsy train rumbled up to the Keene Station.
With milk from the dairies, passengers at train time.
The rails are long gone. Ripped up leaving
Only rusty spikes as traces buried in the gravel
For us kids to find, evidence of an older world
And of the way our grandparents used to travel.
Locomotive, tender, passenger car and baggage
Not much of a train - a small engine, cars, two or three.
On a twenty mile circuit between two junctions
The Union Pacific and the TV&B.
My little one church town was the midpoint,
Of it's daily journey, dropping would-be preachers
At the station just down the hill from the college,
Along with missionaries, doctors, nurses and teachers.
The train used to approach the station there;
"Next stop, the Holy City," the conductor cried.
Until one day the train no longer came,
And the tracks were from the roadbed pried.
The Old Betsy road ran through our childhoods there,
But it's outlines fade as years to dust they wear,
The traces away, ever softer a nagging reminder
Of why once upon a time our fathers settled there.
So much that's good gets lost as decades pass.
Memory dissipates and more's the pity.
And we forget that once the conductor cried,
"Next stop...........the Holy City!"
© 2019 by Tom King
Drawing © by Delbert "Sleepy" Read
Love this. Thanks.
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