Friday, March 20
By Gene Owens


"This is not 38, you must take Old 97/And put 'er into Spencer on time."

-- From "The Wreck of the Old 97"

Steve Brodie was "scalded to death by the steam" and eight others died in 1903 when Old 97 lost her air brakes between Lynchburg and Danville and leapt off a 75-foot trestle. Brodie, the engineer, was "going down grade making 90 miles per hour" as he tried to "put 'er into Spencer on time."

Lynchburg and Danville I knew as important cities in the commonwealth of Virginia. I didn't know where Spencer was until I began regularly traveling Interstate 85 from High Point to visit family in South Carolina. A sign just to the northeast of Salisbury announces the presence of the N.C. Transportation Museum there. Many times I've made a mental promise to get off the interstate and browse the museum.

Walter Turner, on behalf of the museum, has invited me to Rail Days, to be held there June 13-14, and by golly I'm going to try to make it. The event promises to reunite me with some memories. The Southern Railroad established the Spencer shops in 1896 to provide maintenance for the steam engines that plied the tracks in that day. The town grew up around the shops and now boasts about 3,500 people. When diesel engines replaced steam engines, the shops were phased out. During the late '70s, the railroad turned them over to the state of North Carolina. It was the perfect location for the transportation museum.

When Walter first approached me about showing up for Rail Days, he caught my attention with his reference to the "Loretto," a private car originally ordered by Charles Schwab, who engineered the merger of J.P. Morgan and the Carnegie Co. into U.S. Steel.

The car was a rolling two-bedroom luxury home with Cuban mahogany walls, gold-leaf ornamental carvings and expensive tapestries.

It was just the type of car that would appeal to Col. Elliot White Springs, the tycoon who put the Springmaid label on the textile map. Springs, a World War I fighter pilot and successful writer, had inherited the Springs Cotton Mills from his father. When the Loretto was declared surplus, he bought it. He intended to use it as a stationary office, but later he designated it as the home of his daughter Anne and her husband, H. William Close. Bill Close took over the company on the death of his father-in-law. After Bill and Anne moved out, the car went downhill until the museum took possession of it and restored it to its former splendor. It'll be there in June.

Probably inspired by memories of his life with Anne in the Loretto, Close, during the late '60s, bought a set of private cars that had belonged to Johnson & Johnson. They featured Tiffany lamps, a player piano and turn-of-the-century decor. I was then serving as manager of publications for Springs Mills and was there when Marshall Doswell, who was director of public relations, began taking calls from media all over the world. Close's purchase caught Marshall flatfooted, and he called his boss out of a meeting in New York to ask what he should tell the media.

"Just make up something, and if I like what you've told them, you'll still have your job tomorrow," said Close, who was clearly in a joking mood.

What Marshall did was to invite the international media to South Carolina to see the cars and take a rail excursion on the Lancaster and Chester Railroad, a property of Springs Mills.

The L&C is a 29-mile line connecting Springs' mills in the towns of Lancaster and Chester. Col. Springs had a lot of fun with it. He named a vice president for every mile of tracks, including stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, who was vice president in charge of unveilings. He published a mythical dining-car menu ("top round of Dagmar") and a mythical schedule that listed one stop as Richburg, but only during quail season.

Richburg is a tiny hamlet famous as the hometown of Marty Marion, the St. Louis Cardinals shortstop who was a contemporary of Stan Musial, Enos "Country" Slaughter and Al "Red" Schoendienst. When I was with Springs, Richburg was also proud of a tree stump said to be the remains of an oak that Gen. Cornwallis' horse bit the top off while the nag was tied nearby. Old-timers said the tree did indeed look as though a horse had bitten off its top.

Well, Marshall Doswell had the weatherbeaten old Richburg train station gussied up in bunting, and he brought in media junketers from both sides of the Atlantic to board the rail cars there. It must have been quail season, for the train not only stopped there but it also served roast quail and sherbet for lunch.

While the player piano belted out old-time songs, the ornate cars rolled out of Richburg and stopped on a trestle across the Catawba River, where lunch was served. The media folks loved it, and Marshall Doswell kept his job until retirement.

I won't look for roast quail or top round of Dagmar at the Rail Days in Spencer, but I suspect that the atmosphere and eats will be worth the trip. So come June 13, Lord willing, Miss Peggy and I will board our trusty Toyota and we'll do our very best to put 'er into Spencer on time.

Thank goodness, the brakes are fine and we don't have a 75-foot trestle to cross.

You may write to Gene Owens at 317 Braeburn Drive, Anderson SC 29621 or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@aol.com