Frisco GrandKid Here. Hi!

I come from a railroading family. I grew up on tales of the Road. I may be the only girl in the world who wanted to grow up to be a brakeman.

Here are a couple of stories as written down by my grandmother, the daughter of one Frisco employee (Millard N. Jaques) and the niece of another (James Oscar Jaques) and granddaughter of yet another... and on and on. LOL

Bit lengthy but well worth the read!

In this story, Uncle Oscar is James Oscar Jaques, son of “Bill” and Sarah E. (Ellis) JAQUES. The ‘I’ in the story is Elsie, Sarah’s granddaughter through Millard Nathan and Lenora (Hartung) Jaques.

Around 1909, my Uncle Oscar was a railroad man and single. Jaunty and carefree, he was the pet of all the waitresses in Monett Missouri where we all lived. Oscar’s light repartee with some of the local telephone operators brought forth scandalized observations from Grandma. One day Uncle Oscar’s train was involved in an accident and Oscar ended up with a broken leg. Grandma had been notified of the injury and when the train came through Monett en route to the Frisco hospital in Springfield, wild horses couldn’t have kept Grandma from meeting that train!



When she saw her youngest son lying on a cot in the baggage car, her emotions knew no bounds. She knelt down by that cot and wept and wailed and became so hysterical that the conductor hesitated to make her leave. He contacted the yardmaster and after a time, that worthy gent showed up to settle matters. He entered the car, lifted Grandma up bodily and held her to keep her from going back . As he firmly escorted her from the baggage car, he told her in no uncertain terms, “Ma’am, y’all done layed out this train for over 40 minutes already, and by God this here railroad has to run! For this here railroad to run, this here ****ed TRAIN has to git outta TOWN. And to do THAT, YOU-all has to git outta this here train!... Now SET....Ma’am.”


Grandma calmed down and Oscar continued on his way to the hospital. It might not be stretching things a mite to say that Uncle Oscar thoroughly enjoyed that broken leg. He flirted with the nurses and gave the doctors Hell and had generally a high old time. Still, fun as it was in Springfield, he knew Monett was home.

Uncle Oscar had a white Spitz dog named ‘Ted’ . that dog worshipped Oscar, body and soul. Ted refused to take up with anyone else and when Oscar was out of town on a run, Ted would lie in the road at the top of the hill and watch as the trains from the Oklahoma Division and the Kansas Division came into town. Both trains came into Monett from the West. By some uncanny sixth sense, Ted always seemed to know the train Oscar was coming home on. Excited, the dog would jump and bark, wagging frantically, and Uncle Oscar would always go “on top” and wave as the train pulled up into the yards. Ted was very seldom wrong. Ted would then race down the hill , cross the tracks and meet Uncle Oscar, accompanying him home with a fanfare of barking. It was a wonder that dog wasn’t killed by one of the frequent trains passing through, but he always made it.


Ted disappeared for days after Uncle Oscar’s injury. Grandma couldn’t find him anywhere. When Oscar got out of the hospital in Springfield, he found Ted. The dog had crawled far back under the front porch and died. We always thought he died of a broken heart. Uncle Oscar lovingly carried Ted’s body out and buried him by the south tracks he had loved to watch for Oscar’s arrivals. Later on someone notified the Monett police that someone had buried a child there, the grave being about the size that would accommodate a child’s body. The police went out and found that grave and dug it up, revealing poor old Ted’s body. They reburied him and to this day, somewhere by the tracks old Ted’s ghost keeps an eye out for Oscar’s train coming in from the West.

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I'll have more Frisco stories by and bye... if anyone wants to look up that accident in 1909 that broke James Oscar Jaques' leg, let me know. I'd love to read any documentation on it, and other stuff I mention.


Oh, and one of my fondest memories is lying in a field in Monett with my grandmother and hearing her say "Ah... south-north bound train... she's stopping... whistling flagmen out....(long pause) OK, they're calling them in... She's gonna start rolling... They're approaching the yard, now..." I asked her "Mama how do you KNOW this stuff?" and she'd say "Why... the whistles, Honey... the whistles." She taught me all the whistle signals, but today the only ones I remember are the "approaching grade crossing" (Two longs, a short and a long) and "Clear the track / warning" (series of shorts becoming a long as the train approaches) I may be wrong on that last one... I used to know them all, but I've forgotten.


I still have my great grandfather's railroad switch keys, his rail pass (if I can find it) and his old heart shaped locket. AND several pictures which I will upload to Photobucket and thence to here.


Highball it, Boys... Highball it!!


Sylvia Stevens

 

I also came from a Frisco family although mine was more recent than that. My father worked as a machinest at the Tulsa yard from '69 until Burlington Northern purchased Frisco in 1981. We still use those terms on a daily basis around here though because we still sell locomotive parts and repair, maintain, lease and sell locomotives. (The big ones not models) The terms we use are different though. They usually relate to the locomotive itself or the parts on them. I am also working on trying to get a museum built in my town of Beggs, Oklahoma for the Frisco Railroad. In 1899 the Frisco came thru and built a stock pen and a depot and named the stop Beggs after the then vice pres. of Frisco, C. H. Beggs. If anyone has any extra money laying around that they would like to donate to this cause, I am definately not too proud to take it. We started our business soon after Burlington took over because they didnt take care of their small customers like the Frisco did by sending out machinest to handle repairs on their switching units and so we started in 1986 in order to fill the gap that was left. I want to be able to show the way the Frisco company was more of a family organization and how they worked together to build their business together. I know that dad said it was a world of a difference when the change came. If anyone has any old copies of "All Aboard" that they would like to part with or any other Frisco stuff, let me know.

Rhonda

 

My dad worked out of Cherokee as a brakeman from 1971 until the end