Travel to Fort Wood

Yesterday was the day for my monthly morning shift at the USO we have here at Lambert STL airport. We had about 300 military come visit during my four hour shift, over half of them heading back to Ft Wood after their Thanksgiving leave. That is much more than we have during a "normal" month, and in fact was a quite a few more than we had last November at the same time. There are five volunteers on my team, including me, but we only had four yesterday as one was ill.

We had a full dormitory (18 beds) when I arrived at 6am, and in fact also had two Marines in the nursery sawing Z's on the floor as we had no families there with young children.

My point - many of them (Army, Marines and, yes, Navy) needed to get back to Ft Wood, and it was chaos trying to help them get transportation back (I was surprised how many of them just showed up at the USO without any arrangements to get back to their duty station!).

We all felt like we were travel agents trying to help them out. There are two Greyhounds daily that pick up at Lambert and go down I-44, plus several contract van companies that were coming by to solicit full vans down to Fort Wood, plus the Marines had a chartered bus set for the evening (they are so organized!). Also, several of the troops had cars and were meeting up with friends at the USO - we were putting people in them to fill them up if they had space in return for gas money.

I was ranting and raving about the "Good Old Days" when SLSF No's 3 and 9 would have easily solved the problem, with the bus pick-up at Newburg that also existed then. Most of these kids didn't even know that the Frisco once offered passenger service through that part of the country.

But then why should they? They are 18-19-20-21 years old, and passenger service ended on the Frisco roughly 45 years ago.

I'm getting old! Sigh.

Ken

ps - Don't get me wrong - Working with our military people at the USO is fun, fun, fun, and I had the best time yesterday of my entire two years working there. It's just that it would be so much easier if this country still had a significant passenger rail service. For example, getting the Air Force folks back to Scott AF Base was like falling off a log - send them down to the east end of Terminal 1 at Lambert, get them on the MetroLink System, and off they went back to Scott in Illinois.

ps #2 - I'll be there again on December 23, two days before Christmas. There will be many more people coming through the USO then, but they will be inbound, either to be picked up by family or friends at Lambert, or to connect to other flights. It won't be as much of a problem. The Christmas rush is our heaviest time at the STL USO - it will be wall to wall with US military - and our USO here is a big place, one of the biggest in the country. Santa will be there too, as we will have kids. We already have donated presents for all of the little kids.

ps #3 - No, big as it is, there is no ocean at Ft Wood. They Navy types were going down to Ft Wood for training on heavy equipment provided by the Army Engineer Corps.

 

Good musings. I wish we could turn back the clock. Too much is gone that younger people will never know about.

Charlie

 

Buck - It is a pleasure to work at the USO and to help our people in uniform, if only to provide them with a calm place to rest, help them with a travel problem, to take a nap between flights, have a computer for them to use, a video game or X-Box to play, a book to read (which they can take with them), or to enjoy one of our world famous chili-dogs and a Pepsi, or just someone to talk with. I love it. We have a great volunteer team on my shift. I run the front desk, and really enjoy welcoming our guests and checking them in. Gotta have a valid US military ID card, or a valid retiree card, or a valid military spouse card, to get in! Sometimes John Q Public comes in looking for a cup of coffee or a place to sit down. Nope, sorry, this is for the US military!

I was a high-grade point Chemical Engineer graduate in 1964, just as Viet Nam heated up. ChE's were judged to be priority back then, and my employer easily got me deferred each year. In 1968, while at grad school at Purdue, we had our son Kurt, and that made the deferment permanent. I always have felt a little guilty about that; working at the USO is a very small way to pay a little of that back.

Plus, yesterday (Sunday), it was fun telling these kids about the Frisco and how back then they could have returned to FLW riding on a first class train, the Frisco's The Meteor, Number 9.

Ken

 

I would like everyone to understand two great things about the USO - it is ALL staffed by volunteers, and it is ALL funded by donations of $$$ and supplies. In our case, as but one example, PepsiCo St Louis donates all the soft drinks and Frito-Lay snacks to USO-Missouri. Sunday morning, two Delta pilots, both ex-USAF, came in and each donated $50. That's how it works. I just sent USO-M a check myself. Anybody else wants to do the same, let me know and I'll give you the address. Thanks.

Uncle Sam pays for nada, zippo, zilch, zero, nothing.

Back to talking about the Frisco.

Ken

 

Ken -
Neat stuff - I always remember seeing the USO "room"(?) at Lambert when we'd go to pick up my uncle incoming for the holidays from Midland, TX. Those were the days of black/white tube arrival/departure monitors and constant pages of "...please go to the nearest TWA Courtesy Phone for a call."

Here's a USO flag that was a free download from N-Scale Limited. Might be good to include depending on one's era.

 

Brad - Can you specify the locations of the two trestles to be replaced on the Ft Wood line? Any pics of them?

One last USO comment regarding Ft Wood - we do run a branch USO down there on-site within the Ft Wood complex for the troops. I've never been there - would like to go down and work a shift sometime. Another good reason to get down into deep Frisco country!

Ken