Train Rides to Louisville Began at Vine Grove

 

 By ELEANOR MARTIN

 
Long ago, two little boys were running down the pike.

"Where are you going?" someone asks.

"We are going to Uncle Alex's house. He came home from Louisville last night with a stalk of bananas and we are going to get some."

My father would make a buying trip to the big city occasionally. The auctions were being held on Main St. down close to the river now the Belvedere. The merchandise was being shipped by boat down the river to be unloaded to merchants there. When my father returned home with a stalk of bananas and gifts for the family, black patent leather shoes for my sister and me, we knew the sales had been good.

When we were dressed in our best the last thing my sister would do was to get a clean handkerchief and stuff it into her pocket to wipe the dust off her shoes along the way. So that is why her shoes were always so bright and shiny. I looked at mine and they seemed a bit dusty.

At that point we only had bananas at Christmas and on very special occasions. We had big plump raisins growing on a stem to be weighed like grapes.

Our trip to Louisville was long remembered. We traveled ten miles by horse and buggy to Vine Grove, put the horse in a stable and took the train, passing through the town of Stithton which Ft. Knox was ready to take over.

I loved the train ride. Somehow the arrival of the train in a small town would make the people's day. The people would gather to welcome some of their friends and neighbors back from Florida. The train coming around the bend with the whistle blowing would draw the younger set as well as the old.

 
 

 Schuyler Shelby Martin
1913
 

Mary Eleanor Scott
1918
 

 I have seen people tossing pennies on the track to be flattened out as the train runs by. I never knew why they did this - maybe to see how much copper was in a penny. This was where boy meets girl. Some romances were started there I'm sure. When the train was ready to leave the conductor would call "All Aboard" and the bell would start ringing for it was time to move on to another town. The men meeting the train to carry the salesmen's grips to the boarding house where they would have home cooked meals and would stop to wave to the passengers as the train roiled out of sight.

Have I just been tagging along doing nothing? Here it is the middle of April. "April showers bring May flowers." I know it's a hackneyed saying but I think it is true.

I have promised myself that I shall take one last trip on Amtrak before it too may vanish.