BURKE RECALLED - PLANE SPOTTERS AND TRAIN WRECKS
These interviews were done as a result of Braddock District Supervisor Sharon Bulova’s initiative to capture the history of Braddock District. The interviews led to the publication of Braddock’s True Gold. By Marion Meany and Mary Lipsey
Interview of Lynn and Becky Bryce
LYNN:
Yeah, and then, of course, we had blackouts [during World War II] at night some times. I guess they thought somebody was going to come bomb us. In Burke they had a – almost where the post office is now [across from the train station] – they had a tower and women, my mother included, would spend two or three hours a day in the tower looking for airplanes.
MARY:
Sort of like Civil Defense?
LYNN:
Yeah, right. Of course, none of them ever flew over, but. . .
MARY:
Right. Did they have their binoculars?
LYNN:
Oh yeah. Yeah, they’d sit up in the tower and watch for them.
MARY:
How tall was the tower? I mean, like two stories maybe or. . .
LYNN:
At the most.
MARY:
At the most, yeah. So their range wasn’t really very big.
LYNN:
No, it wasn’t. The plane would have to have flown pretty close to it. (laughter)
MARY:
But was the tower built specifically for that?
LYNN:
Yeah, I think so.
LYNN:
Yeah, after the war, we were living in Burke and they were still running steam
engines, so in Burke now – almost where the crossing would be on Old Burke Lake Road – there was a water tower, and so the trains would stop to get water – steam engines – and there’d be, maybe, thirty/forty/fifty guys that were riding the train – hobos – whatever you want to call them, and when the train would stop for water, they’d jump off the train and they’d run to all the houses and ask for food – and I know my mom was always afraid – you know – they were going to break in the house or something. She’s say don’t open the door. Well, they’d come to the door and they’d say we’ll cut your grass if you’ll give us a sandwich or whatever and most of the people would give them a sandwich or something, and then if they missed the train, they’d just wait for another train and catch it. You don’t see people riding the trains anymore, but it was nothing in those days to see twenty/thirty guys riding trains, sitting on top of the box cars or in the box cars. I never saw anybody riding under the trains like they always depict in the movies, but you’d see a lot of guys in the cars and on top of them.
Then we had – I can remember having three train wrecks in Burke – one at the Sideburn
crossing, which was a steam engine wreck – killed a fireman. He was trapped in the wreck and it scalded him to death. We had another one right at the crossing of Burke Lake Road and – where Burke Lake Road is now.
BECKY:
Old Burke Lake Road.
LYNN:
Old Burke Lake Road. There was a girl standing there, named Breeden, waiting
to catch the train into D.C., and when the wreck happened, a rail snapped and hit her in the head and killed her right there next to the crossing. And then the last one we had was, after we were married, a train ran through a closed switch.
BECKY:
We had two.
LYNN:
We had two – ran through the closed switch and we had to evacuate Burke
because there were propane tanks. We couldn’t do anything until they put the propane tanks
back up on the tracks and so. . .
BECKY:
Then the second one happened right at Christmas. We were decorating our Christmas tree.
LYNN:
Yeah, that’s right.
BECKY:
It was at night, and there was another switch problem. I think they were frozen.
LYNN:
Well, the switches were supposed to open automatically, but they didn’t, and the
trains ran through the closed switch.
BECKY:
And the cars were on the bank where the – of course, the Giant wasn’t there.
LYNN:
Giant wasn’t there.
BECKY:
It was a huge tall bank and theywere just all lined up like soldiers.
MARY:
And you were just like two blocks away
BECKY:
No, we were right there. We were not even a block.
LYNN:
Yeah, we were right there. The house just shook.
BECKY:
He ran out there and, of course, it’s pitch black – runs down and goes down the
track – you didn’t know if it was going to blow up or anything, and he could hear all this stuff
running – it was paint, but he didn’t know what it was.
MARY:
Oh paint cans exploded or whatever.
LYNN: Yeah.
BECKY:
No, it didn’t explode.
LYNN:
It just tore them open.
Interview of Paul Kincheloe
10
PAUL: Charlie Dyer was the gentleman who I had earlier told you, was the one who would
throw the mail on the train when it slowed down going to Alexandria and catch it when it would slow down coming out of Alexandria, and he was kind of a hermit. He had a little place just – I don’t know – a few thousand yards down the road from the where the Burke Store was. Some say it was a little shack-like place that he lived in, and he was a collector of everything. If you had an old car that would barely run that you wanted to get rid of, Charlie would take it because he was going to overhaul it and sell it and he’d get it in there, and ultimately it would just sit there and he’s get about a car every now and then, and one year I could remember, Charlie was going to build a swimming pool, and he dug out this great big huge hole, and that was Charlie’s swimming pool. He never got around to building the pool. All you had to do was go down there after it rained, and it’d be half full with water, snakes or whatever it was, and he had this – it wasn’t a pickup truck, but it was shaped like a pickup truck, but it had a big back on it. In those days, it made it look more like a hearse. What he did was, he cut a hole through the top or the back of that body that was over the truck and he put a pot belly wood stove in there, so when he was out there waiting to catch the mail, he could sit in the back of the truck and keep warm because you’d see it sitting there and the smoke come billowing out of the top of it, and I wasn’t there when the train wrecked. I didn’t get there until after it wrecked, but they said that Charlie saw it coming and coming off the tracks, and the local story was that they had never seen Charlie run a couple miles in his life, but he just never stopped, ‘cause he wasn’t going to get caught by that train when it derailed there, but he was one of the real characters.
Interview of Lynn and Becky Bryce
LYNN:
Yeah, and then, of course, we had blackouts [during World War II] at night some times. I guess they thought somebody was going to come bomb us. In Burke they had a – almost where the post office is now [across from the train station] – they had a tower and women, my mother included, would spend two or three hours a day in the tower looking for airplanes.
MARY:
Sort of like Civil Defense?
LYNN:
Yeah, right. Of course, none of them ever flew over, but. . .
MARY:
Right. Did they have their binoculars?
LYNN:
Oh yeah. Yeah, they’d sit up in the tower and watch for them.
MARY:
How tall was the tower? I mean, like two stories maybe or. . .
LYNN:
At the most.
MARY:
At the most, yeah. So their range wasn’t really very big.
LYNN:
No, it wasn’t. The plane would have to have flown pretty close to it. (laughter)
MARY:
But was the tower built specifically for that?
LYNN:
Yeah, I think so.
LYNN:
Yeah, after the war, we were living in Burke and they were still running steam
engines, so in Burke now – almost where the crossing would be on Old Burke Lake Road – there was a water tower, and so the trains would stop to get water – steam engines – and there’d be, maybe, thirty/forty/fifty guys that were riding the train – hobos – whatever you want to call them, and when the train would stop for water, they’d jump off the train and they’d run to all the houses and ask for food – and I know my mom was always afraid – you know – they were going to break in the house or something. She’s say don’t open the door. Well, they’d come to the door and they’d say we’ll cut your grass if you’ll give us a sandwich or whatever and most of the people would give them a sandwich or something, and then if they missed the train, they’d just wait for another train and catch it. You don’t see people riding the trains anymore, but it was nothing in those days to see twenty/thirty guys riding trains, sitting on top of the box cars or in the box cars. I never saw anybody riding under the trains like they always depict in the movies, but you’d see a lot of guys in the cars and on top of them.
Then we had – I can remember having three train wrecks in Burke – one at the Sideburn
crossing, which was a steam engine wreck – killed a fireman. He was trapped in the wreck and it scalded him to death. We had another one right at the crossing of Burke Lake Road and – where Burke Lake Road is now.
BECKY:
Old Burke Lake Road.
LYNN:
Old Burke Lake Road. There was a girl standing there, named Breeden, waiting
to catch the train into D.C., and when the wreck happened, a rail snapped and hit her in the head and killed her right there next to the crossing. And then the last one we had was, after we were married, a train ran through a closed switch.
BECKY:
We had two.
LYNN:
We had two – ran through the closed switch and we had to evacuate Burke
because there were propane tanks. We couldn’t do anything until they put the propane tanks
back up on the tracks and so. . .
BECKY:
Then the second one happened right at Christmas. We were decorating our Christmas tree.
LYNN:
Yeah, that’s right.
BECKY:
It was at night, and there was another switch problem. I think they were frozen.
LYNN:
Well, the switches were supposed to open automatically, but they didn’t, and the
trains ran through the closed switch.
BECKY:
And the cars were on the bank where the – of course, the Giant wasn’t there.
LYNN:
Giant wasn’t there.
BECKY:
It was a huge tall bank and theywere just all lined up like soldiers.
MARY:
And you were just like two blocks away
BECKY:
No, we were right there. We were not even a block.
LYNN:
Yeah, we were right there. The house just shook.
BECKY:
He ran out there and, of course, it’s pitch black – runs down and goes down the
track – you didn’t know if it was going to blow up or anything, and he could hear all this stuff
running – it was paint, but he didn’t know what it was.
MARY:
Oh paint cans exploded or whatever.
LYNN: Yeah.
BECKY:
No, it didn’t explode.
LYNN:
It just tore them open.
Interview of Paul Kincheloe
10
PAUL: Charlie Dyer was the gentleman who I had earlier told you, was the one who would
throw the mail on the train when it slowed down going to Alexandria and catch it when it would slow down coming out of Alexandria, and he was kind of a hermit. He had a little place just – I don’t know – a few thousand yards down the road from the where the Burke Store was. Some say it was a little shack-like place that he lived in, and he was a collector of everything. If you had an old car that would barely run that you wanted to get rid of, Charlie would take it because he was going to overhaul it and sell it and he’d get it in there, and ultimately it would just sit there and he’s get about a car every now and then, and one year I could remember, Charlie was going to build a swimming pool, and he dug out this great big huge hole, and that was Charlie’s swimming pool. He never got around to building the pool. All you had to do was go down there after it rained, and it’d be half full with water, snakes or whatever it was, and he had this – it wasn’t a pickup truck, but it was shaped like a pickup truck, but it had a big back on it. In those days, it made it look more like a hearse. What he did was, he cut a hole through the top or the back of that body that was over the truck and he put a pot belly wood stove in there, so when he was out there waiting to catch the mail, he could sit in the back of the truck and keep warm because you’d see it sitting there and the smoke come billowing out of the top of it, and I wasn’t there when the train wrecked. I didn’t get there until after it wrecked, but they said that Charlie saw it coming and coming off the tracks, and the local story was that they had never seen Charlie run a couple miles in his life, but he just never stopped, ‘cause he wasn’t going to get caught by that train when it derailed there, but he was one of the real characters.