The trains ran down the Shore here, and they hauled a lot of freight. They pulled a lot of freight during World War II, government freight or wartime stuff, all types of vehicles that they used in the fields and tanks. I’ve seen trains go down with tanks on them.
It would take the train a half-hour to get by the [school], out of sight of the window of the school over to Bloxom. I was on the west side of the building, where I could see the railroad track during the wartime, and … all I had to do was turn my head like that and look right at all of that wartime stuff that was traveling. And the track just stayed busy. I don’t know where all the trains went. I don’t know how they got all of it across that Bay at the other end and on and off with those floats that they had to float in there. … You can’t hardly perceive it in your mind, if you could have seen the amount of stuff that went down on [the train].
I had my aunt and uncle in Birdsnest that were the postmaster and the assistant postmaster down there. And I used to go down to visit them, and one of my trips going down, daddy put me on the train. I had never been on a train before. I knew the train; I saw the train regularly. … I was down in the grammar grades.
Bloxom is where he put me on. And I got on there, and he watched me, and the train took off and went on south, and I was sitting there, and I was sitting there with my back to the south. The train was going south, and I was sitting with my back that direction, actually looking backwards. And I was enjoying myself, looking out the window. Didn’t know what it was all about, but I was going becuase I was on a train for the first time in my life.
Somewhere between here and Birdsnest, about half-way down I think, another train was on the other track, so the sidewire was sitting right up next to the other train coming this way. And when we’re going down and this other train coming up, and right of of nowhere in between my window and that other window, in between them two tracks, wasn’t very much room, maybe this much room is all it was between them cars, going like this, that train come up beside me, right beside my window and blanked that off dark, with that movement like that and that roar. I thought I’d been eat right down. I figured it was all over with. I never will forget that.
From an interview with Pierce B. Taylor, Jr., spring 2010.