The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-06-25

'doOdle-Dug nOle LII lHe oid ua5s nlaxed doodle-btfg with great success, and got thereby much applause from my
 playmates. A gondola dn railroad par 1ance1 is shaped inside like a doodle-bug hole. Designed for transporting coal and unloading it without the use of shovels, everything loose in the car has ten dency to slide to the bottom. and thence through automatic doors. getting unload- ed. The furniture of that car consisted
 only Of two iron grders extending from
 side to side, and on these Tom and l
 sat clnng to, dangled from, from 1 a.
 m. to I 30 a. m. It's a great experience
 even with the discomforts thrown in. to
 slip through the night miles and miles;
 and we were so close to the singing
 wheels of the old hulk that we could
 reach down and touch them with our
 hands. There are thrills to be had that
 fairly make the blood tingle-thrills you
 can't win on a plush-seated passenger
 car. One knows a sort of delicious haz-
 ard-a feeling of pioneerase. It was the
 finest 100 miles of travel ever had, spite
 of the fact that the 'doodle-bug' hole
 was dirty and grimy enough 10 please
 Whitechapel slummer-spite of the fact
 that on reaching Knoxville two hot water
 baths were required to separate me
 from the cindersS Instead of riding into
 the city we got off about five miles. out
 following a fine, broad pike which led
 us through a delightful residence suburb
 west of the city. Saw many beautiful
 homes with lawns of most refreshing
 well-kept greenness. Knoxyille.s com
 mercial size was a surprise to me. In
 the past I had thought of Knoxville as
 heinz just a prosperous university town.
 Instead 1t Is really a fine little city with
 a population of about 50,0OO.
 Afternoon )-At about this afternoon
 ve caught a race track" car and came
 to a terminal about four miles southeast
 of the city. The conductor directed us
 how to reach Norrstown, small Vi- laQe further on. Here we found meal ground on an old-fashioned water mill. The miller was a jovial old chap of the type-''his double chin, his uortlv size" all there. An, but he had a noble beard fully two feet long, all with meal. Our next stop was McMillan. which we reached in about 10 minutes brisk walking. It was our in- tention to catch a fast freight here for a station 40 miles southeast an6 the junction for Asheville. camped mar the station we fund a party Of section men, two of whom were real dis which have duly labeled and pigeonholed One of these-Hilton- seemed to be a dollar-a-day man, un- lempt. high cheek-bones, with forehead slanted back He might have stepped out of a Millet canvas-quite stupld-and followed each word said with disin- terested. unspeakably vacant stare. All of the workmen were going to their homes at near stations to spend Sunday | and I wondered about this chaps life who loved him-who was interested in | bins He accepted a ma gazne l proffered | him with dog-like gratitude. MT. Rich, | the cook, had number of yarns to tell | when he learned that we were beating | our way. One time in his life he had ridden 230O miles in the same freight car, and on another occasion in hand-to-hand conflict, he had whipped an entire train crew that attempted to drive him out of A 'chicken car" He thought if we made haste to reach the next station-Morris- | town-we might get job feeding car load of chickens through to Washington, D. C., or New York. The result of his | advice was that in the next hour we | paid out s2.5O cash fares to reach NJ, | where we were told that, the chicken | car had just left. But the gods favored us anyway. In 90 minutes we were aboard a car heaped high with anthra- cite coal, destined for Asheville. Strange l to say, the ear was 'gondola' similar 10 the one we rode in from Chattanooga; | but there was this advantage-at least 10 feel of good lump coal separated us from those treacherous wheels at the | cars bottom. At least we weren't tor | tured any more with thought of sudden through the trap doors.
 That moonlight ride through the Sap | phire country. under an April Sky, was all that could be wished for. While I missed much hill perspective, the half light showed dinly what was to be seen | in a radius of a quarter of a mile. Peaks | Ipthrust at times like giant fingers. The l skyline was one continued pageant of mountain silhouette, half divined in the far distances; even the rugged boulders, at times out-thrusting over the moving train, were not violent gestures. (On that car of coal, hurting through the night, I felt that was really having a happy moment-as if I had suddenly come into some good fortune that couldn't be reckoned in dollars and | cents, or in any applause the world could giveD At times some sheer cliff would let fall a cascade, shimmering like a satin ribbon, against the shadows The | train stopped for water quite near one l of these and I tried to fully absorb the | scene-to fix it in my mind for all time | (The French Broad river at the left, l which we were seeing for the first time, and on the right the towering escarp- | ment with it's ribbon of samite, and over | topping all the peace of the night and the l endless hills. And we there crouched | among the Jumps of coal, trying to under l stand0
 At stop close to Asheville the con- ductor found us absorbing the pano- rama. but shivering as if we had II chils. q can understand now why tu- bercles have a hard time of it up here) l For d consideration of 9 cents we were allowed to return to the caboose, remove about nine strata of grease and einders from the visible parts of us, and lean back on cushons-which we did as gracefully as houris long divorced from Paradise. It Is a far cry from coal cars to cab cushions and believe me, it's good to bridge the extremes. One of these days I shall explain to the people of these states that the crusade against Morgan and his railroad ilk for charging 3 cents per mile is 1l-advised. Luxuriat- ing in that caboose came to this de- cison; and I had bought this Rrvilege for some cents less