A wake-up call from The Money Train
This is a scene up the road from my house, captured with my phone on the way to work.
There are two interesting things about this photo that you otherwise wouldn’t notice unless I pointed them out.
1. The railroad signal had been going off, flashing and loudly clanking, since 4:00 a.m. We could hear it a little at our house, but can you imagine how pissed off the people in that condo building, right next to the railroad tracks, were?
Here’s the best and most ironic part.
2. The owner of the railroad tracks, as in the owner of the Wisconsin & Southern Railroad Company, lives in that condo complex, in the spot closest to the tracks. Seriously. He wanted a place where he could literally watch his business go by. I hope he was wide awake and bitching at himself for how obnoxious his railroad can be at times.
How do I know this? His dad, the creator and founder of Gardner Bender Tools, told me when he stopped in at one of the local historical societies I worked at with some of the most amazing photos of painted lady warplanes (nose art) I’ve ever seen. He had taken them himself during WWII.
While we looked through his photos, he told me how he started his company. “I saw electricians trying to do a job that they didn’t have the right tool for. I decided I’d make the tool they needed and spent hours in local libraries researching it. And then I made it.” That one tool revolutionized the electrical industry and his company took off. He later gave the company to his son, who sold it, and purchased the railroad.
Much like the condo in the above picture, the town I live in is pretty unassuming. Mostly blue-collar workers and farmers. And two multi-millionaires. Interesting neighbors turn up in the most unlikely places.