Adventure of Two Lifetimes

Ken and Ruby - Part 1

Prologue

There are moments when the sadness breaks through the wall I have carefully erected around my heart. Not often. The wall is strong, covered in logic and activities; a fuzzy haze that protects my core from banging around in the emptiness and feeling the pain. I can normally block the feelings, and just redirect my thoughts when they begin straying onto that course. It's only when I have to explain to someone, when I have to put into words what has taken place, that the cracks begin to show, and I realize the healing is not complete. That it may never be complete.

Chapter 1

Being born in 1934 might have been hard for many. The depression was in full swing, and thousands of people around the world were fighting just to put food on the table each day. Ken didn't know any of that. As a young boy he was comfortable in his life in Butte. His dad was a structural engineer for the railroad, and even though people weren't traveling as much as they had been, the railway was still the easiest way for people to get around. They had a nice home, and his mom doted on him from the beginning. Her old-fashioned background made her elevate the status of her first-born son in her heart, and Ken lived up to every expectation. He was intelligent, brave, and daring, yet thoughtful enough to bring her bouquets of dandelions from the yard each day. With his blonde hair and blue eyes, he was the picture of his father and grandfather in their younger days.

Not that he was perfect. For his fifth birthday, he received his first pair of roller skates. Unfortunately, it was winter in Montana, and the ground would be frozen solid for months. He would have to wait until spring, his mother told him, to learn how to use them. But when she took his younger brother Joe to the doctor the next day, Ken decided he would learn how to skate on the kitchen floor. After all, it was smooth as could be, since mom had waxed it just the day before.

It took him three hours of scrubbing to get all the marks off when she got home.

He had a great set of best friends that he played with everyday. They would play in the rail yards and in the abandoned mining areas around town. In the winter, they would go to the junkyard, grab the bumper off an old car, and use that to sled down the hill by the railroad tracks. They had no fear of the jagged metal edges or what would happen to them if they crashed at the bottom of the hill and got cut. They were young, innocent and full of a sense of adventure that is so much a part of childhood.

When he was just seven, his friend Georgie dared him to climb across the struts of the trestle bridge that went over a ravine outside town. All four of his best friends came to watch as he carefully began climbing across the wooden structure, seventy-five feet in the air. The rails were right above his head, so if a train were to come, he would be safe underneath; he would just have to hold on tight. He was about halfway across when he heard the train coming. He made sure his feet were wedged in and he had a good holding spot for his hands as the bridge began to shake. The shaking increased as the engine made it's way onto the bridge. His heart was racing, but he felt a great sense of excitement, imaging what it would feel like to have this huge machine fly right past, over his head.

Then he saw it. As the train approached town it needed to slow down, so the fireman was racking the coals; literally dumping them out of the engine, through a hole in the bottom of the train and into the chasm below. Ken realized if they did that as the train passed over his head, there would be no way for him to escape the burning embers. If he let go to push the flames off his body with the train still shaking the bridge, he would fall to his death. He had nowhere to go. He ducked his head and held on, praying that his hair would not catch fire. His heart felt like it would pound right out of his chest as the train passed just inches from his face. Then it was over. No fire, no falling, no death, but he had his first look at the idea that some adventures could end badly.