The Milwaukee Railroad - Clear Lake, Iowa

Life on the north side of Clear Lake was influenced by the Milwaukee Railroad and the many trains going past both day and night. There are many memories of the railroad.

My first memory is from Mr. Fields our neighbor on North 13th St. Mr. Fields was an engineer on The Milwaukee Road. He told me many times that he was going to give me a ride in the engine of his train someday. To this day, I regret not pushing him on that invitation. This was in the days of the steam engine and would have been a real treat for any little boy of 5 years old.

I remember a time during World War II when a prisoner of war train was coming through Clear Lake. I don't remember how it was communicated but my mother told me very strictly that I was not to go near the railroad tracks that day. As any 6 year old, that was the first place I went so I could see the Japanese prisoners of war. The train must have had a full head of steam because it went right through Clear Lake at over 50 miles per hour. The windows on all the cars were painted black so there wasn't any thing to look at, but I at least saw a prisoner of war train.

There was a high grade on the tracks on the north side of town and because of this grade a pond of water was created along side the railroad. This pond was a perfect place to go ice skating . There were about three or four of us boys in the neighborhood that were ice skating on a very cold winter after noon. I didn't have regular ice skates but had those clamp on skates. They required a skate key and clamped on to the shoes. Needless to say my feet were very cold. We heard the familiar whistle of a freight train coming and knew about the safety valve that blew hot steam from the side of the engine. We thought we could get warm from that hot steam and crawled up the bank to get close to the train as it went by. The alert engineer saw those little boys by the side of the track and blew an extra amount of steam out the side. That scared the heck out of us and we scrambled down the embankment and back onto the ice. We saw the engineer laughing as he went by and is probably still laughing about that to this day.

When I was 12 years old, I delivered papers for the Mason City Globe Gazette. My route was in the camp grounds area behind where the Half Moon Restaurant now stands. It was a Saturday morning and I was collecting the 35 cents per week from each customer. I heard the train slow down very fast and stop. I knew something had gone wrong and jumped on my bicycle and road down to the tracks. There was an accident and the train had hit a 1935 Ford Coupe. The engineer leaned out the window of the train and shouted at me to go see if the driver was dead. I should have said, "I am only 12 year's old, find out for yourself." No, I went over to the car and saw the guy pinned in behind the steering wheel. I couldn't tell if he was alive or not, but I knew he couldn't have been hurting to much. I saw empty liquor bottles and the smell of booze was overwhelming. An adult got there by that time and checked on the man. A short time later the ambulance got there along with a photographer from the Globe Gazette. I read the paper the next day that the passenger was OK and released from the hospital. I sure wish I could find the picture that was in the Glove Gazette. There I was standing with my hands in my pockets, one pant leg rolled up so it wouldn't get caught in the chain of my bicycle. That would be a perfect addition to this story.

My last memory of The Milwaukee Road was the trip to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, North Chicago, Illinois for induction into the U.S. Navy. My send off was no different than the many thousands of men that boarded a train at Clear Lake for induction into the U.S. Armed Forces. My parents and girl friend were at the station waving a teary good bye. I am still amazed to this day that the government put me in Pullman and I slept all the way to Chicago. I can still hear the sounds of the "clickedy clack " and the noise of each semaphore the train passed. I remember the first time I saw an electromotive engine and thought it was a big deal. I now wish I could see one of the old steam engines.

Written by Ron Gerdes CLHS 1956

I must have been in 5th or 6th grade when Brian Kuns came here from California to live with his grandpa Jack Kuns. Brian and I became friends and often were doing something together. On day during the fall, I think, Brian and I were playing near the tracks just north of my parents market on old 18. There was a field from 18 to the track. We had put a rock on the track and were taking off when a man on a repair cart came down the tracks. Brian and I ran and hid in a cornfield. The cart was upset but the man did not get hurt. However, a lady who lived to the east of the hayfield saw me running. She recognized me because of my red hair. The next day in school I was called to the nurses office. There in the waiting room was a man sitting at a table. I was scared when he pulled out a badge. It was a six-pointed star and he told me that he was a railroad detective with the Milwaukee Railroad. I think he cited other railroads like Chicago and something else. I remember him lecturing me and holding that badge in front of me in one hand while he was talking. I cannot remember much more but I am sure that I probably got a paddling when I got home. Brian later moved back to California and I think he died before he finished school. His grandpa Jack was a good friend to me and my family. It seemed there was a period of time in my life when I got in trouble often, but that is a story for another day. Written by Jim Knapp CLHS 1958

What a wonderful childhood we all had in Clear Lake. The railroad played a great part in my life because we lived just two long blocks from it. I still get a pang in my heart when I hear a train whistle. You could hear the mournful wail of the train while going to sleep or waking up. It symbolized the chance to leave home and go some place grand and get away from our snug little town! Oh, if we only realized that we had it all right there.

My maiden Aunt Judy, who was head dietician for Stouffer's Stores, who was based in Chicago, would arrive on the Milwaukee Road for Christmas or Thanksgiving and I would sit down at the railroad station all day in the cold just waiting for the train the arrive. The station was always open then, and I would sit on the hard wooden benches as close to the old pot-bellied stove and read all the travel brochures. She always brought exotic gifts from her travels all over the world, and always made our holidays special by her being there with us. (A little aside, many of her recipes are still used for Stouffer's frozen dinners you buy in the grocery!)

Diane and I went with Aunt Judy to Portland, Oregon on the train to see another aunt and uncle when Diane was probably 11 and I was 7; we shared a sleeper and the wonderful dining car with the children's menu with bears on it. We must have that menu somewhere!! I remember mom crying in the bathtub the night before we left. She thought she'd never see us again. It was a marvelous trip with outstanding scenery, especially the Columbia River Gorge and tunnels through the mountains. Aunt Judy had her hands full keeping track of us.

Aunt Judy also took me alone to Glacier National Park on the train when I was 14, and we stayed at three different hotels throughout Glacier and enjoyed a week's bus tour of the park. I remember it was raining most of the time, and I still long to see Glacier when it isn't raining.

We also had quite a gang of neighborhood children (the Hughes boys, Judy Boyle, Charles Ashland, Kato Volstad and Diane and I) that spent adventurous days in what we called "The Swamp", which was formed by all the debris that was dredged up to remove the old Surf Pier that used to be somewhere around the Blue Horizon and Witke's. "The Swamp" was located just south of the railroad behind the elevator and an implement store. In fact, I carried a "Rock" around for at least 35 years that was actually a slab of cement embedded with coke bottles, wine bottles, and other fill which was part of the foundation from the old Surf. It had been built at a time that they needed all kinds of filler to add to the cement either during a war or the depression. Someone probably knows exactly when it was built.

At any rate, we would be gone from home early in the morning till supper time with our folks never worrying about us. Of course, they didn't realize we were playing around these slabs of concrete, old lumber (probably with nails still intact) old tires, and of course, swamp water from rains and snow melt off. I'm sure our parents thought we were playing in someone's yard, because we were bound to secrecy about our forts and the wars we would fight in "The Swamp." Huckleberry Finn had nothing on us! I think Harriet Volstad finally ratted on us and we were forbidden to play there. That made it even more irresistible!!

There also was a cattle loading facility on 6th Street and the railroad, and we would play in there on rainy days. Our favorite trick was to put a penny on the track before we left and run down early in the morning to see if it the night trains had flattened the penny. I don't remember if we ever found the penny!! And we didn't cause a derailment, that heavens. But I have very fond memories of trains and that pang still comes when I hear a train whistle!

Written by Linda Hintzman Counsell CLHS 1960