by Ralph Barnes
Citizen Voice & Times
January 2, 1997
As a boy growing up in Ravenna, I always looked forward to New Year’s Eve. New
York has its Time’s Square, New Orleans has its French Quarter but nothing
quite equaled Ravenna’s New Year’s celebration. At least not in the amount of
noise generated. When the clock struck twelve on New Years’s Eve, the Ravenna
Railroad Yards erupted into battle zone of sound and fury. Local switch engines
joined passing freights in ear-shattering shrieks and blasts that surely
aroused the dead, at least those that had recently passed beyond the latter
stages of rigor mortis and had not yet quite entered the eternal deep sleep.
Steam whistles blasted away, while bells clanged and the crowd lining Main
Street whooped and hollered like UK fans during a close basketball game.
My grandmother believed that she had committed a mortal sin if she was not in
bed by sundown or out of bed before sunrise. She never paid much attention to
New Years and did not hold in high regard those who did. Every year, giving
little thought to the great holiday, she would go off to bed as was her usual
custom only to be jarred into awakeness at midnight. Before she could gather
her wits about her, she nearly always jumped to the conclusion that Judgment
Day had arrived. When the truth of the matter eventually dawned on her she was
more dismayed than ever with the revelers and their tomfoolery that had aroused
her from a good sleep.
New Years was not the only time the whistles blew in the freight yards. When a
train wreck occurred somewhere up the line, the whistles sounded to let
railroaders know that an emergency had developed. Men would scurry off to the
yards to join in the rescue or salvage operations. When the whistles blew for
wrecks, people with anxious faces sought news of friends, neighbors and
relatives who were members of train crews working up the line. Occasionally
there was the sad news that local men had been killed or injured in a wreck.
Other times the whistles blew to celebrate some great event such as the end of
World War II. The jubilation on that day exceeded by far the New Year’s Eve
celebrations. Even my grandmother joined in merriment. Of course that
celebration occurred during the daytime which Grandma thought was unusually
sensible for that crowd.
On rare occasions the whistles blew to mark sad occasions as when Franklin
Delano Roosevelt died shortly before the War ended in 1945. The word of the
death of the great man arrived over the radio and stunned folks, who not
knowing what else to do sat around and stared at the radio. The broadcasters,
being in the same quandary as their listeners, gave out intermittent news
bulletins and played Roosevelt’s favorite song "Home On The Range"
over and over again between bulletins. The adults looked worried and anxious as
they listened. They were deeply concerned for the future of the Country. Hadn’t
Roosevelt led us out of the Country’s greatest depression? Hadn’t he been the
one that led us to victory in the world’s greatest war? Surely we could never
find another leader with the qualities of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Even an
uncle, who was a Herbert Hoover Republican to the core, and would not have
voted for Roosevelt or any Democrat in a million years, voiced his concern
about the loss of such a great leader. In the middle of all of that a train
whistle began a deep throated emulation of the slow, sorrowful cadence of a
funeral dirge. The mournful whistle and the weeping adults with "Home On
The Range" playing in the background is the saddest happening that I have
ever witnessed, with the possible exception of the last time Jimmy Swaggert
repented on national television.
As an adult I have on occasion celebrated New Years in more elegant settings
than those of my youth in Ravenna. But it never fails as the band plays
"Auld Lang Syne", and the beautifully gowned women and black-tied men
dance to the lilting strains of that old Scottish tune, my thoughts return to
Ravenna. In my mind’s eye, I can see the cheering crowds and hear the train
whistles. At that moment, I feel sorry for my fellow revelers in their elegant
frocks and fancy tuxedos, they have never experienced New Years by the tracks
in Ravenna.