THE WALKING STICK PHILANTHROPIST

For Elise Oliver

 

A Facebook acquaintance once shared a story

about her maternal great-uncle, George,

who, for thirty nine years, drove a steam engine

– a Hunslet standard gauge made in Leeds –

pulling goods wagons of coal and clay

from the marshalling yards in Stoke-on-Trent

to the pot banks in Burslem, Tunstall, Longton,

Fenton, Hanley, and brought back finished pots.

 

His father had left labouring on a farm

in Rugeley to labour at a bottle kiln.

The family of nine lived in poverty.

George never married, and shared,

with his surviving sister’s family,

a red brick railwaymen’s terraced house

somewhere in Shelton behind Stoke station.

“It’s a stop and start sort of job,” he would say,

“waiting in sidings for the main line trains

to pass, and shunters to fettle the wagons”.

 

His favourite haul was to ‘Etruria’ –

“not the place in Italy!”, he would joke,

but Josiah Wedgewood’s estate outside

the Six Towns, to where he had moved both

his works and his family to escape

the sulphurous smog. By the siding

mountain ash trees grew on an embankment.

George would set the fireman/trainee driver

to brew the tea, lend him his Daily Mirror,

step down, and peg a likely sapling

to the ground with twine. In time he would harvest

the bespoke canes and give the primitive

but sturdy walking sticks to needy neighbours

in the narrow, cobbled streets of Shelton.

 

 ***

 

Travelling back from London by train

in a carriage full of masked strangers,

a wild, darkening autumn afternoon

flinging leaves at the windows, I fell asleep,

dreaming of two old bald men fighting

over a comb, of a couple of giants

clubbing each other to death in quicksand,

of billionaires rocketing into space

the better to see the forests burning.

 

I woke to an unfamiliar landscape,

and feared I was on the wrong journey.

We came to a deserted station.

The train slowed. I read the sign – ‘Etruria’,

and was transported briefly to a world

of china blue, and elegant white figures

in Attic poses – then realised

we had bypassed Stafford, its castle ruins,

and closed factories. I thought of one man’s

enterprise, and kindness.

 

 

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7 Comments
  • Ashen Venema
    November 25, 2022

    Like a miniature novel?

    • David Selzer
      November 25, 2022

      Indeed! I’ve given up writing prose fiction, but not telling stories.

      • Ashen Venema
        November 25, 2022

        Indeed, writing prose fiction is a totally consuming business. I’m adding the last touches to ‘Shapers’ now, after many revisions, it’s been a long haul. But writing poems, Haiku for me these days, gives these bursts of joy that go a long way.

  • Alan+Horne
    November 26, 2022

    That’s a good story, David. I recently walked the canal north from Stoke through Etruria and Longport, a remarkable jumble of post-industrial wasteland, modern development and Victorian (or earlier) industrial survivals. I guess there isn’t enough money to tidy it all away.

    • David Selzer
      November 26, 2022

      Travelling by train from Chester to London the industrial detritus and dereliction seems to start at Crewe and finish at Rugby. All those brownfield sites ideal for green energy investment – housing solar farms, for example, and actually making the gear needed!

  • Kate Harrison
    November 27, 2022

    Wonderful. The ‘forests burning’ reference is perfect.

    My grandfather (who sadly died when I was 3, so I only have a couple of memories of him) drove trains on the NE coast of Scotland. During WW2, German spies would be landed on the coast and proceed to a local station for an onward journey to who knows where. Betrayed by their raincoats and small cases – and the fact that the railway workers would have known every local traveller – they would be arrested at a subsequent stop.

  • Mary Clark
    December 8, 2022

    A slew of railway men in my family past tense in Pennsylvania, mechanics, engineers, conductors and firemen, who moved with the industrial revolution to machinists at Ingersoll or ticket sellers in Reading, Easton, and points west. Taking the train from New York to Florida many times I saw the devastation of the post-industrial world, the debris left to rot, buildings to collapse, and wondered why. I’m afraid the Elons want to leave the earth in the same condition and move on to destroy other planets in the name of saving humanity.