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David Selzer is a writer of poetry, prose fiction, screenplays and stage plays. He embraces digital platforms to share his work of more than fifty years… READ MORE
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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.
7 responses to “THE WALKING STICK PHILANTHROPIST”
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Like a miniature novel?
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Indeed! I’ve given up writing prose fiction, but not telling stories.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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