After Brittany's birthday party things happened fast. Almost every weekend there was something planned and we couldn't get away to the mountains.
Monday, we received a thin book sized envelope in the mail. It was from Scott, our friend who ran the zigzag trains. Shavonda looked over my shoulder as I read the enclosed letter.
"Dear Shavonda and Jason,
Thank you for the photos you sent. They were beautiful. Even though I travel that line every day, I never realized how beautiful it was until I saw those photos. I never realized what we looked like travelling those mountains. I showed my son what my engine looked like. He thinks I have the same one every day. But I get different ones all the time. Even though the zigzags run every day, sometimes there are more than one out there at a given time. And due to the need for refueling and inspections on the various locomotives, the consists are regularly broken up and locomotives swapped out.
I have enclosed some items that may be of interest to you. I hope they help you out on your next trip down my way.
Hope to see you trackside in the near future,
Scott"
Inside the envelope were a laminated card showing the various combinations of colored lights used on the signals, and what the aspects signified. The second was a current copy of the employee timetable. Timetable was a bit misleading, as none of the trains ran on specific schedules, though many ran at roughly the same times every day. The timetable was a sort of localized rule book, with maps and other information about the routes covered in the book. There were diagrams showing the layout of the tracks at every important point on the line, and rules pertaining to specific points on the line, such as permanent speed restrictions due to curves. But it was the third and final item that really piqued my interest. That was the official track chart, from the engineering department. As a former civil engineering student, I found it fascinating as it documented the location of every curve along with its sharpness, the gradient of the line at each point, and even the locations of things such as culverts, overpasses and even power lines, all correlated to the mileposts down to 1/100th of a mile.
I quickly fired off a response thanking him for these items, and telling him of our plans to take a week's vacation and hike the line over the mountain as much as we could.
Also that Monday, the screen printing supplies and dryer were delivered and set up in the garage. Shavonda had decided a couple months back to try her hand at printed t shirts. She'd done a little screen printing during her college days, and I had been an actual printer. I promised to help her out on this new venture.
One of her ideas was to try printing on our blank pendant stock. Her idea was that we could do more intricate designs in less time than the traditional method of cutting and fitting the individual pieces of stone into a 3-inch circle. She'd had a piece of white quartzite turned down on a lathe to 3-inch diameter, and on Tuesday night after work, I used the rock saw to slice it into blanks. I also measured and cut a piece of plywood to fit beneath the smallest screen frames, with a 3-inch hole drilled in the center. That way, we count control precisely the position of the blanks as they were being printed. Shavonda worked on some designs on the computer as I did so.
During the week, she had sent out one of the designs for screens to be made. We didn't have that capability in house just yet. The design she had come up with was elegantly simple. The words 'Gone But Not Forgotten' were arranged in a circle, with a drawing or design centered in the circle. What went inside the circle could be changed to suit the job. Since the words were separate from the design itself, they didn't even have to be the same color.
Friday evening, I screen printed the first one, the prototype. The design inserted was a line drawing of a steam locomotive from the front. For this prototype, we did the whole thing as one screen for a single-color print. After running the printed blank through the dryer, we took it outside and brushed it with a polyurethane coating to seal the ink, then ran it through the dryer again.
Shavonda had also had the same design scaled up to 12 inches in diameter, and had another screen made. This one we printed on a white t shirt.
The printing process was a success. We were in business.
Shavonda's class reunion was the second weekend in June. She'd gotten her hair done a couple of days before, and went with loose curls this time. We walked in the door hand in hand, Shavonda wearing her red halter dress and a pair of matching heels. I had worn my black dress pants, a red button down shirt, and a black tie. The lady at the sign in desk did a double take when she saw us.
"Shavonda Jenkins? Who's your friend?"
"That's my husband Jefferson Waite. We just call him Jason for short."
I extended my hand. "Pleased to meet you," I drawled.
"If that don't beat all. Von's got herself a redneck." The lady chuckled.
"No, ma'am," I said. "I may be a hillbilly but I ain't no redneck." I gave her a sweet smile. As we walked away to find a table, I asked Shavonda, "What was that all about?"
"When I was in high school, I used to make fun of rednecks. The joke was I'd probably marry one," Shavonda laughed.
We spent most of the evening with Shavonda's old friends Ashley and Quala. Ashley was a redheaded white lady with green eyes, with a pleasingly plump build. Quala was a tall heavyset lady with a caramel complexion. Amazonian would be the word I'd use to describe her. Evidently the three of them and Edie and Patty had their own clique back in the day.
"You still making those necklaces?" Quala asked.
"Sure am. I even have my own stores to sell them," Shavonda proudly boasted. Reaching in her purse, she gave her friends her business card.
"Remember how everybody wanted you to make jewelry for them back in high school?" Ashley said. "You made quite a bit of money off them. Who'd have guessed you'd turn that into a thriving business?"
Ashley, it turned out, was still living in Pennsylvania near Mercer. Quala had moved to Texas in search of work. Both were fortunate enough to have graduated college, Ashley as a marketing major, and Quala had a degree in chemistry.
"Do you still see Edie?" Ashley asked.
"Edie is engaged to Jason's cousin. We see them all the time."
"Do you have any more single cousins?" Quala asked me, laughing.
"Yes, but he's in Colorado."
The conversation turned towards interracial dating. "I'd have never guessed you'd have ended up with a white man from the south," Ashley said. "You used to rip on rednecks." That was the second person to say that tonight. I looked at Shavonda, confused.
"Jason doesn't know about that. I forgot I used to do that," Shavonda replied. Turning to me, she explained, "You have to remember, my family was in the middle of the civil rights struggle. We'd lost family members in Birmingham. I was old enough to hear the stories Grandpa told, and I was mad that they treated us that way."
"What made you change your mind?" I asked.
"Grandpa told me that they did it out of hatred, and if I hated I was no better than they were. Plus, it would eat me alive. He told me he'd forgiven them, and if he could do it I could too. Then I went to college and found out that most folks were good people. And that I should judge people by what was in their heart, not what they looked like or where they came from."
