I began to draw and paint the Woodstock train depot long before I dreamed I would open a studio just across the street. I finished my first large Depot painting in 2004. I faithfully portrayed the depot much as it appeared, bare with darkened windows, a little dusty and underused, fallen from its heyday as a passenger station a hundred years before.
But as I approached it one day on a sleepy street, I was struck with a kind of memory – a vision of how the depot must have appeared long ago. I returned to my studio to paint, to make changes to the original version, which was ostensibly more accurate. There is a light in the window now, and a farmer drives past at the end of the day with a cartload of hay. As I painted, this altered scene began to seem as real to me as anything I had seen with my eyes. And the next time I had a chance, I wrote a “fiction” piece about the Depot for the Olde Towne Gazette – historical details being accurate as far as I know.
The introduction of trains to the continent was the true beginning of our wild ride into the age of technology. The transcontinental railroad was laid from 1863-1869, and the repercussions of its construction were still being felt forty years later as far away as Woodstock, Georgia. The current Woodstock Depot was erected in 1912; a woman my age, telling its story that year, might have had this to say:
“I wasn’t but ten when Mama and her sisters dragged me over to the old depot. They wanted me to see the train come through Woodstock for the first time. That was 1879. I was born in Woodstock, and like most folks I hardly ever left it, except twice to go to Marietta with Daddy. There was a good size crowd. Uncle Jimmy came with us, too, dribblin’ that nasty tobacco right on the floorboards of the buggy.
“Pretty soon the train tracks were shakin’, and the train came roarin’ through like a tornado. My ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton. It was a long time before we could all hear normal again.
“Then Uncle Jimmy started talkin’- he was always kind of a wildcat - he started talkin’ ‘bout Mr. Lincoln for the millionth time, sayin’ he was brilliant whether folks liked to admit it or not. He said Lincoln was a railroad lawyer from ‘way back, and even before he was president and before he ever saw a train, he was all afire ‘bout the railroads and sayin’ they would change the country. Uncle Jimmy said he was right, too - it used to take a man seven months and a thousand dollars to get from New York to San Francisco, and when they was all done with the transcontinental railroad, it didn’t take but seven days and a $150. And that was all because of Mr. Lincoln.
“Daddy rolled his eyes and told him he could stop talking whenever he was good and ready.
“But then I’ll never forget Mama got that light in her eyes - her eyes were as blue as the sky on a fall day and sometimes it almost looked like she could see that far into the future - and she started in about how the trains had changed everything – how it used to be, nobody talked about “savin’ time, bein’ on time, schedules and such,” and that now everyone was sayin’ that this country is just on fire with progress. And the railroad made us all have “time zones” across the whole country – now when you said the time everybody knew what you were talkin’ about, no matter if you were in Boston with the Yankees or in Salt Lake City with those Mormons.
“Daddy said now we’ll all just rush around like chickens with our heads cut off, just like they do in New York. But I was thinkin’ secret thoughts to myself, like about how nice it would be to ride the train to Marietta for the afternoon and not have to watch Uncle Jimmy’s tobacco juice dribble all across the floorboards of the buggy.
“Well, that was almost thirty years ago now. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad bought the line and they just built us a new depot – it’s as good as anything in the state or any of the big cities, I’m sure, just as modern as can be with a red tile roof, and a separate waiting room and entrance for the coloreds.
“I’m planning a little trip to Marietta tomorrow, so I can finally see a decent dressmaker.
“I wish Mama could see how things are changin’ so fast, just like she said. Someday we won’t be using horses for anything at all, I’ll bet.” |
