WALKING IN ANOTHER MAN'S SHOES
                   by Eugene Hutchinson Mallory 2


     This strange, you might say unearthly, story, began in my
years spent in the aero-space job shops. It was in the
pre-sputnik time when America was poking a tentative finger into
space to see if anything up there would bite. About the only
thing unusual about the timing was that it happened in one of
the brief intervals when I worked swing shift, four P.M. to
midnight.

     At the time we were making a small order of payload
chambers for experimental high altitude rockets. They could not
attain orbit, just went up and looked around and fell back.

     One mission for these primitive rockets was to launch the
space mouse. The mouse was put in the chamber with an automatic
camera. During the weightless period of the descent pictures
were taken of the bewildered mouse floating in mid-air. I
believe the landing was a little hard. The pictures survived,
but not the mouse. At least the martyred mouse had his moment of
fame and his picture in the papers.

     In the shop most of the parts we made were given unofficial
shop names. These chambers were thunder mugs, but I have worked
on shrimp boats, horse collars, banjos, bananas and many others.

     The thunder mugs were just about like a five gallon bucket
without bottom or top, but with a flange on each end to hold a
cover to close off the chamber.

     The thunder mugs came to our shop as rough aluminum
castings. The flanges at the open ends had to be cut smooth for
sealing purposes. The way it was done was to fasten one end to
the mill table so the other open end was available to work on.
The cutting was done with a flycutter which is a big wheel with
a sharp toolbit sticking out. The length of the cutter is
adjusted so that the tool will peel off a suitable depth of
metal everytime it passes over the open end of the thunder mug.
The cutter is set in motion, round and round while the table
feed moves the part slowly into the path of the tool.

     The tool strikes once per revolution until it reaches the
opening of the pot. This area is noisy, but not locomotive
sound. When the open part is reached the tool strikes one side
and then the other doubling the rhythm to that of a two cylinder
steamer.

     At least it did to me. At any rate it was loud enough for
this part to be called the thunder mug. Of course the
resemblance to the old fashioned chamber pot of pre-plumbing
days had something to do with the name.

     The picture is a bell upside down with the striker crossing
the open end hitting both sides. The sound is a combination of
bell and drum with a steady roar from the resonating pot.

     The whirling wheel and the drum beat sound of the
resonating pot is hypnotic. The process is violent and these
pots were fragile. I had to keep awake. If something worked
loose there might be little warning and that would be in the
sound. There could be time to shut it off before the crash.

     Every thing was going smoothly. This thunder mug was in
good voice. The shop was filled with the sound. I was wondering
what it sounded like. Suddenly I knew. It was the sound of a
steam locomotive running full throttle and short cut off, the
way they are supposed to run.

     I didn't know how I knew and there was no time or need to
think about, for I was walking the cat walk on the top of the
cars toward the engine in another man's shoes. It was night, but
the moon was so bright and silvery that the beam of headlights
far ahead was as yellow as a candle. The onrushing air was as
balmy and soft as the first warm night of an Iowa spring. The
speed and motion of the cars underfoot was unbelievable, but I
balanced easily and every rattle bang and bounce was familiar
and reassuring. The experience was intense and vivid more so
than so called reality.

     At the same time I was still standing in that dingy machine
shop watching the whirling disc of the flycutter.

     It did so seem particularly strange or difficult to be in
two places at once or to handle two tasks at once. I seemed to
have the knowledge and skills of both trades. The thunder mug
had perhaps ten minutes to go before it would require attention.
So I went with the train, but I sure knew the mug was still
there in great voice.

     The experience on the train was pure magic. As I moved
forward I was totally immersed in the great sound from the
stack.

     I wanted it to last, but it did not. It ended with a nasty
impact, a shock or a jolt like I had never felt. My first
reaction was "What in God's name was that?"

     The next was "How can I get it back." I wanted it. That was
really living.

     The only thing that was left of the train and the moonlit
prairie was the sound of the locomotive. I concentrated on that
and somehow I found my train, but I could not be sure. Was it
all really there or was I just remembering and imagining. I
could not be sure this time. The end was the same. The same
jarring deadly shock, but weaker.

     That was all for the train and the prairie night. The
thunder mug had changed its tune. The link that had reached back
50 years and many thousand miles was reversed.

     That was all for the train, and the moonlit prairie. All
the wonder was gone. It was time to go to work, I finished that
endless shift and went home in a kind of a daze.

     I was as tired as if I had really walked that train.

     In bed I was afraid to go to sleep for fear that wonderful
experience would vanish like a dream when I awoke. In a way I
was afraid it would not.

     This was an intrusion. Something alien something I had no
place for. My life was confused, complex enough without having
this dumped into it.

     I soon figured out that the man whose shoes I wore to walk
that train was my mother's first husband, brother Williams
father, William Sidel.

     I wanted to write it up, but did not until my retirement. I
finally wrote it up for Bernard Selling's life narrative class,
but I wrote it in the third person and past tense. I took the
authors priviledge of all knowing invisibility. As no living
person had any real knowledge of Sidel I filled in enough of the
blank spots to flesh out the story and man.

     After all he had been a ghost long enough. I at least had
talked with people who knew him and I had walked in his shoes,
folk wisdom says that that is the way to know a man.

     I have no pet theory or pat explanation as to how William
Sidel and his turn of the century freight train got into a mid
20th century machine shop, but since both scientists and
mythologists agree that life comes from death, I do believe that
Sidel's death made my life possible, perhaps made it inevitable.

     I never knew what to do about this experience. As long as I
was in work that required security clearance I kept my mouth
shut. I had a feeling the F.B.I. would not approve of it. They
might think I would be communing the spirit of Carl Mark next.

     I thought maybe it would just fade away, but it did not and
I don't feel I should forget it even if I could.