Troop trains, Royal Gorge and that Demon Rum. (was: Re: Military traffic on the D&RGW)

In 1970 (since we're telling "What my Dad did in the War" stories) my parents took two cars on vacation to visit Mom's parents in Arizona. Mom got the teenagers, Dad just took me. I managed to convince Dad, by promising never to ask again, to divert from hiway 50 over the Royal Gorge bridge. (Dad hated "Tourist Traps.") After we had viewed the Gorge, and the bazillions of polaroid negatives scattered about, Dad go to reminiscing about the first time he ever saw the Royal Gorge, which was from an East-bound troop train in 1943. They went through right about sunrise.
Carried away on a tide of reminiscence, Dad went on to tell abut how they pulled into Pueblo and sat for several hours in the yard across the street from a liquor store. Some of Dad's buddies slipped over and picked up some booze. At this point it becomes relevant that Dad was in pilot training for the Army Air Corps and was thus an officer. The car all the young (Dad would have been not quite 21) officers were in was the last car on the train and was a former observation car from God-know where, brass rail and all. The story moved on to that afternoon when, while zipping across Eastern Colorado at about 70 mph, Dad and his buddies, now well-lubricated, were out on the platform trying to shoot the insulators off passing telegraph poles with their .38's.
At this point, Dad realized that he had been telling all this to his 10 year-old son, stopped, and said something along the lines of "That was a very bad thing we did."
It was never mentioned again, but remains one of my favorite memories of Dad.
hank



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2017 10:21AM by hank.