Foot-Finger Freddy By Robert Balcomb ©2005 When I was very young, I called my favorite uncle Uncle Ferd, a habit I still carry today. However he later became known as Foot-Finger Freddy because his fingers were so long. During his Colorado days Uncle Ferd was a committed hobo, mostly walking the railroad tracks from wherever to wherever. Colorado is divided by the Rocky Mountains right down the middle. Because of the succession of one towering range after another separated by deep canyons, the railroad needs many very long and very high trestle bridges, spanning the gorges from one side to the other, sometimes as much as 600 feet above the rivers raging below. The bridges are only about five feet wide, the length of the ties, with no railings. At the approach to most bridges the tracks round sharp curves, surprising anyone on the train that there is a bridge suddenly there. Uncle Ferd was so used to this that it was second nature to him to carefully time his entry onto a bridge. But one pitch-black night, idly dreaming his way along the tracks, with the usual pace of hitting every other tie, he was halfway across a particularly long bridge before he was aware of a train approaching behind him and was rapidly gaining on him, blaring its horn. He lengthened his pace to every third tie as he ran. He believed that train conductors saw so many hoboes that they totally ignored them and never bothered even to slow down. Uncle Ferd ran faster and faster, now taking every four ties by sheer feel. With the train’s headlight seeming to burn his neck, he realized that he did not have enough time to reach the end, so he stopped, quickly lowered himself over the end of a tie, and hung by his fingers, just as the train swept by with a deafening, shattering roar. This train was a triple-length engine-on-both-ends put-together and seemed to endlessly clatter over him, car after car after car after car. Wondering if the train would ever end this relentless rush over his head, he had to summon all his energy and strength to hold on. In the darkness he imagined the sound of vast, empty space below him and, used to high places, sensed the muffled far-away rushing of the river hundreds of feet down. Finally, finally, after an excruciating length of time, the pusher-engine of the train rattled by, its diesel roar fading in the distance—and all was silence again. Dawn approached and the sky slowly lightened. Afraid to look down and totally exhausted, Uncle Ferd hung there by aching fingertips. He knew that looking down only made a bad situation worse. He imagined that down there in the depths of the canyon were huge, sharp boulders and a forest of 80-foot trees that would tear him to shreds, and a raging mountain river that would wash what was left of him down the canyon, never to be found. With his weakening grip on the tie, he was losing the nerve even to move, so he remained hanging there, trying to gird his mind to haul himself up again. He had to do something. He had to pull himself up on the tracks. But alas, his strength was almost gone. Gulping, he took a last chance, now that it was finally light enough, and looked down to experience that awesome space below. The dry wash was only twenty inches under his feet. He was so mad, he hung there the rest of the day. BACK