Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Ode to the: Race of the Old Yonah



(April, 1862—The Civil War) Poetic Prose

James J. Andrews, finessed his way through tight places, avoiding clashes with the south (a Union Spy) where a flinch of an eyelash meant death—!

His quest had now been to take the Engine General and its three boxcars at the depot called – ‘Big Shanty’ at
Marietta, Georgia—race onto Bridgeport, Alabama, with thirty armed soldiers:

       —thus, the race began, heading westward; Conductor William A. Fuller in pursuit!

The Yankees only eleven minutes ahead!  Heaving and pulling iron rails loose until they snapped—to slow old Yonah down, Fuller still behind…

One mistake Andrews had made along the way, was not to destroy the old engine Yonah, thinking, it had its day… which would seal his fate and write his epitaph
(for that was the engine Fuller used to start his race…)!

Consequently, capturing Andrews along the way and most of his squad; hanging Andrews eleven days before his wedding, leaving his bones in Dixie!


Note:  Those who have not been in war, will never understand the simplest of friction, it can produce with the simplest of things, distortion in the mind (miscalculations); you see the mind doesn’t always function the exact way you’d expect it to. Especially when making moment to moment decisions as in the:  “…Race of the Old Yonah” (12/21/2011) 

#3360 (12-20-2011)
Men in War, PART II of III