Special Pages

   The following is a transcription of the Morse Telegraph tape.

   "This is Cecil D. Combs, President of the Morse Telegraph Club, transmitting from the old depot at Wahoo, Nebr., which has been beautifully restored by the Wahoo Historical Society and stands as a tribute to their efforts. The old depot at Wahoo stands amid an age she does not understand.

   An off-spring of an almost forgotten day, she tried to adjust but her tomorrows have come too swiftly and she bears the indelible marks of too many yesterdays. She does not understand that her former riders of the trains now use their automobiles for short trips. But she does know that, somehow, she is out of place. In an effort to grow with the times, her office has been restored with the sound of the old telegraph instrument.

   Only the old timers will remember her youth -- good days they were too! The grinding locomotives unloading their wares in the lobby, the smoke coming from the coal burning engines -- they have all mellowed together. The people she remembers she cannot stereotype. There were so many on so many different trains. There were the holiday travelers who came in on the "Old Wooden Axle" to spend the week end with friends or relatives. She remembers the ones who met those trains and the countless questions from the kids who waited for their aunt or grandparents to arrive.

   She remembers the shoppers who came for the day, and returned that evening laden with packages.

   She remembers the grandmothers-to-be who boarded her trains to be with their daughters in far away places "While the baby came," and their satisfied, tired look when they returned home, purses crammed with pictures of the child who looked "Just like his grandfather."

   Sometimes she remembers what she'd rather forget.

   Through two world wars she watched the young men stand on her platform, their jaws set, nervously laughing at each other's bad jokes. Her waiting room embraced a thousand women who counted the minutes and then the seconds until the approaching wail of the troop trains. Through her soot-covered windows she watched the husbands, sons and lovers kiss them, smile at them, wave at them, and then swing brashly aboard the train.

   Her walls have absorbed the tears of countless separations, and she too, in sadness, has shuddered violently with sobs when the long line of cars moved out of the yards. And even now, in the silence of her darkly lit chambers, she must hear again the mothers, sweethearts and wives weeping.

   But, now the people and the sounds are ghosts and echoes of the past. So, she waits. The weeds find ways to grow around her skirts. She is old and tired, but the people of Wahoo, with justifiable pride would not accept her as a monument to the past. They painted her coating, brightened her walls and said to her in fact: "All is not past. The present is now and hundreds of people will yet pass through your rooms, admiring you as an important part of our American history."

   So, do not be sad, old depot. Sing merrily with the sound of the telegraph. Again come to life and be thankful that your fate and future have been preserved by the good folks in Wahoo, Nebr. To them you are a living monument to the past, and to the present.

   May your dignity and beauty withstand the years of time.

C.D. Combs   

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