..............................................................................Grab Bag
The Dangers of Underage Railroading


There is a scene in The High and the Mighty - a thoroughly b-grade movie starring John Wayne and Robert Stack - where an aggrieved husband pulled a gun on his wife's boyfriend inside an airliner passenger cabin. Fortunately, a split second before the gun went off, one of the plane's engines coincidentally exploded, causing the shooter to miss - and in part, the B rating. Subsequently, a passenger disarmed him, and the stewardess ordered him back to his seat. Later, the passenger handed the gun back to him, minus the bullets.

Conclusions:
1) Potential murderers apparently did not carry spare rounds of ammo in their pockets back then.
2) Boy, did people have a different outlook from today on life and things.

E.O. in perilous times
 This is the best way that I can think of to explain the mindset of a century ago that promulgated the two films below. As a whole, folks just tended to more lackadaisical about hazardous situations in those days, by all appearances.

Certainly the second below Our Gang video has elements of The High and the Mighty, in that the kids almost wreck the railroad, yet in the end all is forgiven and they go back to playing in train yards, but responsibly.

Max Fleischer's Play Safe cartoon, on the other hand, is almost present day shrill in portraying the dangers of underage railroading, but yet I came away with the distinct impression that the film was progressing against the current of traffic. In those times, a fair number of parents kicked their kids out of the house in the morning with the refrain, "Be home by supper." Heck, the year The High and the Mighty hit the theaters, my mother was still practicing this time-honored approach to parenting. Hence, I often busied myself down in Milwaukee Gulch by placing pebbles on the track with the hopes of sending a train into the ditch. Attractive nuisance suits and Cuban hijackers would not come to adjust our outlook on life and things for several more years. - EO

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