Part II

Reprinted with permission from "Private File" by Robert ¹⁰ Bigelow (son of Edward ⁹ above), News Editor, in the Honolulu Advertiser, 24 September 1967.

     In [the last issue] we left my father running away from home in 1882, at the age of 14. He was wearing his Sunday suit and had 10 cents in his pocket that summer morning when he walked into the railroad yards in Baltimore.
     Eddie Bigelow was no stranger there. Railroading, in those days, had all the glamour of rocketry today. In those yards a boy could see famous locomotives like "The Mogul," built right there in Baltimore by the B & O. It was the Titan rocket of the age - the engine and tender were 58 feet long and they weighed 153,400 pounds.
     Papa didn't know where he was going.., but he was going. He found a train puffing up steam and ready to roll. He climbed into one of its boxcars, wedged his skinny frame between bales and boxes and waited.
     Soon he heard footsteps crunching on the cinder road­bed outside. The door slammed shut with a clanging of metal and left him in darkness. He heard the engine pick up steam. The car shuddered and began to roll.
Papa waited until the train stopped, crawled out and walked away. He looked over his shoulder. No one was following. He just kept walking, heady with a new feeling of independence.
     Then Papa heard something that made his heart do flip-flops. It was the sound of wheezy human breathing somewhere else in the car. Out of the gloom came a whisky growl: "Are ya black or white?" Even in the freight car fraternity there was segregation in those days.
     Papa stammered out an answer and the voice said, "We're locked in here. Have ya got a knife?"
     Yes, Papa had a knife. His ever-loving, stick-whittling, bait-cutting, fish-cleaning, splinter-removing, mumblety-pegging pocket knife.
     "Bring it over here. We got to cut this lock out fore we get to Wash'n'ton."
     A crack at the bottom of the door let in a beam of light that dimly revealed Papa's companion as a red-eyed, scraggly-bearded hobo in overalls and a ragged shirt.

     Eddie had always wanted to see Washington. Just a couple of months ago he had read in the paper that they had hanged Charles J. Guiteau, the madman who had assassinated President James Garfield less than a year earlier. Chester A. Arthur was the new President.
     At first Eddie was surprised to note that the nation's capital was not as big as Baltimore and that the horses and carriages were no more elegant there. But he found his way to the Capitol. There was nothing like that in Baltimore. From the heights he could look across the trees to the 300-foot stump of the Washington monument, still under construction. It wouldn't rise to its full 550 feet for another two years.
     Papa asked his way to the White House. It looked then much as it does now, except that the West Wing, which houses the executive offices today, wouldn't be built for another 20 years. The 18 acres on which it stood were an unfenced, wooded area.

     Papa stood outside the White House and wondered if President Arthur was looking at him through a window. He tried to appear very dignified. It was dusk by this time. Men went around the grounds lighting the lanterns and lights appeared inside the mansion.
     It was then that Papa realized he had no place to sleep. A dime could buy a lot in those days, but not a hotel room. Besides, Papa had never been in a hotel and wouldn't even know how to ask for a room.
     He started to walk away, but suddenly the thought dawned that this was the safest place in all the world. The city beyond was strange and forbidding but the White House was familiar from a hundred drawings. It was the very center of all that was solid and reassuring and good.
     So Eddie walked into the grounds, found a nice place under some bushes no more than 100 yards from the big house, curled up on a pile of leaves and went to sleep.

Chester A. Arthur never knew he was babysitting that night.

Next: Papa helps celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Bull Run, smokes a homemade cigar and goes to sea.

This is the second in a series of four articles, written by
Bob Bigelow in 1967 as a tribute to his father, which
will appear in Forge over the next year.
Contributed by Arthur Lindley Bigelow, Abington PA.

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