John Fitzgerald GB 04 Great Bra

The Great Brain at the Academy

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The Great Brain at the Academy

WHEN MY BROTHER TOM began telling people in Adenville, Utah, that he had a great brain everybody laughed at him, including his own family. We all thought he was trying to play some kind of a kid’s joke on us. But after he had used his great brain to swindle all the kids in town and make fools of a lot of grownups nobody laughed at my brother anymore.

I think that was why just about everybody in town except his own family was glad to see Tom leave Adenville on September 1, 1897. And I couldn’t help thinking that Papa must have felt kind of relieved too, although he didn’t show it. Papa was editor and publisher of the Adenville Weekly Advocate and was considered one of the smartest men in town. But some of the shenanigans Tom had pulled with his great brain were enough to make Papa feel like a blooming idiot. Now he wouldn’t have to worry about men dropping into his office to complain that Tom had swindled their sons. Mamma cried a lot at the depot but she also must have felt at least a little relief. She wouldn’t have to worry for the next nine months about mothers telephoning her to complain about Tom. The truth of the matter, though, was that although Tom had been a junior-grade confidence man since he was eight years old, he had never realty cheated anybody. With his great brain he simply devised schemes that made people swindle themselves.

Tom and my eldest brother Sweyn were bound for the Catholic Academy for Boys in Salt Lake City. We only had a one-room schoolhouse in Adenville, where Mr. Standish taught the first through the sixth grades. Any parents wanting their kids to get a higher education had to send them to Salt Lake City. Tom was only eleven going on twelve but so smart that Mr. Standish had let him skip the fifth grade. Sweyn was two years older and going back to the academy for his second year. A stranger who saw us three brothers together would never have guessed we were related. Sweyn looked like our Danish-American mother, with blond hair and a light complexion. I had dark unruly hair and dark eyes, just like Papa-Tom didn’t look like either Mamma or Papa unless you sort of put them together, and he was the only one in the family who had freckles.

Tom promised to write to me every week. The first letter I received told me how he had spotted a card shark on the train. I didn’t find out all the details, though, until my brothers came home for Christmas vacation. Then I got Sweyn to tell me what had happened and later Tom told me what had happened. But there was something wrong. Sweyn didn’t mention several things Tom told me. And Tom d;dn’t mention his invention for trains which Sweyn told me all about. That is why I figure the only way to tell what really happened is to put their stories together and tell it in my own way.

Tom admitted he felt down in the dumps as the train pulled out of Adenvilie. I couldn’t blame him. It was the first time he had ever been away from home-I knew when I became old enough to go to the academy that I would probably bawl like a baby.

“Go ahead and cry,” Sweyn said as the train left the depot. It is nothing to be ashamed about. I know I did last year my first time away from home.”

Tom sure wanted to cry but he’wasn’t going to give Sweyn the satisfaction of knowing it. “Maybe I don’t feel like crying,” he lied.

“Pardon me,” Sweyn said sarcastically. “I just thought being separated from Mom and Dad and our kid brother for the first time might make you feel sad. Well, I know something that will make you cry. You won’t be able to swindle the kids at the academy and get away with shenanigans like you pulled in Adenville. Those Jesuit priests are strict.”

Sweyn’s superior big-brother attitude was beginning to get on Tom’s nerves. “You are just jealous of my great brain,” he said. “It is warm in here. I’m going to open a window.”

“You do and you’ll get a cinder in your eye,” Sweyn said.

That was enough to make Tom open the window even if he got ten cinders in his eyes. He had never let Sweyn boss him around at home and he wasn’t about to start now. Sure enough, he got a cinder in his eye. He pulled his head inside quickly and shut the window.

“What did I tell you?” Sweyn said.

“Take the corner of your handkerchief and get it out,” Tom said.

“Say please,” Sweyn said, smiling and pretending he enjoyed seeing Tom suffer.

“Never mind,” Tom said. “I’ll go to the washroom and get it out myself.”

“I was just joking,” Sweyn said, taking out his handkerchief.

He got the cinder out of Tom’s eye just as the conductor came into the coach. The conductor was a big ruddy-faced man wearing the traditional blue uniform and cap with a big gold watch chain across his vest. When he came to them he took their tickets and placed two blue stubs under the metal tabs on the seats. Then he looked at Tom’s red eye.

“I see it didn’t take you long to learn not to open a window on a train, sonny,” he said.

Being called “sonny” always made Tom angry. “My name is Tom Fitzgerald, not sonny,” he said. “And I can’t help wondering why they don’t put screens on coach windows so passengers won’t get cinders in their eyes.”

“Well now, Tom Fitzgerald.” the conductor said, “it just so happens that on the newer coaches on the main line

we do have screens on the windows. But you still can’t open a window when the train is moving.”

“Why not?” Tom asked.

“Smoke from the locomotive would get into the passenger cars,” the conductor said.

“They could fix it so all windows could be opened without any cinders or smoke getting into the passenger cars,” Tom said, although he didn’t have the least idea of exactly how it could be done.

“And just how would they do that?” the conductor aaked. “I’m sure the president of this railroad and of every other railroad would be delighted to know.”

Tom didn’t miss seeing the conductor wink at the other passengers. He tapped his index finger to his tem-ple. “I’ll put my great brain to work on it,” he said, “and let you know when you finish collecting tickets.”

“I’ll be back,” the conductor said. “I wouldn’t miss hearing this for the world.”

All the passengers in the coach except Sweyn began to laugh. Sweyn felt so embarrassed that he slid way down in his seat. “You have only been on this train for about ten minutes,” he said, “and you’ve already made us the laughing stock of everybody in this coach.”

“They won’t be laughing very long,” Tom said, confident that his great brain would not let him down.

“You must be plumb loco,” Sweyn said with disgust. “They have engineers with years of experience designing trains. If there was any way to open windows without getting cinders and smoke into the passenger cars they would have invented it.”

Do you think that made Tom give up? Heck no.

“The men who built Conestoga wagons and prairie schooners never thought of putting brakes on them,” he said. “Thousands of emigrants who came West had to chain their rear wheels when going down a grade. Then one day one of them got tired of chaining his wheels. He used a shovel handle, a couple of two-by-fours to

Tom’s great brain must have been working like sixty because when the conductor returned he was ready.

“Here I am, Tom Fitzgerald,” the conductor said with a smile on his ruddy face. “Now tell me how we can open windows on trains without getting cinders or smoke in the cars.”

Tom wasn’t about to divulge his plan for nothing. When he put his great brain to work he expected to be paid for it.

“I’ll expect some financial reward if the railroad uses my idea,” he said.

“Naturally,” the conductor said. “And you have all these passengers as witnesses that it was your idea.”

“They could run a pipe from the smokestack on the locomotive along the top of the train to the caboose,” Tom said, “and let all the cinders and smoke out behind the train.”

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t work,” the conductor said. “The pipe would break when the train went around a curve.”

“Not if they put flexible couplings on it between each car,” Tom said.

A salesman across the aisif began to laugh. “I think the boy has you there, conductor,” he said.

“No he hasn’t,” the conductor said. “With such a long pipe the fire under the boiler in the locomotive would go out.”

This stumped Tom until he remembered a photo-graph of a factory he had seen in a magazine. “I don’t think it would,” he said, “because the longer the smokestack the better it draws. That is why they put such high chimneys on factories.”

By this time Tom was so sure his idea would work that he began to wonder how big a reward the railroad would give him. The conductor must have guessed what he was thinking.

“I’m afraid you will never collect that reward,” he said. “In order for a smokestack to work it has to be verti-cal. Hot air is lighter than cold air. What creates a draft is the hot air rising to the top. If you bent the smokestack over horizontally the hot air would just rise to the bend in the pipe and be trapped there. And as a result you would have no draft and the fire in the firebox of the locomotive would go out.”

No wonder Tom didn’t mention anything about this in his letter to me. And no wonder Sweyn chuckled when he told me about it at Christmastime. It wasn’t until I confronted Tom with what Sweyn had said that I learned the whole story. And it just goes to prove a fellow has to listen to both sides of a story to learn the truth.

Tom admitted he was stunned that there was a flaw in his idea that he felt as if the conductor had hit him on the head with a baseball bat. And even worse was the

shock to his money-loving heart. And boy, oh, boy, was he embarrassed as the conductor and all the passengers except Sweyn began laughing at him. Papa had often said that when a fellow starts out trying to make a fool of somebody else he usually ends up making a foot of himself. And that is exactly what happened to Tom. But there was one thing Papa and Mamma had drilled into us boys and that was always to face up to our problems.

“I deserve to be laughed at,” Tom said to the conductor. “I tried to make a fool out of you and ended up being the fool.”

“Don’t take it so hard, Tom,” the conductor said sympathetically. “Some of our greatest inventors were laughed at. You just keep on using that great brain of yours and someday you will invent something that will improve trains.”

“In that case,” he said, “I’ve got to iearn all about trains by the time we get to Salt Lake City. Can I come with you?”

“Come along,” the conductor said, smiling.

When they got to the caboose the conductor introduced himself as Harold Walters and the brakeman as Paul Jackson.

“Why. do you ride in the caboose instead of in the coach?” Tom asked.

“This is what we call a feeder line,” Mr. Walters said. “On feeder lines we don’t have a train that is strictly for passengers like we do on the main line. This train, for example, has a mail-and-baggage car, a freight car, and some-times a car for livestock in addition to a smoking car and a coach car. And because the train is what you could call

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part of a freight train we have a caboose like they do on all freight trains. On the main-line passenger trains the conductor and brakeman have a seat reserved for them on one of the coaches.”

Tom remained with Mr. Walters for almost three hours, going with the conductor to the coach and smoking cars to collect tickets at each stop. Then he returned to his seat.

“Weil,” Sweyn said, “did my little brother learn all about choo-choo trains?”

Tom figured this was as good a time as any to put an end to this big-brother act of Sweyn’s. And he knew the hardest blow of all would be in the pocketbook.

“I guess you know a lot more about trains than I do,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Sweyn asked in that superior way of older brothers. “I have already made two trips to Salt Lake City and back.”

“You sure have,” Tom said, “and I figure for every mile I’ve ridden on a train you must have traveled at least twenty. Right?”

“Right,” Sweyn said.

“That means you know twenty times more about trains than I do,” Tom said. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Sweyn answered.

“Then put your money where your mouth is,” Tom said. “I’ll bet you a quarter that I can ask you two questions about trains that you can’t answer. If you answer, both of them you win. If you only answer one of them it is a tie and the bet is off.”