“Chancing the Buddy System” by Patricia E. Watts
– keep believing
A series of troubles and disappointments did not dissuade this willing optimist.
Patricia E. Watts lives in Mountville, South Carolina where the love of local and family history has given her a passion to write stories to pass down to her children. She has found through stories of tragedies, tears, and triumphs and even mysteries that she has a rich heritage worth telling. Her story “A Real Small Town” appeared in 2020 PSPP’s That Southern Thing and her paired stories “Sometimes the Prize Goes to the Wrong Person” and “The Orphan Train” appeared in spring 2021 PSPP’s Luck and Opportunity.
Author’s talk
The story about how we found out that my great grandfather and Scott had each held the same job in South Carolina with the same company and both men ended up in Colorado was an eye opener to us.
Patricia E. Watts
When I was a young girl growing up in Colorado, I had a great uncle who lived a couple of streets over from us. He was a railroad man through and through. His lifelong career was the railroad where he worked hard and made his way to the top. I remember him saying that he got his start on the railroad in South Carolina when he was 12 years old carrying water to the crew members of the train for his father, who was my great grandfather.
We thought this uncle’s career was fascinating. We would sometimes get to spend a wonderful afternoon in the railroad car that he had turned into an impressive school room. And the train depot was just a delight to us.
Years later when he found out that I was dating a young man from South Carolina who had been with the railroad before being sent to Colorado, he was more than interested. He traveled a lot with his career, but he came for a visit as soon as he got back in town. He was anxious to meet this young man. And he wanted Scott to know that his father had been the Section Foreman for the Seaboard Railroad at Carlisle, South Carolina before this father moved the family west to settle in Colorado. To my uncle’s surprise (and great delight) Scott was able to tell him that he, too, was the Section Foreman for the Seaboard Railroad at Carlisle, South Carolina before coming to Colorado. I will always remember the afternoon when these two men met.
