STERLING STATION, Its Trains, People and More, Seen Through the Eyes of a Child
by Laura A. Decker
Come down Memory Lane with me with the big iron horse that came down from Auburn twice daily, stopping along the way to Fair Haven. This is through the eyes of a child. I remember the whistle that blew when it came under the old bridge on what is now known as the Cosgrove road. The bridge is long gone now. My brother, Howard Liddle and I would stand on that bridge when the train went under it while the steam came up between the boards. That Iron Horse was not like the ones today. It was big and black and was coal fed. I remember its smoke stack with its trail of smoke going with it. The “Y” in back of the barn was where the railroad cars were left that didn’t need to go to Fair Haven.
I would stand on the front lawn and wave at the engineer and conductor as they went by. I can still see him sitting in the window of the train with his arm leaning on the sill of the train as it goes by, waving back at me. I didn’t know him, but I felt like he was my friend by the way he waved.
I saw many people walking those tracks, as people didn’t have the cars those days, and they did a lot of walking. They walked to meet the train, to get the mail, to school, to Fair Haven, and Martville to do their shopping. They walked to the Junction where Floyd Rudd was the ticket agent. He and his wife, Ottie, lived in the old hotel (a private residence now), where Ottie was Post Mistress. The address was Sterling Station back then.
Sherwin Hill tells me he remembers jumping on the 7:00 morning milk train with other boys and riding to the junction from Fair Haven. I can see Mrs. Wyman and her three children, Joe, Stanley and Helen, carrying her market basket heading for Fair Haven to get groceries. My grandfather was going for the mail. My Father and I would walk to Martville to get his hair cut at Rufus Blanchard’s barber shop. He played pool at the pool hall in Martville next to the store, then stopped off at Harold Howland’s Red and White for groceries he put in a feed bag and carried home on his shoulders.
Two people who walked that track, every school day, were my brother Howard and I. We walked to the Junction then took the road (Sterling Station Road) up the Keville Hill to the school.
One morning the train was late. Our Mother had to send us to school down those tracks. She sat us down and preached to us good on what to do if we met the train. I still remember her words. “Go down the bank quickly and turn your back on the train; don’t look at it or you would be sucked into the wheels.” We heard the whistle, saw the big black engine coming at us under the bridge. It saw us too, its whistle blowing. I am sure the engineer’s heart came in his throat … But we did just as Mother told us to do. Of course my brother had his big story of how he saved me. But don’t you believe it. Mother was very glad to see us when we got home from school.
“Fair Haven, Fair Haven, the Land of the Free and the Home of the School Teachers”
Marion Rudd used to take the train from the Junction and Lucille VanWie got on at Ira Station and went to school in Cato. Francis (Wall) McIntyre took the train to business school in Auburn. Naoma Brown and Marie Bower Frost were a few teachers that took the train. Harry Brown was a baggage man on the train. He would come through the passengers’ car when he got close to Sterling or Fair Haven saying “Fair Haven, Fair Haven, the Land of the Free and the Home of the School Teachers.”
