Trains have chugged along their rails for years, but a few have been brought to a screeching halt. Legends and Ghosts have silenced more than one train's piercing whistle. The story "The Baker Heater League" was written by Patricia C. and Fredrick Mckissack and the story "11:59" was also written by Patricia C. and Fredrick Mckissack. "The Baker Heater League" is a nonfiction story where legends take control of the brain and "11:59" is a fiction story where ghosts take control of the human body. While the story “11:59” and “The Baker Heater League” are two completely different stories there is more to them than what meets the eye.
"The Baker Heater League" is a nonfiction story that reveals how railroad workers called porters, would gather around a potbellied stove and share legends. Legends such as those of Casey Jones and John Henry were created out of these stories. This story's point of view was that of the author. According to page 5 of “The Baker Heater League” ”The Porters developed a language and history that grew out of
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common experiences.” “The Porters shared their experiences from coast to coast and north to south.” One of the bravest porter was Casey Jones, Casey the brave engineer could have jumped to safety but he decided to safe many other lives at the price of his own. “The 11:59” however was a story where fiction becomes reality and ghosts come to haunt it.
Lester Simmons, a retired porter once told the younger porters about how one night the ghosts took control of said reality. The things we say might be a lie and we can say them with ease, but when the things that we say actually start to occur we become lost. This is exactly what happened the last day on earth for Lester. Lester was walking home after a long night of talking to the porters at the station, when suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his heart and a slight tingle in his arms. Lester began to look at his watch and he realized it was “11:59” but Lester was not ready to die. According to page 14 “Lester decided that if he had to do it all over again, he’d stand by his choices with no regrets or hesitation.” also according to page 14 “Lester wondered what his life would be life if he married Louise Henderson and had a gallon of
children.” “The Baker Heater League” and 11:59 although similar were entirely different. “The Baker Heater League” was about a heroic porter who saved lives at the price of his own during a train wreck. According to page 5 of “The Baker Heater League” “As old porters died or retired, their stories became part of the railroad soul, and their legacy helped to reshape and mold new heros.” The 11:59 was a more tragic story with an abrupt and unexpected ending. According to page 15 of the “11:59” “As Lester sat there in the chair, he heard what sounded like a train whistle, he could hear time ticking in his head, Lester knew it was time for him to leave life as he knew it. Lester looked at his watch one final time it read 11:59 and with that Lester saw the great beam of the single light.” The mind of a reader can live one thousand lives where as a man who does not read only lives one. In these two stories, “The Baker Heater League” and “11:59” were both stories about porters but porters are all different and porters can create legends and ghost stories. The story of “The Baker League” was a nonfiction story but this story got tied up with legends. The “11:59” was a fiction story and it consisted of many tall tales or ghosts. The Porters all have a legend to tell, and when one dies or retires the legends get passed on.
Baseball statistics are meant to be a representation of a player’s talent. Since baseball’s inception around the mid-19th century, statistics have been used to interpret the talent level of any given player, however, the statistics that have been traditionally used to define talent are often times misleading. At a fundamental level, baseball, like any game, is about winning. To win games, teams have to score runs; to score runs, players have to get on base any way they can. All the while, the pitcher and the defense are supposed to prevent runs from scoring. As simplistic as this view sounds, the statistics being used to evaluate individual players were extremely flawed. In an attempt to develop more specific, objective forms of statistical analysis, the idea of Sabermetrics was born. Bill James, a man who never played or coached professional baseball, is often credited as a pioneer in the field and for coining the name as homage to the Society of American Baseball Research, or SABR. Eventually, the use of Sabermetrics became widespread in the Major Leagues, the first team being the Oakland Athletics, as depicted in Moneyball. Bill James and other baseball statisticians have developed various methods of evaluating a player performance that allow for a more objective view of the game, broadly defined as Sabermetrics.
Thomas Bell, author of Out of This Furnace, grew up in the steel mill town of Braddock, Pennsylvania. His novel reflects the hardships faced by his family during the time when the mills ruled the area. The book also focuses upon the life of immigrant workers struggling to survive in the "new country." All events in Bell's novel are fictional, however, they create a very realistic plot and are based somewhat upon a true story. In this novel, Bell refutes capitalistic ideals and the lack of a republican form of government by showing the struggles and success of immigrant steelworkers.
In Industrial Cowboys, Igler offers a study on the advances of Miller and Lux, dating back from the time they started in the Gold Rush era to the end of their campaign in the 1920s. Igler’s book studies the firm’s logistical structure as well as change in the San Joaquin valley environment, the political economy of California as a state and labor interactions. Igler does a superb job explaining how these two German immigrants rose to the top of the meatpacking business through the use of primary sources, company and public records, and various newspapers. Igler also uses photographs and maps to add to his analysis. In a growing effort to incorporate districts and industries ignored eastern research based plans, Igler makes a very persuasive argument that Miller and Lux, San Francisco, and the West were an essential role in the industrial transformation of the nation.
The. Crichton, Michael. A. The Great Train Robbery. First Ballantine Books, ed.
There was this rundown, old split-level on the edge of the town owned and inhabited by a young couple. This young couple did not have much money so they had to rent out the basement. The tenant that lived in the basement was a short, old man by the name of Louis. Louis lived there for about a year, but he NEVER came out of the basement. He NEVER answered the door during rent collection but just slid it through the mail slot. After a year, the couple was considering evicting Louis, mostly because they had a fear of Louis and his shady activities in the basement. Also, the couple was due for a baby in the upcoming year and they felt it was best for Louis to go. Louis did not respond well to the eviction however. So, when the couple was cleaning out the apartment, for another tenant, a skeleton fell out of the closet and landed on the floor with a loud CRASH! The couple ran out and called the police. After the whole thing with the police was sorted out, the couple moved out. More families would move in, but on the anniversary of the eviction, the Ghost of Louis would appear and haunt the inhabitants of the house, causing them to move out. The cycle continues today, and no one has seen Louis ever again, but rumor is he died after that eviction.
Out of This Furnace and Triangle focused on the struggle of immigrants who tried to better their lives for themselves and the lives of their families. Out of This Furnace is a fictional book by Thomas Bell. Even though the book is fictional, it gave a factual insight of the life of a steel mill and furnace worker during the late 1800s their romantic involvement and the fight for better working and living conditions for themselves, as well as their families. Many of these steel and furnace workers are immigrant men from Europe who came to America in the hope of finding work that everyone can better themselves and their families in the home country.
[2] The Molly Maguires were one such labor voice, if perceived this way, one such tribe (both causally and ethnically), and one such milestone, active from the 1860’s to the 1870’s. It is this period in the Pennsylvania anthracite coal regions which the 1970 movie is based. Long before child labor laws, a minimum wage, suitable standards on working conditions, or any form of labor union (the first geographically encompassing the Pennsylvania coal region was the shabbily organized, often squabbling, General Council of the Workingmen’s Associations of the Anthracite Coal Fields founded on March 17, 1869 [Aurand 69]), the Molly Maguires were an active labor force, if one views them as such, or a marauding group of renegades, thugs, and Godless anarchists, if one is persuaded to perceive them in that light.
Maggard, Sally Ward. "Women's Participation in the Brookside Coal Strike: Militance, Class, and Gender in Appalachia." Frontiers 3 (1987): 16-21.
Like all the best ghost stories, this begins with the most innocuous of introductions: “…life is complicated”, a quote by Patricia Williams that Gordon will remind us repeatedly is “the most important theoretical statement of our time” (3). What obscures, obfuscates, thwarts and yes, haunts us and our work, she argues, is not what is seen but what isn’t, the notable absences out of the corner of our trained eye, those ghosts who may be invisible (especially to the discourse) yet still exact attention from their hidden presence. Perhaps anticipating the confusion of my book’s previous reader, Gordon patiently (and poetically) expands on her conceptualization – ghosts are those whom, through the “complicated relationship between reality and its mode of production” (11) have been relegated to that void between the s...
In my paper I examined an article by Alexander Saxton. In his writing he discussed the formation of unions in the Alabama coalfields. The make up of the coal unions were very similar to the make-up of America and unions today. This was very peculiar to have such a conglomeration of workers because of the racial sentiment amongst the races of that day. The workers in the coalfields had the same background generally, except for their racial roots. These miners were brought toget...
My relatives who live in Maine had a ghost in their house. They started hearing foot-steps around their house and they think it was the previous owner of the house; I can’t remember his name, but he died. One of the stories was their younger daughter asks her mom, “who was that man who tucked me in last night”. They heard some foot falls in the attic. The daughter kept waking up in the middle of the night and the music box kept opening. Once, the wife was doing laundry in the middle of the night, felt something on her back and heard foot steps in the room and she freaked out. Often they would return home to new wood being put in the fireplace even though it was never used and behind locked doors. They eventually said out loud, “Please leave” and foot steps were heard walking out of the house and no other events occurred.
I originally became very interested in this phenomenon after seeing the film Urban Legend several years ago. My curiosity on the subject matter was rekindled when Stacey Burleson presented on "Legend" in our class. To be quite honest, I did not realize that UL was considered as being part of a genre of literature until Ms. Burleson's presentation. This newfound interest in the subject, as well as a desire to dig beyond the surface of the subject matter, is the reason I chose this topic. In doing this research, I realized that I have been participating in UL's every since I was a young boy. The simple fact that I never used the term "urban legend" is why I thought I was so unfamiliar with this subject area. During my childhood, my family and peers always referred to these legends as "campfire stories". It was not until college, when I saw the previously mentioned movie, that I associated the term with the countless stories I had heard and told to others.
Perhaps of the greatest fears possessed by humanity is the fear of death. There is no real idea of what happens when one dies, and that terrifying uncertainty leads most to avoid even the thought of it at all costs. With an invisible clock ticking human existence away, there remains the question of what is the meaning of life? Ray Bradbury’s short story The Last Night of the World not only forces its audience to reflect on the hypothetical of today being the last day, it offers an idea of what is important about the time people have on Earth. Through clever ambiguity, subtle mood building, and reflective dialogue, Bradbury suggests that it isn’t from the world on the grand scale that the answer is found, nor is it in personal grandeur or fast
Life after death: a mystery to most, but unsolved to all. Scientists and ghost hunters dedicate years and years of their lives searching for proof of the dead still roaming earth. Some believe the presence of some dead linger, while others believe spirits haunt. What I believe to be true is the existence of ghosts and their link to their former life on earth; my belief can be confirmed by the abundance of video and picture proof, eye-witness accounts, cultures, and numerous belief systems. Oxford Dictionary defines ghosts as an apparition of a dead person that is believed to appear or become manifest to the living.
The story “To Build a Fire” by jack London is one of the most famous stories of survival in the wilderness. The story is about a man leaving a camp to walk to another camp at a temperature of 75 degrees below zero, with an Alaskan husky dog as a companion. The story takes place in the past and was written in 1908. The man in the story is purposely not given a reputation, as the deterministic environment is additional more necessary than his free will and individuality. His aim at the start of the story is to reach the camp to meet "the boys," presumptively to prospect for gold.