Fritz's Accident

A recent story I wrote in this blog about the railroad and its importance in Tenney sparked a few Tenney railroad memories from Jeri Nowak, the daughter of Fritz and Leona (Kath) Novak. Jeri vividly remembers riding with her dad as a young child to the elevator to unload harvested grain, where she remembers seeing Jack O’Laughlin working. Mr. O’Laughlin was a popular, well-respected guy in Tenney, and has been mentioned as a part of many Tenney stories I have heard over the past few years. What are your memories of the O'Laughlins?

A different Tenney train story brings up much less pleasant memories. At Christmas time in 1937, Jeri’s dad Fritz was bringing his sister-in-law and her children home to Tenney after they’d spent the evening at the Novak home in the country. It was snowing. He dropped them off at their home in Tenney and was leaving town to return to his own home. There was a train going through town at the time, so Fritz waited for the train to go by. When he thought it was clear, he proceeded across the tracks.

What Fritz didn’t realize was that the train was actually still there. The snow prevented him from seeing that the part of the train in front of him was a number of empty flatbed cars going by. The train hit Fritz’s car and dragged it about a half-mile before the car detached from the train. Luckily, he had already dropped off his sister-in-law’s family, or they certainly would have been hurt or killed. Fritz, alone in the car, was injured quite seriously, with a broken leg and a major face injury caused by the steering column going through his cheek. Now that’s a train story that would make an impression on a young girl.

In the process of doing research for the Tenney book, I read a LOT of Breckenridge newspapers for the time period of the 1920s and 30s. It seems as though train wrecks or car-train wrecks occurred at an alarming rate during that time period. The crossing in Campbell, in particular, seemed to be the scene of many a wreck. While the railroad was the lifeblood of Tenney and Campbell, it also left many scars.