Knoxville, Tennessee, looked to be all crowded streets, tall buildings and smoggy air. It was nothing like home in the Smoky Mountains. But that year of 1949 when I was seven Mama and Dad had brought all us kids to the city so Dad could take a job as a machinist at a tool and die shop.
One chilly afternoon my brother, Buddy Earl, and I walked along the railroad tracks near our rented house. I carried an empty bucket that bumped against my knees as I walked. “See any coal on the ground?” I called.
“Not yet,” Buddy Earl called back. At this part of the track there was a railway crossing, and the train always slowed down here at the intersection. If we were lucky, bits of coal fell off the train and onto the ground where we could gather them up.
A lot of the coal wasn’t the best quality, most of it clinkers and burned-up lumps, but we needed everything we could get to keep warm.
Things hadn’t gone so well since we came to Knoxville. Flatlanders—that’s what we called the folks in the city—thought we were pretty strange. They had a name for us too: hillbillies. Just last week in school I’d gotten laughed at for telling the time. “It’s nigh on one o’clock,” I’d said.
The other kids laughed. “Nigh on one o’clock?” they repeated. “You talk funny.” I kicked some pebbles by the train tracks and frowned at the ground.
I wasn’t ashamed at being a hillbilly. I loved our little house on the mountain. We grew our own food in the gardens, the stream was full of fish for catching, and the woods were full of game. Here in the city you needed money for food, and money was hard to come by.
Dad had come down with pneumonia, probably because our house here was so cold. You could throw a cat through the cracks in our walls, they were so big.
“Train’s coming!” Buddy Earl shouted. We stepped back from the tracks. The train slowed to a stop. Coal rattled down over the sides to the ground. Buddy and I dove to get it.
“Why are you boys digging in the snow?” someone called from the engine cab. It was a fireman. I could tell by the soot on his face and the red bandanna around his neck. “You looking for fishing worms?” He laughed.
“No, sir,” I said. “We are finding coal that falls from the cars.”
“It’s mighty dangerous for two youngsters to be running these tracks,” he said. “You tell your daddy he ought to buy coal from now on.”
“Our daddy is on sick leave,” I informed him. “We ain’t got any money to buy food, much less coal.”
The fireman stepped away from the window. Buddy and I resumed our search for coal. A second later the man came back to the window. “Hey!” he said. “You little fellows bring that coal bucket over here. I got something for you.”
We brought him our bucket. The fireman filled it with good, clean coal straight from the train’s own supply.
“What’s your name?” I asked the fireman. “I need it to remember you in my prayers tonight.”
He smiled the kindest smile I’d seen since coming to Knoxville. He wiped the back of his neck with his red bandanna.
“You just call me Jim,” he said. “The Lord will know who you’re talking about. Now you boys stay away from the train when it comes through day after tomorrow. I’ll throw off a scoop of coal for you so you don’t have to step on the tracks.”
Our bucket was so full of coal it took both of us to carry it home, side by side.
“We might actually be warm tonight!” I said.
Everyone was sure surprised when we bumped our way up to our house with our bucket so full.
“No cinders or clinkers at all,” Mama exclaimed, picking out a couple of lumps for the fireplace. “Where did you get all this coal?”
“Our guardian angel gave it to us,” I answered. I gave Buddy a wink. “And the day after tomorrow, if we’re lucky, we might see him again.”
Mama looked at Buddy and me over her glasses. “Does this angel have a name by any chance?”
“Just Jim,” I said. “He’s guardian angel for us and for the steam engine that pulls the coal cars.”
Mama shook her head and went back to fixing supper. The kitchen was already getting warmer.
Two days later, as promised, Buddy and I stood back from the train as it steamed up to the crossing. Jim appeared in the window and gave us a wave. A second later a large scoop of coal flew out of the engine cab, followed by a bright red scrap of cloth.
“Looks like Jim lost his neck bandanna,” I said, running over to pick it up. “Wait, there’s something tied up in it.” I untied the scrap of cloth and pulled it open.
“Well, just look at that,” Buddy said. “Two pieces of bubble gum!”
“And a dollar bill!” I said, waving the money in the air. “Our guardian angel must be rich!”
Buddy and I returned to the train tracks regularly all that winter. Three days a week, we met Jim in his engine cab. Each time we received a bucket of coal, and sometimes a treat, like penny candy or money. You can bet I never forgot to put Jim in my prayers each night.
In the spring our family moved back to the mountains. I had never been so happy to see our old house and our gardens, the woods and the streams. City life was not for me.
But whenever I thought about Knoxville I smiled, remembering Jim, our guardian angel. I still remember him in my prayers. I still don’t know his full name, but the Lord knows exactly who I’m talking about, even all these years later.
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