By Nancy Huddleston, Editor 

When John McCarthy pulled the old watch out of his pocket one sunny afternoon at the restored Savage depot, it was like opening a door to the past for Will Williams, Nancy Allen and John Oster.

That’s because each of their fathers had the same watch – a special railroad timepiece that was synchronized with other watches carried by agents and workers up and down the line. The watches were used to track the arrival and departure of trains on certain lines, and to safeguard against accidents. Timing was so important to the agents and rail workers that the watches were specially built so they couldn’t accidentally be reset.

“You’d unscrew the face, pull a pin, then set the watch, and then screw the face back on,” explained McCarthy.

Will Williams, Nancy Allen, John McCarthy and John Oster.

Charles McCarthy was the depot agent at the Savage depot for 30 years. Charles Oster, the father of Allen and Oster, started working at the depot at 16, became a telegrapher at 18 and went on to become the depot agent years later, finally retiring after 49½ years with the railroad. And Art Williams worked for “the other railroad” the Minneapolis, Northfield and Southern (MN and S) for more than 40 years as a section foreman.

So, as the restored Savage depot has come to life over the past several months, memories of the past have been stirred up for the group.

Oster and Allen said their father’s career started as a telegrapher, moving from station to station – wherever he was needed. Next, he worked as the depot agent at Merrian Station in Shakopee, which was located near where the Renaissance Festival grounds are now located. Then he came to the Savage Depot in 1952 and stayed until it was closed down in the early 1970s.

In those days, the depot was located on the north side of Highway 13 and was a great place to hang out, they all recalled. What’s more, working for the railroad wasn’t a 9-to-5 job, rather it was more like a 24/7 job.

McCarthy has memories of his dad rising each day in the early morning hours, sometimes as early as 3 a.m. to leave for work. As he tiptoed out of the upper room of the home where everyone slept, he’d wiggle the toes of John and one of his brothers on his way down the steps. “It was his special way of telling us good-bye for the day,” he said.

Allen and Oster note their dad “never missed a day of work,” and if he did, he could probably count those on one hand.

Williams said he could always find his dad in the MN and S tool shed, which was located in front of where Continental Machines now stands. “His job was to make sure the rails were top-notch,” he said.

On Saturdays, Williams and his brothers, Wes and Paul, often accompanied their dad to work. His dad’s section spanned from Bush Lake down to Orchard Gardens, so riding the rails was quite a trip. At certain times of the year, the Williams boys could pick plums or hazel nuts in areas next to the rail line.

“Then, as we got older, dad would let us sweep the grain out of rail cars and gather up the grain that was spilled on the ground,” Williams recalled. “We’d take it over to Shakopee to the grain elevator and sell it to get some spending money.”

Allen and Oster explained that when their father worked at Merrian station, they’d sometimes get a short ride on a steam engine as the machines were switching tracks at the station. “That was always fun,” Oster noted.

But that was before the railroad put a stop to allowing anyone except railroad workers in the yards for liability reasons.

McCarthy’s memories from his teenage years at the depot are of helping his dad out by moving freight or mail bags from time to time.

“Then I ran off and joined the Army Air Corps, got on a B25 crew and went all over the world,” he said.

But, whenever he was home, his first stop would be the depot to see his dad.

One time, he remembered standing on the landing waiting for a train and seeing a car headed for a dude ranch run by Ed and Becky Hanson get stuck on the tracks.

“It was a Sunday morning and Dad and I were standing there looking down the tracks and the car full of tourists just stopped in the middle of the tracks and didn’t move,” he said. “That train came along and the cow catcher on the front just flipped that car like a Cracker Jacks box. It was horrible, just horrible.”

McCarthy also recalls another tragic accident in 1942, when one passenger train torpedoed another one sitting on the tracks at the west end of the village. Eight people were killed and 50 injured. “I was a young kid and seeing that was a horrible sight,” he said.

But accidents were rare in Savage, the group said, noting the depot provided a hub for the community. It even provided shelter for a famous wayward pilot who was forced to land his plane unexpectedly near the Minnesota River in the summer of 1923 during a thunderstorm. A young Charles Lindbergh spent three days in Savage waiting for replacement parts to repair the propeller of his World War I Curtis Jenny.

Charles McCarthy, the depot agent and mayor of the village, offered Lindbergh shelter for three days at the depot and kept him company. Four years later, Lindbergh made a name for himself with the first non-stop, transatlantic flight from New York to Paris.

In the months that followed, Lindbergh toured the country and among his stops were Minneapolis and St. Paul. Before he left the area, he made a special pass over Savage to acknowledge the town’s hospitality.

Charles McCarthy witnesses the return flight, telling others that the aviator circled the village three or four times.

 Nancy Huddleston can be reached at editor@savagepacer.com [2].