By: Lauren Salvo

In 1961,
They were barely
old enough to drive,
but Robby’s Grandpa
had just given him
a ‘49 Chevy for his
17th birthday.
Robby was thrilled
to take his friends wherever
they wanted to go.

Less than a block away from
their high school,
Franklin Central,
was a railroad track.
Trains would come and go
early in the morning
and late at night,
waking the families that lived close.
And sometimes, the trains would pass
in the afternoons distracting students from
their studies,
and keeping people from getting home
a little bit faster after school and work days
were over.

One Wednesday afternoon
on the way home from school,
Billy crammed four of his friends
into that little red Chevy
and they headed
home for supper.
They sang and laughed
as they listened to Patsy Cline
and Chubby Checker on the radio,
As the chorus of “Crazy” played,
a train barreled down the tracks.

The train’s horn sounded,
and the tracks rattled.
Robby stopped and looked both ways,
but it was too late.
The train’s impact tore
the clothes off of each one of them;
stripped of their lives too soon.
They never had the chance to move past
that railroad and follow their dreams.
Fifty-six years later, five crosses,
one for each of those kids headed home
in the red ‘49 Chevy,
still stand tall along the railroad at the
crossing of Franklin Road
and Edgewood Avenue.