The Keeper Of The Key (June 1969 | Volume: 20, Issue: 4)

The Keeper Of The Key

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Authors: Milton Sweeney Colweel

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June 1969 | Volume 20, Issue 4


My maternal grandparent. Patrick Sweeney, was indeed a giant among men. To me he was Thor, Atlas, Hercules, Paul Bunyan, and Saint Patrick, all rolled into one. When I knew him, back in the eighteen nineties, he was very old and nearing the end of his time. Still, he was straight as a rod, his lionlike head topped by a mass of rumpled hair, once red but by then a snowy hue. Steel-blue eagle eyes peered keenly from under heavy, frosty brows; a full white beard, worn long but with no mustache, framed his rugged face.

Standing six feet and seven inches, “Granther” had shoulders of yardstick span. Even then, approaching ninety years of age, he was amazingly strong, and I could well believe the stories I heard of his fantastic physical feats when he was younger. During the years 1846 to 1851, Patrick Sweeney had labored mightily in the building of the first railroad along the east-bank, water-level route of the Hudson River from New York to Albany, a distance of some hundred and forty-three miles, thereafter, he became a railway switchman on the Hudson River Rail Road, as it was then known.

Thus it happened that on a sunny morning in April, 1862, Granther was on duty as a switchman at the little river town of Stuyvesant Landing, about twenty miles south of Albany. Despite the turmoil of the Civil War, this was a quiet job, permitting meditation and extracurricular interests. For as a rule there were but two trains north and two south during a twelve-hour stretch of duty, plus occasional wartime specials.

Granther often remarked that this particular April morning was extra fine and quiet. The old Hudson was unrippled, smooth and calm at high tide, reminding him of the River Shannon and the Lakes of Killarney, which he had known in his boyhood. So, Granther said, he just sat in die sun near his switch shanty, smoking his day pipe and watching the river, especially where a big sturgeon had jumped and splash-landed in the cast channel, starting a great, rippling circle on the surface of the water. Granther’s sharp eyes had also spotted a fine stick of timber afloat in the stream. Why not, he thought, try for the sturgeon? The least he could do would be to salvage the drifting plank while he was at it.

But wait—duty came first! The southbound morning train from Albany would soon be along. Granther must switch it from its arrival track over to another, and send it on its way to New York. This waiting, he grumbled to himself, might make him miss his try for that gambolling sturgeon out there; he might even miss that fine piece of timber.

Was the train late? No, there it came, chuffing along toward the switch, its whistle tooting. A double set of rails led south from Albany; from Stuyvesant Landing to New