Memories of Charlton County - by Gibson and Mays Back to Table of Contents 22. SUNDAY SCHOOL PICNIC AND TRAIN WRECK (Pp 38-39) When I was a teenager two
exciting things happened to me in one day. I was on a train when it wrecked and I saw the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in my life. For several weeks we had been planning a Fourth of July excursion to Green Cove Springs and all of the Sunday Schools in the Methodist and Baptist churches were working together for this big outing. Over two hundred people brought picnic baskets and early in the day we got on the train at the Folkston depot. Everything
went just fine and we were having a great time on the train when suddenly the coaches jolted hard and stopped dead still. The engine had gone over an open drawbridge near Green Cove Springs and fell, pointing down into a creak. The tender was halfway between the bridge and water and was tilted, blocked by the engine. If the creek had been two feet deeper the tender and engine would have piled into the water. The engineer and firemen were injured in the wreck. Luckily there
were two fellows fishing nearby and when they saw what had happened they paddled the boat up to the engine and got the two men out and to shore. The engineer was badly hurt but no one in the passenger cars received any injuries. We thought that was the end of our Fourth of July picnic but the railroad sent another engine and rerouted the train. But instead of going to Green Cove Springs, we went to Pablo Beach. That was the first time lots of those people, including me,
had seen the Big Water. We really had a good time playing in the ocean. At the beach there was a long row of little old houses where the people changed into their bathing suits. I rented a life preserver and was told to be careful and keep it around my waist, and not let it get up around my neck or I might drown, Elbert Altman was on the excursion and Little John Roddenberry and R. T. O'Quinn were there. So was Anna Dean and Ethel Williams and Ruth Dean. Ruth was the
prettiest of all the girls on the train. Little Joe Mizell and his family were there and also Aggie Mallard. Practically all of the Sunday School members of the Folkston churches were on the train. We all had a wonderful day. I asked a conductor on another train a few days later how the engineer was doing, who was hurt so bad in the wreck. I said "Did he live?" and the conductor said "Did he live? You couldn't kill that fellow, he's tough. It would take more
than a train wreck to keep him down!" | 
