December 1943
2025
It is December 1943, a tragic month on America’s rails.
The eastbound Santa Fe Chief pulls in to Union Station in Kansas City.
Fats Waller’s manager comes to check on his client and finds Fats dead in his berth.
The composer of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Honeysuckle Rose” has passed away at the age of 39.
A few hours later, another train pulls into Union Station with Louis Armstrong on board.
…
Shortly after one o clock the next morning, a snowstorm pounds the coastal plains in North Carolina. The blizzard roars between big tobacco sheds and slashes across fallow fields.
Winter winds jolt the southbound Tamiami West Coast Champion off the rails. Two Pullman sleepers and the diner car are flung across northbound tracks where they come to rest.
Half an hour later, the northbound Tamiami East Coast Champion, on its way to New York from Miami, sails through the storm.
Snow so thick it turns the black sky white swirls in the darkness. The crew doesn’t see the warning signals.
When the two Atlantic Coast Line trains collide, 73 passengers are killed and 187 are injured.
…
Fats Waller is cremated.
More than four thousand mourners attend his funeral at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.
In his eulogy, Adam Clayton Powell Junior says Fats “always played to a packed house.”
Some say his ashes fall from the skies over Harlem.
…
Years of legal wrangling pass.
In 1967, the Atlantic Coast Line merges with its competitor, the Seaboard Air Line Railroad.
The newly created Seaboard Coast Line then spins off passenger service to Amtrak in 1971.
Remnants left today are part of CSX Transportation, a Class 1 freight hauler.
The passengers are gone.
Ghosts walk back and forth along the tracks outside Lumberton, North Caroline whistling a Fats Waller tune.
