The school term had started before we moved to Caney.   I went into Miss Toner’s third grade classroom and endured the misery of being “the new kid” for whatever time it took my classmates to divide into their “He’s okay, he’s a loser”, groups.  Then life went on.  I made friends and began living a new life as a town kid.   Fall passed, the nights grew longer, and we slept, dreaming of possibly the best Christmas ever.
The yellow bungalow Dad rented was a block north of the Missouri Pacific, or as everyone called it “the MOP”, railroad tracks.  Twice a day, a train came through carrying passengers; mail, freight, and railway express packages from Ark City , to Coffeyville, and points between.  Their steam engines were behemoths that crushed the ties far down into the gravel roadbed.  They smelled of smoke, steam, oil, and faraway places.
The engines approached the depot as priests come to an altar, with bells, jets of steam smelling "incense", and wrapped in black-robed majesty.  They stayed a few minutes, while acolytes went through the practiced movements of unloading the Railway Express, the U.S. Mail, and helping an occasional passenger get on or off.  The Conductor would soon bellow, "Boooaaaarrrd!  All Aboard."   
It was a great thrill to ride my bicycle to the depot to watch all this.   As the Conductor mounted the steps, I would nervously pull my bike back a bit in awe of the might and majesty of the train.  As the engineer fed steam into the engine it responded with rhythmically slow "chuff" . . . "chuff" . . . "chuff". . thunderclaps.  Occasionally when the Engineer was anxious to go or maybe just feeling his oats, he fed too much steam, too quickly.  That would cause a Gatling gun series of "chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff" explosions while the gigantic steel driving wheels spun on the steel tracks.    Sometimes, while waiting for the train, my friends and I would put a penny on the track and watch the engine and cars run over it.   When the caboose disappeared, we would retrieve the flattened copper disk that had been our penny and marvel at what the train had done.
One Saturday morning an extra train came through bringing boxcars to leave on the rail siding.  I happened to be on hand and stopped to watch.  While the brakemen were involved in their chores, the engine sat idle, steam trickling from various pipes.  As I stood there astride my bike with one foot on the ground, the fireman smiled down at me.  I waved and he waved back.  Then, incredulously, he called out, "Wanna come up and look around?"  I had shouted "Yeah!" and was halfway into the cab before my bike hit the ground.
For the next few minutes, the doors of heaven opened as the fireman showed me levers, gauges, and controls.  Then catching me off guard, he asked, "Do you go to church?"   Then answering truthfully, I stammered, "Uh, no, not very often".  "Well, let me show you something" he said, reaching for a long, iron lever.  He yanked on it.   An apocalyptic black door in front of us parted in the middle and slid open.  "Look there" he nodded toward the firebox below the steam boiler.  The scene he had opened to my eyes was riveting.  There only a few feet in front of me was a fire like I had never seen in my life.  Chunks of incandescent coal glowed malevolently sending snake tongued flames searching for prey.  I felt the heat from several feet away.
"That's just a sample of what hell is", the fireman was somber.   "Be a good boy.  Go to church and don't do bad things or you'll end up in a place worse than that."  He let the doors slam together as a loud exclamation point.   St. Paul never gave a more vivid, inspiring, sermon