VALPARAISO — Wanderlust grasped at the heart of young Randall Roberts as he watched the passenger train zoom through the Bonifay station every Sunday after church.
Roberts said he would study the faces of each traveler, caught in small glimpses through the yellow glow of the train's windows.
It was the early 1940s and the United States was in the midst of World War II. Observing passengers from unknown places was a town affair, Roberts said.
"I'd say to myself, 'Ahh, I wish I could go,'" Roberts said of his 15-year-old self. "I can remember it and picture it so vividly."
Now in his early 90s, Roberts continues to spend hours gazing at trains. This time, though, it's not a passenger train, but a red antique caboose that sits in his backyard in Valparaiso.
'Less sense'
In 1968 Roberts and his wife traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, to do the nearly impossible.
Roberts said he'd watched for years as fond memories of his childhood — cabooses traveling across the United States — were being burned for scrap. The train lover was determined to not let them go extinct.
"I thought it was awful," Roberts said. "They were burning history. We started searching for a caboose of my own. We found one in Montgomery that was downtrodden. We immediately said we'd take it."
The journey to his new home of Valparaiso, however, would prove to be a challenge.
"We had our friends pull it for us on the tracks all the way back home," Roberts said. "This was back when I had less sense than I do now. We pulled it to a big saw mill where the Mullet Festival is held. We then had to hire a professional house mover."
The movers, Roberts said, had to drive the large caboose over the Tom's Bayou Bridge and through the city to their first house on Chicago Avenue. The train was moved six months later to the Roberts' new home down the road.
The caboose has remained there for about 50 years.
Similar to a modern-style tiny house, it has a bathroom, stove, sink, fridge and living area. The caboose was placed on a few feet of tracks Roberts laid himself, which is now accompanied by an antique railroad switch just for show.
"My wife was quite the carpenter," Roberts said. "She and my father-in-law did repair work on it. We had the conductor seats professionally reupholstered and we made curtains for it and everything. When it was all done, we borrowed incandescent lights from the city and hosted a caboose party. People came dressed in railroad overalls."
It was a thing of beauty once fully renovated, Roberts said. He always dreamed of one day taking it out on the tracks for a trip across the country.
That trip, unfortunately, hasn't happened yet. And history, according to Roberts, is repeating itself.
Full speed ahead
The train man's beloved caboose is slowly deteriorating.
Roberts said his only wish is for it to be restored again. His carpenter wife has passed on and 90 years old is a bit too aged to be on the roof of a caboose, he said.
Nevertheless, the caboose doesn't simply remind him of his childhood anymore. It holds memories with his spouse and his friends he calls the "movers and shakers of Valparaiso" who have passed on, too.
And it brings him back to a time when his children would climb up and down the little red caboose to see over the neighbors' roofs.
"I'm going to fix it up again soon," Rogers insisted. "It's sad to see it like this."
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