I Thought It Was The Ol' 999...

As we waited to go on one of our favorite rides at Lagoon, I saw the beautifully preserved steam locomotive housed in a shelter in Pioneer Village at Lagoon Amusement Park.

When I saw it, I thought it was Engine 999, but when I got home and looked at a photo album, the train in the picture was much smaller than the one on display at the park. I'm sure Engine 999 is somewhere--perhaps in storage, but back in the 1970s when Pioneer Village was new, that little engine chugged around the buildings and other sights in the huge 1800s museum.

I had no idea until decades earlier that my mom's grandfather once worked on that same Engine 999 back when his other job was working on normal-sized trains in Ogden, Utah.

It's a cool legacy.

Yes, I thought it was the same train, but I was wrong. I'm wrong about a lot of things. Good thing we have photo evidence to keep some things from being forgotten. 

Since the 1980s, I've worked several seasons at Lagoon. I've picked up trash, planted flowers, dressed as a large raccoon, and even fallen thirty feet into a pile of straw as a wild west stuntman, but I never operated one of the many steam engines the park has operated over the years. Just as well--my great-grandfather did many years ago.

A Little About George Richard Knight

George Richard Knight

The phrases “Family Tree” and “Roots” ardently represent our genealogy, our familial past, present, and future. These metaphors almost perfectly symbolize any given point in our journey through life. As living beings each of us represent the trunk of a tree, singular, erect. Those who have come before are the roots, many times (literally) buried beneath the ground; the nutrients from dirt and water flow upward, supplying the trunk with the necessities of life. Of course those who follow after us--our offspring--represent the limbs, ever expanding, moving farther and farther from the ground, the trunk, and the roots. All connected—all reliant upon each other. Seeds from the tree fall and create their own trees, and the process continues forever. The arboreal allegory has been used for years and will continue to be used as a visual depiction of man. There exists in us all—whether genetically linked or not—connections which forever bind us to our past for the decisions we make today contain origins of decisions made ages past. Had not my mother’s father’s father chosen to leave what many consider a desert paradise to homestead in a valley where a snowstorm on July fourth is not only possible, but probable, my life as I know it would not have existed.

I peer through the imaginary crust of dirt and follow a family root to a certain point and meet a man named George Richard Knight. Born in 1868, George was the oldest of nine children, the family calling Salt Lake City, Utah, home. George's parents, Oswell and Ellen Staples Knight, will forever retain the hallowed title of pioneers, an honor bestowed on those descendants who accomplished the Herculean task of (in many cases) literally walking across half a continent as a physical sacrifice of their faith. George met his wife, Ruth Alice Pool, in Logan, Utah, while working for the Utah Northern Railroad. Ruth's father, also an employee of the railroad, began taking boarders of which George was one. A romance ensued which lead to a courtship and eventually, marriage. Their life together began the family line that continues through me and extends to my children. The decisions of one affected not only their immediate family, but generations that follow. I wonder what repercussions our actions today will have for those who we'll not meet in this life. Time, as they say, will tell...