Dennis Boyer

The author of Prairie Whistles describes himself as a folklorist and storyteller and in his foreword he states that the purpose of his book is to broaden the railroad heritage dialogue beyond equipment and buildings by recording oral histories of individuals who worked on Midwest railroads (Milwaukee, Great Northern, SOO, Chicago and North Western, and others). The stories he recorded are true. He notes “Most of my sources prefer, for a variety of reasons, to remain anonymous. I honor that request with some regret, hoping that friends and families will recognize these story tellers.” I personally hope that Mr. Boyer kept a record of the actual narrators so that sometime in the distant future the real names can be attached to these oral histories.

The book is divided into three sections: Blow the Whistle and Ring the Bell, Grease, Cinders, and Signals, and Fellow Travelers. The first section contains the stories of the people who moved the trains - engineers, firemen, brakemen, and conductors. The second section are the stories of the people who took care of many of the aspects of the infrastructure that allowed the trains to move – section hands, tower operators, shop personnel, station agents, and telegraphers. The title of the third section is all encompassing – Fellow Travelers consists of stories about anyone and anything carried by the railroad; passengers, hoboes, cattle, potatoes, ore, orphans, immigrants and more.

The stories vary in length from one to five pages. They are well written and they convey an excellent sense of time, place, individual, and the railroad activity/adventure that is their focus. Each starts with an introduction by the author. The introduction provides details about the narrator and gives the reader background details which complement the related story and/or provide details which help clarify aspects of the narration. I consider it a very worthwhile read. See Common Knowledge for a sample of the writing style. (Text length - 125 pages, Total length - 128 pages)… (altro)

It's an interesting book; however, a few things kind of bothered me. First, the book is essentially an extensive list is rural ghostly tales, some of which go as far back as the 1600s. Now, I love ghost tales, but when one reads tale after tale for nearly 300 pages they start to sound the same and lose their frightening effect. Secondly, one of the features I love most about Boyer's other books is that he gives personal accounts and analysis of his treks across the state and the odd people he meets. His storytelling adds a lot of color and wit to his books. However, in this book he just recorded stories from people and didn't add much personal commentary. Nor did he include amusing anecdotes of his travels, as he usually does. Because of the book’s title, I was hoping Boyer would delve into the practice of Pow-Pow, or "Braucherei" as it's alternately known, which is the early folk-magick of the Pennsylvanians Germans (and what the cover of the book alludes to). Unfortunately, he addresses this very little, just a few tales here and there among the myriad tales of ghosts. I found this strange since Boyer himself is a practicing Pow-wow doctor!

Over all it was still good, just not quite what I was expecting.… (altro)

The book is a series of short stories or essays, told in the first person, by a variety of railroad people. The stories are mostly hard-nosed, and very realistic vignettes of railroad life, as seen by car repairmen, tie processors, the first woman to take a job at a remote outpost of a very masculine environment, a rick girl's encounter with war and work and reality at the North Platte Canteen, a young conductor crossing Wisconsin with a reactionary engineer pushing a different union, a dining car worker who covers up an on train killing to keep things moving.

Not a book for those who love the rails without wanting to know there is a downside to the business. Just superb writing by a master wordsmith who has been there, done some of that, and talked to others who did the rest. This is a superb book.… (altro)