Tea and Sugar Train

This train travels the longest stretch of railroad track on earth without a turn — 299 miles.  There’s a bank car, theater car, grocery store car, a car filled with doctor’s offices, one that has a chapel.  Sixty train cars.  A mile long.  Most do not have a passage way between them, so people who work in one seldom see those who work in another. The “Tea and Sugar” meanders more than a thousand miles across South Australia, stopping whenever someone waves it down.  Its arrival in remote places is the social event of the week.  All the families linger for hours buying impulsively, trying to extend the moment when there is laughter and community.  

• The Oldest Doctor Whoever Lived
• Slower is Better
  Smaller is Better The only journalism course Norris Alfred ever took, he failed. In 1980, he was nominated for a Pulitzer prize. This is what he wrote: “The concept of progress has a firm hold. We are on the march from Worse to Better. From Cruelty to Compassion. With our bought vote, we cast a hope that the next leader will take us where we should go, confidently heading the parade of progress in an armored limousine.”
• Today’s Lesson from Ms Ruby: “I’ll try.”
  On an island off the coast of South Carolina sits an old school with a wooden floor, smoothed by a century of sliding feet. You’ll hear reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, but this story is about another “R.” Remembering Mrs. Ruby, Ruby Forsyth Rush hour on Memory lane. Ruby Forsythe was 85 the last time I saw her. She’d been teaching 66 years, living above her classroom on Pawleys Island, South Carolina. Her students called her Ms. Ruby. She had 72 of them that day in this one-room school at Holy Cross-Faith Memorial Church. In her early years, Ms. Ruby was the only teacher African-American kids had on Pawleys Island. “I was mother, father, counselor, everything,” Miss Ruby said. “You got to start with little things that are not in the book.” Half a century before Yoda, she told her students never to say, “I can’t.” Always say, “I’ll Try.” Some walked miles to get to her class. Many went on to college and made major contributions to our country. Miss Ruby summed up her philosophy of teaching: “Sow the best seed into whatever soil you have.”
• A New Life
  Working folks have always been the great voyagers of America. There were always new businesses, new jobs, new frontiers just over the next hill. But something fundamentally is changing in the American economy. Old skills don’t always fit new jobs. The American instinct to move on when times get tough can no longer solve the problem. We caught up with Jim and Deborah Carey and their daughter Chastity once again. The bankrupt farmers still had not harvested a dream. Jim had won and lost six jobs in a year. Six jobs. In three different states. And he had a new baby. All was not bleak. Two things were about to happen that would change their lives for the better.
• Hired Husband
  Bob McClain doesn’t have the kind of face that would launch a Soap Opera, but he’s a handyman with a difference. He listens. His smile crumples up the silence in people’s lives. Not everyone knows how to fix things. McClain is ready to help.