You Are There… Graphic History Series.
Historical Backdrop
On the evening of September 7, 1881, the James-Younger remnants — led by Jesse and Frank James and joined by Wood Hite, Dick Liddil, Clell Miller’s brother Ed, and Charlie Ford — stopped Chicago & Alton Train No. 8 at a deep railroad cut called Blue Cut, about two miles east of Glendale, Missouri. It would prove to be Jesse James’s final robbery; he would be shot in the back of the head by Robert Ford in St. Joseph less than seven months later. Our subject is William “Choppy” Foote, the veteran locomotive engineer at the throttle that night. Foote was a weathered Missouri railroader in his forties, a family man known on the line for his steady hand and his chew of tobacco. After the holdup, Jesse walked up to him, shook his hand, and pressed two silver dollars into it — “to drink to the health of Jesse James in the morning.” Foote never forgot it.
September 7, 1881 — 5:40 AM — Foote family cottage, East Bottoms, Kansas City, Missouri
You wake before the rooster to the smell of lard frying and cold stove-iron. Your wife hands you coffee boiled black and a biscuit soaked in bacon grease. Your youngest coughs in the next room — the croup again. You pull on wool socks darned three times, lace your work boots, and kiss your wife’s forehead. Outside, the river fog smells of sewage and coal. You walk six blocks to the Chicago & Alton roundhouse, the dew soaking your trouser cuffs.
September 7, 1881 — 7:15 AM — Chicago & Alton Roundhouse, Kansas City, Missouri
You sign the run sheet with a nubby pencil and greet your fireman, a thick-shouldered young Irishman. Together you oil the Rogers 4-4-0 locomotive, engine No. 11, crawling under her warm belly with a long-spout can. Coal dust cakes inside your nose. The shop boss hollers about a late order of axle grease. You test the whistle — it shrieks and a flock of pigeons bursts from the rafters into the smoke-blackened morning light.
September 7, 1881 — 9:02 AM — Union Depot, Kansas City, Missouri
Passengers crowd the wooden platform — drummers with carpetbags, a Mennonite family, two well-dressed bankers from St. Louis, a Black porter loading trunks with quick efficiency. You lean out the cab window and wave to the conductor. A woman holds a crying baby in a knit shawl. The bell rings, the whistle blows twice, and you ease the throttle back. Steam curls along the platform boards, ghost-white in the sun.
September 7, 1881 — 1:20 PM — Aboard No. 8 rolling east, Jackson County, Missouri
