This post is submitted to Friday Fictioneers where the challenge is to write a complete story with a beginning, middle and end in 100 words or less.
The train whistled two long blasts, a short one and another long blast indicating it was approaching a highway intersection.
The engineer had experiences on shorter trips. Trips from Chicago to St. Louis carrying hogs, cattle, and sugar beets. On these trips there were no toilets. The men didn’t care if they missed the pot. This engineer had to sometimes wait twelve hours unless there was a stop. Air conditioning was an open window.
Along these trips she got to know hobos and some other “unauthorized passengers.” Often these homeless were surprised to see a black woman as an engineer.
Oh Danny Boy! 
I’m always amazed by the first ________ person to do whatever. It takes a special kind of strength and determination. I’m equally amazed that there were times people weren’t allowed to do jobs based on ethnicity or gender. I can’t imagine all the advancements we missed out on because somebody wasn’t the right color or gender for the job.
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Well said.
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Good story, Danny.
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A black woman engineer is an achievement, perhaps they need to sort out the toilet issue else more women won’t want the job.
I though this was a carefully crafted story with a clear message.
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Thanks for the nice comment.
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A great piece of social history. Well told
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Thanks!
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Wow. What a story. Well told. Thanks for sharing.
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[…] via Edwina Justus — Oh Danny Boy! […]
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What a wonderful piece of history, Danny. Yay Edwina!
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Ah. Now I understand why the engineer had to wait so long 🙂
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Love the surprise!
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A great tale and the last line came as quite a surprise. The link was blocked for me too, but thanks to Google I was able to read all about her, and interesting it is.
Here’s mine!
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This was great, DJ! The RDP for today is ‘homeless’ in case you wanted to tag it….
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Thanks for that information!
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Great story, and a great name too.
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I couldn’t read the link as it’s blocked in my country, but she sounds like a trail blazer.
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Sorry about the link not working. She met many challenges to make that distinction including obviously sex and race.
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