Attribution: LuigiGT12, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes that the keeper cannot allow the Halloween of 2023 to pass without recalling once again the great multi city “trick” of moving a boxcar in Cameron to block off Highway 8, the major east-west route across northern Wisconsin.
Just how this came about will never be known, but somehow word was spread in Rice Lake, Barron and Cameron that the real Halloween action was to assemble enough “man” power at the Cameron RR crossing to push a boxcar out onto the highway.
Estimates at this late date are suspect, but somewhere between 50 and 100 participants showed up for the project, among them “Soo Line” Smith whose father worked for the railroad thus making him knowledgeable about boxcar brakes, the reasoning went.
At the height of the futile effort—with straining participants lined up along both sides of the boxcar, the Cameron cop suddenly showed up and the grand scattering of boys was like chickens when the hawk is suddenly overhead.
So the keeper has this fond memory of youthful Halloween outrageousness, and he hopes that the brainchild of the multi-city scheme is still around to share it.
Photo by Bill Stokes