10/25/2016
LEGEND OF THE WILDCAT DOORS
In any industry requiring long hours of travel to far away places with strange sounding names there will be larger than life legends. Out at sea the stories swirl around unknown monsters, storms and occasional sightings of beautiful mermaids and sirens. Out on the interstate highways, or ‘super slabs,’ as the professional drivers know them, smoky, convoys, warm home cooked meals and seductive ‘lot lizards,’ steal the conversations. America’s railroads are no less of a repository of great stories, John Henry, Casey Jones, lost kittens, redheads and the long lost legend of the wildcat doors.
Whither or not there is a shred of truth to any of these legends seems secondary to the amount of creativity that goes into the telling and retelling. Most of the tales however, including all of the aforementioned railroad tales have at least some basis in truth. The fact is, over the decades and millions upon millions of miles, some pretty jaw-dropping things have happened. None of the story’s on the sea, on the road, or on the rails are any more astounding than the legend of Jacksonville Terminal’s wildcat doors.
Somewhere lost in time, but generally believed to be around the time of Great Florida Boom of the roaring twenties or the WWII avalanche of travelers, the Jacksonville Terminal was overcrowded beyond belief. With an average daily passenger count on par with todays Orlando International Airport, the baggage room literally burst into the concourse breezeway and onto the edge of the sidewalk of West Bay Street. A busy crew of baggage handlers, porters and red caps worked feverishly to sort and route this mountain of luggage to the right destination, train, or customers.
With the bags so temptingly within reach of the street, a recurring theft problem rapidly accelerated out of control. With the employees too busy to police every bag, a slick gang of thieves developed a well-rehearsed method of stealing from the tempting stacks. Having cased the bag pile, A large sedan with 4-5 occupants would screech up to the curb with the engine running. Someone would jump out and grab the selected bag or bags and in a matter of seconds dive back into the car which would quickly speed away.
The railroad police seemed powerless to stop the thefts; even posting an officer by the infamous doors didn’t work. The Jacksonville Police Department was briefed on the situation and the two departments worked to come up with a coordinated plan to stop the crime. Unfortunately the bad guys completely fouled the best plans.
Enter one crusty old railroad conductor we’ll call Richard that lived on a farm west of downtown. A practical joker of the first water Richard was a good ol’ boy known for stunts like leading snipe hunts for new hires, or having the company jeweler create a backward running timepiece. And like most of the employees he was tired of having to deal with the stolen bag situation, his solution to the company’s problem would prove to be epic.
The police had figured out that the criminal gang was getting bolder and that the thefts were approaching a daily menace. Yet a full time officer to watch baggage wasn’t high on the City’s list of problems and the assigned railroad police officer still had to break for mealtime or natures call. Even though the police tried to mix up their formula, the gang seemed to always stay one step ahead of them.
One pre-dawn morning Richard clocked in with his usual uniform and grip in hand. This morning he had a second bag, one best described as a small trunk with a fairly large patch on one end. The unusual trunk brought immediate curiosity, chatter swirled near the water cooler and roars of laughter erupted around the room. It was well known that Richard raised rabbits and regularly live-trapped wild ones. Sometimes he’d catch and cage opossums, raccoons and other small critters much to the delight of area children and Terminal employees. This time however he had a real surprise in the small trunk, one petite but very angry wildcat.
No doubt it took some explanation as to how Richard had trapped the cat, placed the trap entrance and the trunk with the hole in it next to each other, lifted the trap door and prodded the cat to run from the trap into the trunk, sealing the hole with a piece of thin wood pre cut for the purpose. And with all of the jostling around, the long car trip and the sounds of so many people, the cat was in fine form as the Terminal employees decorated the curious piece with insurance and fragile labels and hung dozens of bag tags on it. Through the concourse doors leading to Bay Street the employees set the devious trunk near the curb. Richard’s was obviously one of the juiciest looking pieces available and in a most literal way, ‘The Cat Was In The Bag!’
When your author first heard this tale nearly 60 years ago, the Terminal was still a busy place and before the telling was done a small crowd of railroaders had gathered to rehear and rehash the tale. There was some disagreement on just how long the trunk sat at curbside, but nobody thought it was more then a few moments.
So true to form the car came speeding up to the curb, a couple of guys jumped out and dove into the backseat with Richards’s trunk. As they sped away, Terminal employees popped out of every doorway to witness the car disappearing westbound toward the Myrtle Avenue subway.
They never made it. The car slammed into a light pole near Cleveland Street, its occupants more than happy to surrender to the nearest police or ambulance unit. If anyone got away they didn’t go too far, apparently easy to track.
The gang was busted, the thefts stopped and Richard whistled out of town.
Today the great Terminal repurposed as a convention center still stands, albeit mostly silently. Travelers bypass its concourse on the Interstate, some coming to or from the beautiful multimillion-dollar Jacksonville International Airport. That airport is consistently ranked as one of the best airports in the nation, it features live music performances and doubles as an art gallery. Yet for all of the bling, JIA is missing one thing, it just doesn’t have those doors.
