About Sam and Me

My name is Jim.

My great-grandmother’s name was Easter. Her brother was Sam. So that makes Sam my great-great uncle. Easter, her sister and other brother were still alive while I was a teenager and I knew them very well, but I never met Sam.

I was born in 1961. I grew up in Portsmouth, Ohio, a small steel-mill town on the Ohio River. Portsmouth is located in the Appalachian part of Ohio, a little down river from where Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia meet. Our home was just a few hundred yards from the river. Our lives were confined by the hills in the narrow valley shaped by that river. Our horizons were not very far away at all. This was true physically, spiritually and metaphorically.

I guess you could say I was a hick when I was growing up. There was something about that town and its valley that obscured much of the outside. It was as though the very hills shrouded the secrets of the larger world, while cloaking the secrets of the area from those where weren't from around there.

And we all have our secrets, don't we? We all have our moments of ignorance and feelings of – well frankly there's no better word for it – feelings of being a hick.

Now I don't mean to denigrate people who live in any particular part of the country by using the word hick. After all, I met an awful lot of hicks when I was living in Washington, D.C. There were people who knew or cared little about life outside the beltway. I've met New Yorkers, Bostonians and Californians who knew absolutely nothing about "the square states".

As Easter used to say, you can be from some pretty fancy places and still be a hick. But you don't need to grow up in an isolated ramshackle town to know that. Getting out, asking questions and confronting some deep-seated mysteries can lead to some pretty interesting discoveries.

Now, you probably think I'm digressing right now, but this is where Sam comes in.
 

Sam was born in 1900 in nearby Kentucky. His family moved to Portsmouth at about 1908. He grew up in the same small town as I did. He was an unskilled day laborer when he worked. We don’t know that he ever held a steady job.

There is a lot we don’t know about him. He was mysterious. My great uncle, his nephew, is getting up there in years. He barely remembered Sam. He said that Sam was a “likeable fellow” – a term he uses a lot to describe people he likes. He said that Sam was happy-go-lucky and fun to be around. He was very gregarious and outgoing, the life of the party. But beneath all of that, there was something else about him that set him apart from everyone else. He kept to himself in many significant ways. Not many people really got to know him.

You see, Sam went through periods in which he drank heavily and hopped the trains as they left the local rail yard. After a while, he would come back, sober up, get a job, and save up some more money. Then he’d drink again, quit the job, and hop a train. This was his way.

He never explained where he went, and he never talked about why. His sisters and brother all staked out ambitious careers in various small retail businesses around town, but Sam seemed content with the odd job and satisfying his sudden urges to leave without telling anyone.

He never married.

I left home for college in 1979, and I have worked steadily for the same employer since 1984. I left my hometown as soon as I could and my train didn’t take me back home. His always did.

I never married.

I have been an engineer in the defense industry, living in Dallas for fifteen years until 1999, when my job took me to Tucson. While I’ve been away from home since graduating from college, I still think about home and family a lot. Lately I have become the family archivist, going through all of the old photographs handed down through the generations, sorting them and identifying the pictures. This is how I came to discover Sam.

When I saw his pictures and asked around, I realized that there was a profound mystery to this man that called out for further investigation. His pictures spoke to me. There is a feeling of kinship that I haven’t been able to adequately describe.

I don’t drink very much at all. I’ve kept the same job for over twenty years. Sam and I are different in these ways. I don’t hop trains, but I take off on impulsive road trips on the weekends. I think my impulse to do this is similar to Sam’s, except without the drinking. I get restless. I get tired of looking at the same Tucson mountains day after day, and dealing with the same people at work day after day. Sometimes the pressure builds up and I just have to go somewhere. Anywhere. I think I inherited Sam’s restlessness. That restlessness has been a constant traveling companion for Sam and me.

I don’t know whether Sam had a real life traveling companion or not. My real life traveling companion’s name is Christopher. He and I do everything together. We’re family.

I have very few clues as to what Sam was all about. I only have a few more clues as to what I'm all about. He is largely a blank slate, but not completely. Sometimes I can use his slate to fill in the blanks in my own.

In one photograph I see Sam standing somewhat apart, looking down, his mother turned to look adoringly towards him. But he doesn’t return her gaze. He looks elsewhere, and appears decidedly uncomfortable. He'd rather be somewhere else. He’s well dressed, but his hand is clasped tightly at his coat collar.

Is it to keep out the chill? Or is it to shield a part of him from his mother’s gaze?

Sometimes you don’t want people to look too closely, especially those you love the most.

Yeah, he’s different.

I’m not sure – maybe I’m just projecting my own ways of looking at things, but I think Sam and I have a lot in common. Like Sam, sometimes I don’t want people to look too closely at me either. And there are times when it’s too difficult for me to examine myself objectively. In those times, maybe I can examine someone else and gain a few insights into my own existence. Sam is perfect for that.

Yeah, I’m different.

So, why do I know so little about him? The answer is simple. You see, one day his train didn’t bring him back home. He disappeared when he was in his mid-thirties and we never knew what happened to him.

So here's the story. Sam was particularly close to his mother. By all accounts, they had a special bond. And he always made sure he was home for her birthday. But one year, when he didn’t return for her birthday, the family became convinced that he met with an untimely end. After all, he never missed his mother’s birthday. His mother’s universe revolved around him, but that year she felt the breath-robbing sucker-punch of a beloved son’s death when he didn’t return.

Nobody has heard from him. We all presume, like his mother did, that he met an untimely end, but we have no proof of this. He simply disappeared. And all we have left of his existence are some entries in some census records, faded memories from long gone relatives, and these few photographs.

He's become something of a traveling companion to me over the years. His charismatic smile tells me a lot about his sense of humor. But sometimes his demeanor  betrays another side to him, one that seems to not quite fit in with the people around him. He is different from the others, and there are times when that difference appears to chafe at him. In some photos he is very comfortable in his own skin, but in others he’s ready to get away at the first opportunity. He’s sullen and uncomfortable, his hands clenched as he sits uneasily. I know the feeling.

I wonder if someone out there knew him – really knew him. I hope so. I’d hate to think that he left this world without touching another life in a unique way that only he could.

Is that why he hopped the trains?

Some sixty years after he disappeared, he managed to touch another life after all – mine. Even though we each dealt with the strangeness of life in different ways, I think we have a lot in common. It is as if there was something about his mystery that hides the keys to who I am.

It is the vogue of this age to have a guru to lead you through the important questions in life. Sam is my guru.

He disappeared from the face of the earth and nobody knows what happened to him. This happens to millions of people all over the world. They simply disappear without a trace, soon to be forgotten. But Sam is different. He has left a mark on someone – me – someone whom he could never know. I am using that mark he left me to keep him alive using technology that he never could have dreamed of. Sam is leaving a trace on me still, and as long as I continue to investigate the mysteries of life, his mystery will remain a guiding force in my heart.

This is why I’m looking for Sam.