Wagons, ho!

Weatherford resident recalls adventures on Arrows to Atoms wagon train

Phil Riddle

editor@weatherforddemocrat.com

David Aikin likes to tug at his white whiskers and tell folks he came to Weatherford on a wagon train.

He’s not slinging Texas bull, either. He did.

It was a wagon train put together 50 years ago by the United States Postal Service to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Oak Ridge, Tenn.

“OK, so it was a commemorative wagon train,” he said.

The Arrows to Atoms Wagon Train, the longest mail contract of its kind, at that time, rolled from Tennessee to California with a stop over in Fort Worth, Aikin’s home town at the time.

“The wagon train pulled into downtown Fort Worth and the wagons parked outside of Leonard Bros. Department Store to draw in the crowds to raise money for the wagon train’s daily expenses,” Aikin wrote in an essay to the Democrat.

One fundraising aspect of the trip was a USPS ‘cachet’ stamp to commemorate the train’s route. Aikin bought one of the commemorative stamps and mailed a flier announcing the Arrows to Atoms Wagon Train to himself. He received it in February the following year.

In his essay, Aikin wrote, “Someday I shall open the thang to see what I sent to myself.”

He opened it Thursday at the Democrat offices and chuckled at the memories of the adventure.

A family friend, Jack Diamond, was owner of the Rockhound Museum in Weatherford, had been contracted to furnish polished rocks for a “sluice box,” a trough containing sand and water as a means of earning money from the crowds attracted by the wagons.

Diamond told the 14-year-old Aikin about the train’s appearance in Cowtown, so the youngster went to see it.

“Jack saw me and spoke with the wagon master, then contacted my mother and I got the OK to ride to Weatherford,” Aikin wrote. “I joined the wagon train at Mary’s Creek, just west of Fort Worth, in the late afternoon on July 12. They were finishing up soaking the old dried out wagon wheels to expand them slightly to keep the rims on the wheels.”

The two-day ride to Weatherford was spent with driver George Rainey. Aikin slept both nights in the aisle of one wagon nestled between bulging mail sacks.

“The wagon train was hauling real U.S. mail,” Aikin wrote. “Thus, these men were real U.S. Marshals and had real pistols with real bullets.”

The first night of the trek to Weatherford, state troopers took members of the wagon train to a nearby drive-in theater.

“The movie was Rio Bravo,” Aikin said. “with John Wayne, Dean Martin and a new kid, Rick Nelson.”

During the intermission of the film, the Marshals entertained movie goers with a mock gunfight using blanks.

The wagon train stopped the second night at Jack’s, near the current R&K; Restaurant site. The wheels of the wagon were soaked again at a creek near Punkin Center and lunch was at a new drive-in, The Malt Shop.

At the end of the day, the wagons were parked near today’s Mineral Wells Highway/Bowie intersection.

“That night the men brought out their gunfight routine and also showed off their singing and music playing ability for the crowd,” Aikin remembered. “I spent the night under the sky at the wagons.”

One of the men, sporting an ironic nickname, showed Aikin a wound he’d received earlier in the trip.

“ ... they practiced a quick-draw on each other,” he said, “and one had live ammo left in his pistol. Frank “Lucky” Nelson showed me the bullet hole in his thigh.”

Aikin has a heck of a memory ... for someone who came to Weatherford by wagon train.