In my early days of “railfanning”, my dad used to drive me to locations where we could see the trains (how wonderful). My dad had no particular love of trains . . . his passion was for boats. So we’d split the day, spending some time hanging around a rail yard, then some time strolling on the docks of the yacht harbor at Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. The arrangement worked well.

One weekend day back in the early sixties (likely ’61 or ’62), we found ourselves poking around the rail yards by the warehouses along the Mississippi River. The Louisville & Nashville was one of the railroads with a presence in that area, and we spied this old wooden caboose sitting by itself. Naturally I wanted a picture of it so my dad whipped out his trusty Argus 35mm camera and snapped this view.

The image is a bit blurred, likely due to slight camera shake, but it’s still adequate enough that I enjoy having it. The number 21 is still in reasonable condition despite the weathered paint. And it seems to be “all original”, look closely at its trucks. The title of this post reflects the message chalked onto its side, the “Original House of Shock”. There are a few other scribes by the door, but I’m unable to make them out.

Unfortunately the valued slide was lost in the Great Flood of 2016 . . . I was fortunate that I had scanned it.