Excerpts from Grandfather Stories The Century of Progress, the Chicago World's Fair, occurred while we lived on Fulton Street. My Grandmother McParland came to Chicago to see the fair and stayed with us. We, of course, took in the fair. It was magnificent. We climbed the magic mountain and slid down to the bottom, we toured the Hall of Science and saw the glass woman, and we even took a ride on the overhead cars that toured the fair. Each of them was named for a character on Amos and Andy that was a very popular radio show at the time. Together with my friends I used to spend some time playing on the railroad tracks. We would often see men riding the tracks with handcars. My friends told me that they were railroad dicks who were armed with pepper guns which they would shoot at little boys who they caught playing on the tracks, and the pepper would sting very badly if they ever caught you. That was probably not true but I believed it so it might just as well have been so. One trick we had was of putting nails on the tracks before a train came by and when the train came it would flatten them and make toy swords for us to play with. ©2004-2006 Kearney Publications