This is a story told to me by my grandfather, Fred Hahn, who lived at 215 W. Elm St., Bluffton. As an adult, while cleaning out a box of family letters and photos, bits and pieces of the story again surfaced. This story happened 100 years ago this winter.
By Fred Steiner
One night in early December 1918, Fred Hahn dreamed that his brother, Harry, a railroad brakeman, tried to call him – but couldn’t make contact. The dream captivated Fred for the rest of his life.
In reality, on the night of Fred’s dream, Harry died in a train accident. The same night a railroad employee tried unsuccessfully to call Fred by long-distance telephone, to give him the news.
Here is the story:
In 1918, Fred, 40, of Bluffton, worked in the oil and gas fields. He was a pumper for the Ohio Oil Co., which eventually become Marathon Oil Co.
Harry, 33, living in Fostoria with his mother, Flora, was engaged to a woman from Ada.
Harry worked for the Big Four (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad) since 1910. During the summers he played semi-professional baseball in towns like Tiffin, Bucyrus, Findlay and Fostoria.
There were times during the winter when, his own words in a letter to his brother, it was tough working on the railroad:
“…a week ago Saturday (I) worked out in it all day and I’ll say it was terrible and (on the) R.R. you get it worse than any thing else. Everybody froze their selves somewhere; we had a Big 4 freight engine and one passenger engine to get out. I walked in snow knee-deep the length of two engines and I had to feel for the Pullman as my eyes were frozen shut and I could not see. I froze my eyes and face.”
In the early morning hours of Wednesday, Dec. 5, 1918, Harry, died in a railroad accident as he uncoupled freight cars. His only communication with the engineer was with his red-globed kerosene lantern.
The engineer interpreted Harry’s signal incorrectly. While Harry signaled to pull forward, the engineer, in error, slipped the locomotive in reverse. Before Harry could safely jump aside, the locomotive, with 57-inch driving wheels, backed the train into Harry, cutting off both his legs at the knees.
All of this was unknown to Fred even the next morning. Talking with his wife at breakfast, he shared details of a unusual dream.
He said Harry tried to call him, and that he didn’t know why. He told her that even as Harry tried, he failed to communicate with Fred.
Eventually Fred finished breakfast, hitched his horse, “Al” to his work wagon, and headed to the oil field.
Later that day a telephone call came to the Hahn home. The caller was from Bucyrus. Harry was dead; killed shortly after midnight. The caller apologized. He unsuccessfully tried all night long to get through. The lines never connected. Although only two counties separated Bluffton from Bucyrus, completing a long-distance telephone call in 1918 wasn’t simple. It required manual patching by a series of operators in the route of the call, from one phone system to the next and so on.
Beyond the shock of Harry’s death was the dream. And, for the rest of his life Fred told the dream and death story, which left each listener spellbound.
In his later years, Fred embellished the story, making it not so tragic. He even claimed that Harry sat up in the ambulance and smoked a cigar on the way to the hospital. But, it didn’t happen that way. Harry died instantly.
Knowing the truth of Harry’s death, Fred had to wonder most of his life, “How was it that Harry tried to contact him? Was it more than a dream? What was he trying to say?”
After the funeral, in a letter to Fred from Harry’s former fiancé, the distraught young woman wrote: “I wish I could have talked to Harry one more time.”
Certainly Fred shared the same wish. At the same time he must have wondered: “Was Harry trying to contact me one more time? Was it just a dream?”
