(The following story by Chris Casey appeared on the Greeley Tribune website on March 10, 2010.)
GREELEY, Colo. — She’s Greeley’s version of Radar O’Reilly, the clerk on the “M*A*S*H” TV show with the sixth sense for incoming helicopters.
Dorothy Martin Zabka has an uncanny sense for approaching trains. Like Radar, she’s the person who comes out waving.
“I hear ’em coming from the north or from the south,” Zabka says. “My office is back there, so I have to run around here (into the hallway) and grab my lantern, flick the switch on and go outside and wave it like this.”
It helps that her office is on the southwest side of the Martin Produce building, close to the railroad tracks.
She’s plenty busy enough, working from 7 a.m.-5 p.m., and often longer, each day at the 70-year-old family business at 617 6th St. in Greeley. Zabka, besides being a lover of trains, just likes to give a friendly wave to the train engineers as they pass. No matter how busy she is, she’ll sprint out to the front porch with a Union Pacific lantern, given to her by grateful UP crew members, in hand.
“If I’m not out there, (the engineers) let me know,” she says. “They toot, toot, toot the horns. They let me know that I’m not doing my job.”
This daily ritual has been going on for decades. Zabka, who holds the distinction of being Greeley’s only female mayor (1967-71), took over Martin Produce as a high school student after the death of her father, H.G. Martin. All of Martin Produce’s potatoes and onions now go out by truck, but back in the day the produce got shipped hither and yon by rail.
So, Zabka has an affinity for the railroad — plus the fact that she’s gone on many train trips.
“I’ve ridden that line, and I know it’s very desolate,” Zabka says of the northbound trains. “I thought it would be nice to wave to (the engineers) to show them we like them.”
She calls her friends on the rails “the boys” or “the fellas.” Over the years they’ve given her Union Pacific lanterns — she’s on her second one — railroad gloves, teddy bears and, recently, a reflective jacket worn by rail maintenance crews. She keeps the lantern on a ledge close to the door, always at the ready for her train greetings.
Zabka’s office co-workers Cheryl Fogg and Brenda Breickler say Zabka has instructed them to do the railroad wave when she’s busy.
“But we don’t,” Fogg says. “It’s always Dorothy.”
Zabka’s even made specialized cardboard signs to wave on certain days. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Father’s Day. “I think we have an Easter one,” Fogg says.
Sure enough, on Valentine’s Day, Zabka stood on the Martin Produce front porch waving a heart-adorned sign toward the tracks.
All of this cheer-spreading makes for a refreshing change of scenery for the men on the rails. Robert Burnham, UP’s manager of train operations, said all the crews passing through Greeley know Zabka. They stop in for a visit when they can.
“For them, it’s kind of nice to have someone come out and wave to them instead of giving them the middle finger at crossings,” Burnham says. “We get a lot of that. We’re told we’re No. 1 all day long.”
To make the “hello” gestures easier, Burnham has suggested that Zabka install a light outside the Martin Produce building that she can flick on with a button from her office.
That idea simply won’t work, Zabka says. “When I’m on the phone, I get all those buttons mixed up.”
Besides produce and trains, Zabka’s passions include collecting pens, teddy bears and antique cars. The 4,000 pens on display inside Martin Produce are just a fraction of the 36,000 pens she’s collected over the years.
But few things click the cockles of her heart more than the waves she gets in return from the railroad men.
“They reach clear out of the cabin and wave,” Zabka says. “We have real good relations with the boys. Once in a while they’ll throw me a kiss and I’ll throw one back. They’re real nice guys.”
Joining Zabka on her impromptu train dashes is the fleet-footed Sparky. Sparky is Zabka’s pet poodle, and he spends his days roaming around Martin Produce. (Rather ironically, “M*A*S*H” fans will recall, Sparky was the requisitions clerk with whom Radar frequently chatted on the phone.)
Despite his 10 years, Sparky is as attuned as anyone in the shop to the trains.
“When he hears ’em, he starts toward the door,” says Zabka, who declines to reveal her own age. “Anything I do, he’ll do too. He’ll follow me (out the door), and I’ll pick him up and wave his little paw.”
About five to six trains pass through Greeley during daylight hours each weekday. Regardless of whether they’re headed north toward desolate Wyoming or south toward Denver, the crews roll out of town with a lighter heart thanks to Zabka and Sparky.
“Oh yeah, they don’t let me sit around and do nothing,” Zabka says of the train men.