I’ve heard many theories and stories about the origin of the term “eighty-sixed.” Some claim it originated at a bar in Greenwich Village. It was in the 1920’s, a speakeasy called Chumley’s. “Eighty-sixing it” meant to find one of the secret exits, marked by the number 86, to disappear during a raid. Others say it began in the Old West. When a cowboy became rowdy, they lowered his alcohol content from 100 proof to 86. Others attribute it to the electrical industry, 86 being a strip and lockout device. I believe the term to be in existence before any of that.
My father worked as a railroad conductor sometime in the late 1800’s. He still tells this story. He was one of the first men to take freight through the Cascade Mountains in Washington. He was middle aged at the time. It was late at night. He approached a tunnel that would carry him through a mountain; it seemed like any other mountain. There was a valley to the left full of darkness and quiet. Even the light of the moon didn’t reach down there-or into the tunnel. He had only his headlights. The sound of churning wheels and chugging boxcars resounded in the tunnel. Then the lights of the train suddenly went black. All sound vanished, stopped, wasn’t audible. Nothing. No light, no sound. Just complete darkness and silence. There was no way to say he was on a train at all. He could be in bed with his eyes closed and fingers in his ear. He didn’t even feel the rumbling of the train. No light at the end of the tunnel. No moon; no signs of life.
He waited for the end to come-the end of that peculiar moment, the end of the tunnel, signs of life again. How long could the tunnel be? It didn’t come. He doesn’t know if it was minutes or seconds; he was paralyzed with fear and confusion. Then, as he began to truly panic, he felt something cold on his head and shoulder, hands. He felt a terrible pain in his neck, then something warm run down his back. That was all. The lights came back and ahead he saw moonlight spread across the many trees of a pale valley. He heard the train rumble on and felt its motion. He continued with his freight through the night and came to his destination at daylight. It hurt his eyes. He couldn’t bear it. He ran quickly for the station.
He told one of the other railroad men about the experience. The man listened with intent, serious, fearful eyes, as if he knew the story before my father spoke it. My father looked in a mirror at his neck and saw two tiny holes and dried blood. The other man helped him out of his shirt. There was a trail of dried blood from the two holes which fell down his shoulder and formed the shape of a small “86.” The man said: “Yes, it’s as I expected. I have heard of this. You have been eighty-sixed.”
He was bitten by a vampire, sent to the other side of things, the dark side, never to return to the life he knew. I call him my father not because we are related by blood, although in a way we are. We are related by our similar fate, for I too was eighty-sixed, a long time ago, when I was a young boy. I am still young, although I have been alive a long time. My father took me in, under his wing, and told me this story, many stories. He still tells this one with fear and sorrow in his eyes, about the time he was eighty-sixed.
