Frank Chiaro describes his life as the child of Italian immigrants, farm life in the Pomona area of Mesa County, Colorado, and his various jobs, including his work as a boilermaker for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. He also talks about the second incarnation of his railroading career as a clerk, about mail cars and mail clerks, about the Durham Stockyards and the many livestock trains departing Grand Junction, and about water towers for steam engines. He discusses the Grand Junction train depot fire in 1943, when a train carrying Army munitions exploded and scattered shells in the surrounding neighborhood. Lorene (Tatlow) Roice and Mary (Chiaro) Colosimo, whose husbands both worked for the Denver and Rio Grande, also chime in occasionally. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries, the Museums of Western Colorado and the Mesa County Historical Society.
