The Celebrity Collector - Michael Gross

Michael Gross, from a Chicago neighborhood to Family Ties

A glance at Michael Gross’ resume, a Yale degree, early awards for repertory and Broadway work and a long film and television career, might suggest a privileged start. In fact Gross was raised in a blue-collar neighborhood in Chicago and went through what he called a “gang-and-greaser” phase in his mid-teens before he straightened out in high school.

He earned his place, first in the theater, then on the 1980s sitcom Family Ties, where he played the liberal father of conservative son Michael J. Fox and daughter Justine Bateman, and later as the star of the Tremors horror-comedy films. A fourth Tremors film was due on video at the end of 2003, when he described his collection.

One thing was handed to him as a boy: railroad memorabilia. Most of it came from his grandfather, Chester Gross, who worked for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway for 56 years. Chester’s father had worked the rails too. These veteran trainmen had stories to tell and things to pass on, and Michael, who was very close to his grandfather, took it all in.

Santa Fe dining car china: California Poppy and Mimbreno

“The first thing I remember were the dishes we had in the house,” Gross recalled. “They were rejects, actually, from the dining cars. We’d get them because they were chipped or cracked, or because the image on the plate was faded. But even in their condition, they still held a special significance to me because they had ridden the rails. It was like they’d been blessed by the Pope.”

Most of the dishes came in one of two patterns. California Poppy is off-white with three orange-yellow poppies. Mimbreno, “the good stuff,” was used only in the dining cars of the Super Chief and carries an ancient Indian design of symbolic-looking animals on a white ground. The Mimbreno set was displayed, and used, at Gross’ home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, while the California Poppy was kept in a cabinet at his California home. “I like to eat off both patterns, especially at breakfast,” he said.

Railroad dining car china is one of the most collected kinds of railroadiana, because each line commissioned its own patterns and marked them. The Mimbreno design was adapted from the pottery of the ancient Mimbres people of southwestern New Mexico, which suited a railroad that sold the Southwest to travelers.

Santa Fe railroad memorabilia in Michael Gross’ New Mexico home

The Santa Fe house held most of the collection. Gross described its decor as “a mixture of Spanish, Native American and early railroad.” Among the railroad pieces were an Art Deco overstuffed armchair from one of the smoking lounge cars, genuine lighting fixtures from old Santa Fe coaches, an oak station bench with arms that seats five, and an old baggage cart marked “AT&SF” that stood outside the house.

There was also Santa Fe silverware, most of it marked and hotel-grade, including a soup tureen and a coffee pot, and a walnut desk that had belonged to a Santa Fe vice president, which Gross bought at auction in Topeka. Paper filled out the rest: tickets, timetables, blotters, stationery and brochures, along with posters promoting the West, advertising art and calendars featuring Southwestern painters.

The “piece de resistance,” Gross said, “is a beautiful old wall clock once owned by the chief time inspector of the entire Santa Fe rail system, whose office was in Topeka. It has a four-foot walnut case with a mercury pendulum (rare, as most have disc pendulums). I bought it from a Santa Fe clock aficionado who restores and repairs Santa Fe clocks. I paid about $4,000 for it, ten years ago.” That put the purchase in the early 1990s.

Chester Gross’ Bunn Special watch and lifetime pass

Some pieces came straight from his grandfather. The most personal was a Bunn Special pocket watch made by the Illinois Watch Company. “Having the correct time was critical, of course, and the trainmen’s watches were regularly inspected by the railroads,” Gross said. “They had to be within certain tolerances, which were recorded on an inspection card. I also have that card.”

Standards of this kind were tightened across American railroads after a deadly 1891 collision in Ohio blamed in part on an engineer’s watch, and approved railroad-grade watches became a category of their own. A watch kept together with its inspection card, as Gross’ was, tells the full story of the man who carried it.

Chester also left him a railroad lantern, a Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen wallet, a safety award and a lifetime pass that entitled him to ride the rails free for life.

Part owner of a short line railroad into Santa Fe

“By far the most ridiculous thing I’ve done is become a partner in an actual railroad,” Gross said with a chuckle. The line was the last 18 miles of a short line into Santa Fe on the old Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe route. It was going to be abandoned for lack of business, “so a group of us decided to save the thing and run it, too. It’s fun, but a lot of work.”

Gross said his acting kept him from being hands-on, but the line ran freight and passengers most days of the week between Lamy, New Mexico, named for a Catholic bishop who once lived there, and Santa Fe. “This is the first train I haven’t had to put away after Christmas,” he said. “It’s not much of a money-maker, but I’m glad we saved it.” Few collectors take the hobby that far, though Cliff Robertson flew the vintage aircraft he collected and Jay Leno drove his cars.

Yale, Family Ties and the Tremors films

Gross was born June 21, 1947, in Chicago and graduated with honors from Kelvyn Park High School. He played guitar in a folksinging group before choosing acting, then attended the Yale School of Drama, where Meryl Streep was a classmate, graduating in 1973. His stage work brought a Drama-Logue Award, a Drama Desk Award nomination and an Obie.

His break came in 1982 as Steven Keaton on Family Ties (1982 to 1989). A casting director named Elza resisted hiring him because he lacked name recognition. She later became his wife. By 2003 they had been married 20 years, and he was stepfather to her two children. His sister is Saturday Night Live alumna Mary Gross.

The year Family Ties ended, he took a part in the low-budget Tremors, about the small Nevada mining town of Perfection terrorized by giant sand worms. “Universal released the film into the theatres and marketed it as a horror movie, which it really isn’t,” Gross said. “As a result, it didn’t do well at all.” On video it found a cult following, which led to a Tremors series on the Sci-Fi Channel and three sequels. The fourth film, a prequel set in the Wild West, used authentic period weapons, including a Colt single-action revolver, a Sharps hunting rifle, a four-barrel Sharps pepperbox derringer, a Remington, a Henry repeater and a real Gatling gun.