I hired out on the railroad on April 19, 1973. Almost yesterday. But with classes and a bit of training it was a week or so before I actually walked into a railroad shanty for the first time. I was twenty eight years old. I had worked lots of jobs before this, but still had no idea what to expect.
I shined shoes for the first money of my very own that ever went into my pocket. At George’s Barber Shop. I had helped my mates deliver papers before this, but that was not a job of my own. I had been given a shoe shine kit by an uncle for my birthday. I still have that first shoe shine brush today, but the rest of the original kit has been long gone. It had several cans of polish, rags, and two brushes. One for brown (or anything not black) and one for black. And a shoeshine box to put everything in. It was red and black and had a place on the top for someone to place their foot while the shoe was shined. I was actually already sort of working for George, who was my barber at the time. His old guy that swept up the shop had quit and George asked me if I wanted the job? So I’d come in after school (I was eleven years old) and sweep up after each customer until George decided to close up for the day. Usually around eight o’clock, unless he was still busy. Then George would go home and I would follow a list of chores that he had provided. Mop, straighten the magazines, clean the counters and polish the mirrors, that sort of thing. I could even do a few things that were not on the list, such as browse the girlie magazines that George kept on hand for his customers. I had never seen pictures of scantily dressed girls, and was much impressed. I felt extremely proud to be trusted in the shop alone, and to close up when I was finished. Which amounted to closing the door behind me. For this I was paid a dollar or so a day. When I mentioned to George that I had received a shoe shine box he suggested I shine shoes in the shop between sweeping chores. I practiced on my Dad a few times until I thought I could shine shoes. And one afternoon early in June I carried the shoeshine box into the barber shop. Where I set it in the corner and ignored it.
Sure enough, some fellow saw it and asked if he could get his shoes shined. I couldn’t speak, for some reason, but George spoke right up and said sure, Dave here shines shoes. So I got the box and gave his shoes the best I could. The guy didn’t look too impressed, but he gave me a dime. After a week or so I wasn’t as hesitant, and had shined a couple dozen pairs of shoes when a service man came into the shop, in uniform. "Hey kid! Let’s shine ‘em up!" He was probably eighteen or nineteen and right out of basic. His boots were shinier than anything I had ever seen before. I thought he was joking. "Let’s go here, shine, my man, shine. These boots are a mess." I dutifully grabbed my shine box and he placed one of those giant shiny boots on top. I got out the polish and started brushing it on. And then I started brushing it off. The boots were terribly dull looking compared to how they had appeared when he sat down."Is that it?" he asked. ‘Where’s your rag?"
"What rag?"
"Your shoeshine rag. You can’t get a shine without a rag." I didn’t know this. I didn’t have a rag.
"Here," he said, "You sit in the chair and I’ll show you what I mean." I was glad that there were only a couple fellows in the store, and they didn’t seem to be paying much attention. So, we traded places.
"Hey George! Got a rag I can have?" asked the soldier. He then set about polishing my Buster Browns. First he brushed them off completely, something that I hadn’t thought of doing. Then he started putting on the polish, with HIS HANDS! I was shocked. But I didn’t say anything. Periodically he’d wipe his hands on the new rag. "Got to get some life into this rag." he said. After he had the shoe covered with polish, he brushed it vigorously, using first one hand and then the other. Then he took the rag, and started polishing with that, holding it in both hands and working it back and forth over my shoe. The polish took on a rich looking luster I hadn’t seen before. He would take his fingers and touch his tongue and slap some spit on the toe, and then polish some more. When he let go of one end of the rag and brought it over the toe sharply it would let out a ‘pop’ like cracking the whip. My shoes got shinier and shinier until he sat back and said, "There! That’s more like it. Now you have to get yourself some dye for the soles, and you’re all set."
I got the dye from the cobbler next door. He showed me how to apply it with an old toothbrush to make the sole of the shoe look brand new. I couldn’t wait to show my Dad what I’d learned, and practice on his shoes.
After that, once I began to get the hang of it, I started getting fifty cent pieces and even the occasional dollar for a shine. I never had a set price, just shined the shoes and sat back. I was making four and five dollars an evening and more on the weekends. This was major big loot. At this time my college educated Dad was only making fifteen dollars a day. I endured a few taunts about how at least my hands were the right color to be a shoe shine boy, but I ignored them and kept the rag popping. The hardest thing was getting my hands clean enough to eat at my Mother’s table.
I went from shining shoes to selling shoes at Hughes Hatcher Harry Suffrin. I sold boys clothes there, too. I sold clothes to Gordie Howe for his two son’s. Then I went selling door to door. I sold vacuum cleaners and sewing machines. I sold encyclopedia with great success, driving a company car at age seventeen. I took a summer job with the New York Central Railroad as a clerk. My grandfather worked for the NYC and got me hired on, and my friend Jim as well. I went to California and worked for Ford Motor Company, and then moved back and stayed with Ford. I went into the carwash business and thought I was so wealthy that I could retire. Then I learned that it is possible to spend great amounts of money in an absurdly short amount of time. Then I became a father and had to come out of retirement. My friend Jim was still at the railroad and said he could return the favor and get me a job as a switchman. Seventeen years had gone by since I shined shoes, and wages were up to forty bucks a day on the railroad.
My new boots felt stiff as I walked into the shanty at Livernois yard for my first assignment as a railroad brakeman, or switchman, as we were called. I had been to a couple classes and had learned the hand signs that railroad men used to communicate across distances farther than one could yell. I had learned how to light a fusee, so I could make these same signals in the dark over distances approaching two miles. I had learned how to step on and off a moving train. That was about it. I nodded to the fellows seated at a beat up table that was the main feature of the shanty. It was about noon. "I’m here to work MC4." I announced to the room at large. "Call the yardmaster and let him know you’re here," someone advised. This meant pressing a button on a squawk box and waiting. "Yeah." Blasted out of the box. "I’m here to work MC4."
"Well that’s nice." Pause. "Who are you?" I gave my name. "Thanks. "
Nothing else seemed to be happening, so I sat down. The talk around the table picked back up where it must have been before I came in. Sports, baseball mostly. A card game began. I had a paper bag with a sandwich intended for my lunch that I proceeded to munch on out of nervousness. Another fellow arrived and settled in at the table, greeting the others easily and they welcoming him warmly. "How ya’ doin’, Bill." "OK, Charlie, how about yourself?" "Alright. You guys got that MC4?" "Yeah." The squawk box came alive.
"Connelly, give me a call." A man went to the box and pushed the button. "Bill? " "Yeah." "Your cars are on fifteen and nineteen in the departure yard. Your power is the 2307 and the 1919 on the circle. The bills’ll be down in a minute." "Rog. " "You got a new guy with you, D. Smock." "Rog." Bill sat back down.
"Glad it’s you and not me going over, today, Bill. The tunnel’s a mess, leaking real bad. " "Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah. The day job said the water was two feet deep in places, and they were afraid the blue light would come on."
"No shit? Didn’t think it was that bad." The fellow across from me looked my way and said, in a conversational way, "Big light in the middle of the tunnel. Monitors the cracks and leaks. Should be green. Green means everything’s OK. Watch out if it turns blue. Means the tunnel’s cracked open, and probably flooded. You could drown down there like a rat." Another guy spoke up, an older fellow with whiskers and a huge mustache, "We were going across on MC 3 one time, oh, ‘bout three years ago. Came round that turn in the middle of the tunnel and there it was, the blue light. We dumped the air and made it out one of the ventilation shafts into the other tube, just before a wall of water flooded the whole tunnel. Lucky to be alive."
I was relieved to hear Bill say, "Ahh, it’ll probably be OK today. Those walls are thicker than boxcars."
Conversation turned to other things and another twenty minutes went by. A loud clunk behind me announced the arrival of the ‘bills’. They came down from somewhere in a pneumatic tube. After a few more minutes Bill went to retrieve them. With a cursory glance he flipped through them before stuffing them into the back pocket of his bibs. I recognized them as weighbills, or the bills of lading that identified each car in the train. In my previous incarnation as a railroad clerk, I had filed these bills in large books, each book representing a different railroad. He nodded to an older man across the table, "Mumbles, we’ll meet you in the departure." Bill and another man got up and filed out. After a suitable amount of time, perhaps another fifteen minutes, the man identified as ‘Mumbles’ got to his feet. Glancing at me he said, none too clearly, "Let’s go."
I followed Mumbles out the door. "Meet me on the power," he said. It sounded like, ‘Meemeonaper’. So I stopped walking for a moment to think about it. He was walking over to where I could see several sets of engines, or ‘power’, including the 2307 and the 1919. I couldn’t imagine why I shouldn’t just follow along with him, so I did, about twenty steps behind. Mumbles was already seated in the engineer's seat behind the control stand as I ducked my head and stepped into a freight locomotive for the first time. There were two other seats besides the one that was occupied by Mumbles. One in the center of the cab, and one on the fireman’s side, where I had just entered. I didn’t know it at the time, but this particular job didn’t have a fireman, whereas most jobs did have one. I was impressed by the controls, buttons and knobs and switches of various sizes and types, in all locations around the cab. And how dirty the floor was. I was still standing and taking it all in when Mumbles said, "Wersaber?" "What’s that Mumbles?" I asked, trying for a friendly note. "Namsnotmumbls. Sfrank." ‘Wha. . .?" "Saidmunames not Mumbles. It’s Frank." "Oh. Sorry. Frank. What was that other thing you said?"
Mumbles, though I had to call him Frank for almost two years, was asking where the beer was. He explained to me that I was to never get on his engine without a six pack of beer. After a moment to be sure he wasn’t joking the new guy, I admitted that I hadn’t been aware of that. "S’ok, I’ll wayferya." "You’ll wait for me?" "Berstore’sacrostastreet."
Still not sure about this but seeing no alternative I walked across the street and purchased a six pack. I felt rather strange walking across NYC property with a sack full of beer, but I was to get used to this feeling. After getting back on the engine with the beer Frank instructed me to put it in a cooler that was by his seat. "Pudotinakuhlr." I didn’t know if all engines had a cooler or if Frank had brought that one with him. It turns out that some engines had actual water coolers, but those that didn’t had a metal cooler that was stocked with ice. How handy. Frank got up and mumbled something about, "Bribak." After making a rudimentary ‘daily inspection’ of the engines, Frank climbed back aboard and instructed me to walk down the lead and line the switches for our movement to the departure yard. Using various hand signs, some I’d seen before and some I hadn’t, we finally arrived at a track where I could see my Conductor, Bill. He and the other fellow that had left the shanty with him were waiting for us patiently. I was to get to know this other fellow, 'PT', as one of my best friends over the ensuing years. "Weigh car’s already tacked on," said Bill, "we might as well get over and get back. Dave, you get up there with Mumbles. He’ll tell you if you need to do anything. Me and PT’ll double this shit up and then you guys can get us a route." They tied the engine on to the first cut of cars and I had a chance to get the lay of the land. Railroad yards are big places and seem rather intimidating at first. So many tracks to learn. We pulled the first cut of cars back out the way we had come into the yard, so I didn’t have anything to do since nobody had come along after us and changed the switches.
Doubling up meant coupling one track to another track. After the tail end of the first cut of about fifty cars cleared the lead we could stop pulling. Mumbles was looking out the window at PT who was passing signals from Bill. PT swung down the move after the cars cleared, and Bill threw the switches to line us into the next track that held the balance of our cars. Then giving the signal to ‘back up’, Bill walked to where the joint would make between our cars and the cars standing in track nineteen. PT had to run ahead a bit to keep Bill in sight. "Gidutnpissignils." "You say something, Frank?" He was telling me that he was going to lose sight of PT, and that I should get out there and position myself to where I could pass signals. So I did, and we got the tracks coupled up. Bear in mind, there were no radios in use on the railroad at this time, except the one in the engine to communicate with the dispatcher. And that was a fairly new option. Stencils proclaiming ‘Radio Equipped’ with little lightning signs were proudly displayed on the sides of the newer engines. Once PT tossed a fusee in the air, signaling that the work was complete, I rejoined Frank on the engine. He was engrossed in a magazine, sipping a cold one. So I kicked back to see what would happen next. I’d been on my new job about an hour and a half.
Suddenly there was a loud explosive sound, and a great hiss of escaping air. I looked around nervously, imagining something terrible had occurred. I felt somewhat comforted to see that Frank never looked up from his book but merely reached out a ham like fist and moved a red lever over a few notches. The noise stopped. Frank did some more things on the control stand and took out his watch. Noting the time, he set it out in front of himself. Then went back to his magazine. Minutes drifted by. Pocketing his watch, Frank announced, "Bill’sreddy, tumtagedarut." "Ahh, what’s that Frank?" Frank explained that after coupling up the air hoses between the cars Bill and PT had gone into the caboose. When 110 pounds of air registered on their brake pipe gauge Bill had ‘dumped’ the air, putting the standing train into emergency and thereby telling Frank that they were all set on the rear. Frank had watched the air come back up and then run a leakage test. When the leakage was determined to be within normal tolerances Frank had mumbled, ‘Bill’s ready, time to get the route.’ He picked up the radio handset and keyed it up, "MC4, leernoyyugmesser. "
"Livernois Yard Master, you all set to go, Mumbles?" "Rog." "OK to the signal, Frank." "Rogout."
Frank leaned his head out the window and pulled out the throttle to number two notch. There was a jerk as the engines got hold of the cars, and then repeated yet fainter jerks as each car pulled the next in line into motion. Frank was watching the ground to tell how fast and how far we were moving. When he felt he had sufficient cars in motion he added a notch, watching the ground all the time. When he felt that he had moved the train far enough to get all the cars moving he notched out to number six. The big diesels began to roar in earnest, and the smoke billowed skyward. Frank kicked on the sanders as a bell started clanging, indicating wheel slip on the locomotive traction motors. Suddenly I realized that Frank was busy watching the ground, and I was busy watching Frank, and nobody was busy watching where we were going. I decided to make that my job, and leaned out my window and looked down the tracks. I was on a moving freight train for the first time in my life, and wanted to feel like I might be contributing at least something.
Our route took us out of the departure yard and onto the mainline. A friendly guy on another yard job stepped away from his work long enough to line the last switch for us, and I gave him a wave and he waved back. This was great. I was railroading.
MC4 meant literally Michigan Canada fourth train of the day. We were to take our one hundred and four car train through the Detroit Windsor Railroad Tunnel, built in 1908 with cement walls thicker than boxcars, and then bring a drag of cars back. Each engineer, I was to learn later, had his own way of handling his train through the tunnel. There were many factors to take into consideration. Train length, number of engines and their relative pulling power, number of empties versus number of loads, where the loads and therefore the weight was in the train. There are actually two tubes in the tunnel, two tracks, each tube surrounded by thick cement walls making up the overall tunnel. The track leading to the tunnel slips underground gradually, a mile or so from the river itself. Then continues downhill to a point about half way across the river and fifty feet under the river bed, where it makes a gradual right hand turn before starting to pull uphill towards the Canadian side of the river. The entire tunnel is over three miles long, with maybe three quarters of a mile actually being under the Detroit River. The trick is to know when to start pulling hard out of the tunnel. The mass of the train itself pushes the engines down into the tunnel at first. If the engineer doesn’t keep the train stretched out properly there is a mind numbing crash and bump as the rear of the train slams into the slower moving front half part way into the tube. The slack runs in. If that happens at least the engineer knows that the whole train is bunched up in the tube and he can start notching out the throttle to reach enough speed and momentum to get out the other side. Because if the train isn’t going fast enough as it starts uphill it will stall in the tunnel. This is very bad.
It is very bad because the locomotives have filled the tunnel with thick diesel smoke, and if the train stops the guys in the caboose can’t breathe. And extra engines have to be dispatched to either pull or push the train the rest of the way out. Sometimes the smoke can even be a problem for the guys on the engine. At the least it is a source of some embarrassment to the engineer, and decidedly dangerous for the fellows on the rear. Their options are few. There are ventilation shafts, and doorways leading from one tube to the other. But to open the connecting door is to risk being sucked into the other tube if a train comes through that side at the wrong moment. And the ventilation shafts are few and far between. The guys on the rear are usually stuck there to wait it out. Fellows have had to be taken to the hospital in Canada more than once. It is a serious matter. The same problem exists for the return trip.
The first thing I noticed as we headed underground was that the train tunnel is nothing like the automobile tunnel. I had been through the auto tunnel many times. The auto tunnel is tiled with bright white tiles and is very well lit. And it has many exhaust fans to handle the emission from hundreds of cars even if they are stalled behind a wreck. And it is much larger than the train tunnel. There are two lanes each way in the auto tunnel, and the ceiling is very high so there is no feeling of being closed in to make one claustrophobic. It is dry in the auto tunnel. The train tunnel is none of these things. The cement walls are dark and mottled from years of smoke and dripping water. Water drips from the roof of the tunnel constantly, sometimes regular streams like someone left the faucet open. The tunnel was built for much smaller engines and cars, so that our modern equipment barely fits into the tube, with very little clearance anywhere. Seen from the caboose, some of the train cars actually hit the sides and ceiling of the tunnel as they rock their way through, leaving long streaks of sparks that look like giant sparklers in the dark. Dark. Nobody told me that the tunnel would be so dark. The few weak overhead bare light bulbs that were working did little to dispel the gloom that existed outside the circle of our headlight.
There were a few other things that I was not prepared for. The smallness and dankness was bad enough, but I was totally unprepared for the noise, which was incredible. Our two diesels sounded amazingly loud even at half throttle, as Frank took us into the eastward tube. And I wasn’t prepared for the ride. The engines bounced and swayed on their suspension, rocking wildly from side to side. I glanced at Frank to see if this was normal, and decided that it must be since he didn’t look surprised. I tried to relax my death grip on the armrest. Into the endless gloom we descended, unable to see more than a few hundred feet in front of the engine. Just as I thought that I might be getting used to the idea of the tunnel the slack ran in and blasted us forward with a mighty slam from the rear. Now THAT can’t be normal, I thought. I didn’t find out until much later that Mumbles was not known for his train handling in the tunnel, but that he had never stalled.
Still going downhill and rocking wildly Frank reached out and made eight and sand. Eighth throttle notch, as far as it goes, and sanding the tracks ahead of the driver wheels. I just thought that it had been loud before. Now the engines pulled with all the nearly twenty five hundred horsepower they were capable of producing, and the decibels shot up accordingly, sound crashing of the walls around us in the tunnel. We began to go faster, still downhill. There is a speed limit in the tunnel, but I found out that very few engineers pay any attention to it. It is forty miles an hour, the top speed at which it is considered safe to travel over the tunnel tracks and stay on the rails. Before we reached the halfway point we were going over sixty. Fortunately this meant nothing to me at the time, or I might have worried more than I was already. Suddenly the thought occurred to me, ‘My god! A wall of water could come around that curve ahead and there wouldn’t be a thing I could do about it!’ I could just picture it, a crashing wave from a breech in the tunnel wall, rolling towards us as we rocketed along about to drown like rats. And that’s when I remembered the blue light.
I was just about to ask Frank about the light when we started around the curve in the middle off the tunnel. And there it was! Bright and not blinking and BLUE! "Frank," I yelled, " the blue light! It’s BLUE!"
Of course, Frank couldn’t hear me. Holding on for dear life, I stood up and leaned over the middle seat, and pointing ahead I yelled again, "Frank!" He looked up at me. I gestured wildly out the windshield, my eyes wide, "the blue light!" "Yepper," said Frank, reaching for another beer. "Buttersidoninhungon." Right. He was pointing towards my empty seat so I didn’t need a translation. Bracing my feet against the heavy metal dash board I pushed myself as far back into my seat as I could and prepared for the worst. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, we can blast through the water and come out the other side. The engines roaring we came around that fateful curve and past the blue light. And onto the uphill side of the tunnel. No water. I looked down for a moment, and then tried a sideways glance at Frank. He was waiting. He smiled. Not an unfriendly smile. "Pullabluliteinallanewguys."
"You mean that was all a set up? Right from when I came to work?" "Yup.Wannaber? "
We dropped off our train on one long track on the Canadian side. And immediately cut away and ran through an empty track to the west end of the yard. We tied onto the cars on the next track and pulled them slowly towards the tunnel. When the last car cleared the lead switch Bill ran along side it and grabbed the air hose with one hand and opened the angle cock with the other. This made a 'big hole’ in the trainline and put the cars into emergency, effectively stopping the train. This told us that the he was ready to go the other way, and double to our caboose. Frank backed up slowly until we felt resistance. Then stretched until something stopped us. We were tied back onto our caboose. Again we waited until the air was dumped the second time, then get it back and do the air test. Then get a route back to Livernois. I had been at work a little over two and a half hours.
The return trip wasn’t quite as bad as the way over. Just as rough, just as loud, just as noisy, but not quite as bad. As we reached the middle of the tunnel and passed the blue light that marked it Frank looked over at the light and then back at me with a nod and a wink. I nodded back at him, smiling as best I could. We blasted out of the tunnel on the Detroit side and put the train away. We pulled into an empty track in the receiving yard and just before we got to the end the air dumped with the usual explosion, one that I was already getting used to. Frank said that meant we were in the clear at the other end, and I could cut the engines off. He then directed me towards the diesel house where we left the power. I walked with him back to the shanty. It was about four PM. I had been on my first job about four hours. I’d been through the tunnel to Canada. I’d been fooled about the blue light. But I was back in the shanty and pulled out the remainder of my sandwich. I looked for but did not see the rest of my crew. About thirty minutes later a fellow came into the room and introduced himself as Ralph, the day yardmaster. "I’m outta’ here," he announced. "What are you hanging around for?" he asked. "What do you mean?" "You’re all done."
"All done?"
"Yeah that’s it, go home."
"But the rest of the crew?"
"They left a half hour ago. Go on, take of. You did a good job."
"Wow. OK, thanks."
"Did you see the blue light?" He was smiling big. "Yeah, I sure did. I nearly had a heart attack."
"They pull that on every new guy. See ya’."
And that was my first day.