Several years ago an operator was working the night trick in a terminal yard office. The conductor of an inbound freight train was entering his train information in the register book when he asked the operator how to spell 'pertnear'. He told him it was spelled as just shown. In a few minutes the conductor came over to the window of the telegraph office and handed a message to the operator and told him to send it right away. The message was addressed to the Division Superintendent and read, "While pulling our train into Creston yard we pertnear hit the switch engine."
While working as a supervisor at one of the railroad's larger terminals I was asked to hire several track workers to work on a nearby work gang. Since it was early June and many young men were home for the summer from high school and college it did not take long to have a large stack of applications and start hiring. When I hired people to work on the railroad I would expalin to them that the railroad did not use first names in their records. Their checks would be printed with their first two initials and last name and that is how their foreman would show them on the timeroll. One day I hired two young men, one named Donald Duck and one named I.M. Goosey. (So help me, that is the truth!) I told them where to report the next morning and what their foreman's name was. The next morning when they appeared for work the foreman asked the first man his name, and he replied, "Donald Duck." The foreman got quite upset and asked him his real name. The young man showed him his driver's license and so he had to believe him. Then he asked the second young man his name and he replied, "I.M. Goosey." The foreman told him "I don't give a damn if you're goosey or not, I want your name!" This young man also had to show him his driver's license. The foreman dropped in my office the next day and asked me if I hired any more men for him could I get some that had a regular name like Smith, Jones, or Johnson.
Many small town agents were quite active in their communities and belonged to several organizations. I once relieved an agent who had been at the same station for nearly twenty-five years. After a few days on the job I had learned that his outside activities included being President of the school board, Secretary of the Masonic Lodge, a member of the board of directors at the bank, leader of the Methodist Church Choir, and Mayor of the town. I received more phone calls about the outside business than I did the railroad's business. One afternoon a lady called and told me that this was the third time she had complained about the neighbor's chickens in her garden and she wanted the city marshall sent down there right away, and if he didn't show up in 15 minutes she was going to take her shotgun and shoot those &*%$# chickens herself! I explained to her that the regular agent was on vacation and the railroad had sent me down to work for him during that time. She came right back at me and said, "If you're taking his place then you get down here and do something about it," and hung up the phone. I never took any action on her request. When the regular agent returned to work I told him about it. He smiled and said, yes, he was quite familiar with her request and she had been threatening to shoot those chickens for the last five years.
As we have mentioned in previous stories, the agent at the country railroad depot also acted as the agent for the express company. In county seats and larger towns in the early part of the century they would usually maintian an office at a location in the town's business distirct. After World War II many of these uptown agencies were moved to the waiting room area of the railroad stations. When I was ticket clerk and operator at Knoxville, Iowa on the CB&Q R.R. the Railway Express Agency moved their office from uptown to the women's waiting room area of the depot. Harry Jones, a long time employee, was agent for the Express Company. Even though the risk of robbery to Express offices and vehicles was not a problem by then the agents and train messengers still carried a .38 Colt side arm while on duty.
Every year in late December Harry would get a small wooden box from the Express Company storehouse. Inside would be five fresh bullets for his gun. Only five were sent since, as a safety precaution, the hammer had to rest on an empty chamber. It would be his responsibility to go somewhere that would be safe and fire off the bullets in his gun. He would then put the fresh new bullets in his sidearm. He also would have to take the five empty shell casings and put them back in the box and rreturn them to the storekeeper so they would know he had fresh bullets in his gun. While there was hardly any chance of it ever happening, I used to ask Harry what he was to do if he got in a gun battle and ran out of bullets. His reply was that he would just call off the battle until he could order a fresh set of bullets and receive them back.
In the mid-1940's I was working the extra telegrapher's list on the CB&Q railroad's Ottumwa Division. Since I lived in Ottumwa I was quite often called to do relief work at Lawler Tower, located in the west end of town. The Milwaukee Railroad's Chicago-Kansas City line crossed our double track east-west main line at this tower. One night I was working the 3rd trick position (12 midnight to 8:00AM) when an unusual event happened. About a mile from this tower, along the river bank, was a night club called the Boathouse. Every night about one o'clock in the morning cars would be leaving the club on a road that crossed the Milwaukee tracks about 300 ft. south of the tower. One night I noticed a light on the track down by the signal mast on the Milwaukee track. Since I knew of no trains due on their railroad, I asked their dispatcher if they had a northbound train out of the yard, as there was a light on their track south of the tower. He told me no, they would have nothing in either direction for about an hour. I had the CB&Q westbound track lined up with a high green for a freight train the operator told me would be leaving the yard in a few minutes. I decided to go outside and take a look, and after walking down a short distance I could see that it was a car on the tracks with one headlight burning. I went back to the tower and called the police to tell them there was a car on the Milwaukee tracks just north of the Boathouse road. After I finished that call the yard operator called me on the phone and said the freight had pulled a drawbar starting from the yards so I knew it would be awhile before he showed up. I walked down the Milwaukee tracks and just as I reached the car a police car showed up. The car was straddled over one of the rails and a man, who definitely was very intoxicated, was sitting inside with the window rolled down smoking a cigar. The officer asked him what he was doing there and the fellow replied, "Listen officer, I've been sitting here for at least an hour waiting for that *&&#* traffic light to change. If it doesn't change pretty soon I'm just going to go ahead and run through it." After much arguing the officer placed the man in the back of his police car and called for a tow truck to come and remove the car from the tracks. I often wondered what might have happened if I had given him the high green signal!
Before radio communication came into use on the railroads of America, train crews and telegraph operators had many hand and body signals that would both confuse and amuse an outsider not familiar with railroad operations. Here are some that were used by operators on the CB&Q R.R.: