Oral History Program Oakley MacCarthy Interviewed by Mary Werner 05 July 1973 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Oakley MacCarthy Interviewed by Mary Werner 05 July 1973 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: MacCarthy, Oakley, an oral history by Mary Werner, 05 July 1973, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Oakley MacCarthy. The interview was conducted on July 5, 1973, by Mary Werner, in the location of 604 4th Street, Ogden, Utah. Mr. MacCarthy discusses his experiences and knowledge of the railroad business in Ogden, Utah. Also present at the interview is Mrs. MacCarthy (abbreviated MM). MW: This is an interview with Oakley MacCarthy by Mary Werner at his home, 604 4th Street, Ogden, Utah. It is July 5, 1973 and the time is 8:00 p.m. Mr. MacCarthy could you tell me just a little bit about your early life? Where were you born? OM: I was born in Ogden at 3055 Adams, and the house is still there. I have been going to buy the house and make a shrine out of it, but I never did have the money. I lived there off and on until I was 4 years old. Prior to that my dad worked for the Southern Pacific, and he was stationed at Colbery. I don't think that Colbery is even there yet. It's out right by Montello. He was a signal maintainer, and he rode one of these old three wheel speeders up and down in that district on the Southern Pacific, I was the only white boy out there the rest were dark. I lived out there until I was 4 years old. Then we moved out on Grant, between 27th and 28th Street. It was a really nice neighborhood then, it's gone to pot now. My aunt worked for the telephone office and I used to go up and meet her. When she got off work we would go to the old department which is where the health center is now. They had horses on the fire engines then, and at 8:00 they would ring this bell and the horses would jump up, and what do you call the gidgets that come down on the horse? 1 MW: Harness. OM: The harness would drop down on the horse and the horse would be really ready to go. It would be just a practice. When they did have a fire, the horses would really tear. If they went along Grant, there wasn't any paving from 26th Street, and there was all dust along 26th Street south. It would sometimes get to be 4 inches thick. There wasn't any paving along Washington south of 28th Street at that time. This was quite a while ago. The first three years I went to Saint Joseph's school and that was located on 26th Street just below Washington. It was a two story frame house. The big kids, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades were downstairs and the others were upstairs. We had to take turns hauling coal up in buckets to the stove. The Nuns were really good teachers. They always seemed to feel sorry for this poor little red-headed kid who was real skinny. They really treated him good. Anytime I hear a Catholic story of either a Nun or a Priest it upsets me, because they really treated me good. At Christmas time they always had a program, and they had a big organ up there that they pumped and we had to get in line and go around it and sing. I would never get any noise out of me so I don't think I ever sang on key. MW: Did you go to public school after that? OM: Yes, then I went to the Madison School and to the Washington School, and then Ogden High School. When I went to high school, I lived out on 32nd Street and I was given enough money each day so some days each of us kids would walk and use the $.15 we had for car fare and go down to Ross and Jack's. MW: What was Ross and Jack's? 2 OM: Ross and Jack's was a restaurant where the counter was in a horse shoe affair. If you went in there at noon or almost anytime you had to stand behind someone who was eating, and when he got up you slipped into his place. The main thing you usually ordered was a burger spud. That was a hamburger with potatoes, dressing, and gravy over it. It cost only $0.15. MW: Was it just a man's restaurant? OM: Yes, hardly ever a woman would go in there. But it was just packed all the time. When you slipped into your seat and said, "burger spud", before you knew it, it was right there, you didn't even have to wait. Once in a while some kids would eat on one side real good then tear up that ticket. Then they would go on the other side and eat a little then pay for that ticket. Some of the kids did that, I never did that myself. MW: Oh, I see. OM: That's gone now with a lot of the good things in Ogden. There were a lot of movie theaters too. The Lycem, just below Grant on 25th Street, about where the liquor store is now, that was only $0.06. My brother and I went to the matinee every Saturday for $0.06. There was a friend of the family that worked there and took the tickets, and every once and awhile he would let us in for nothing if no one was looking. We saw a serial every Saturday that ended up with the girl tied up on the railroad tracks or the thing where a big old saw was coming after her, or else the hero fell into the water tank, and the water was coming up, but they always stopped before disaster. There was a stand on the corner called the Busy Bee, where all the kids bought their popcorn and was later owned by Joe Klenke, who was the general foreman in the freight station. There were 3 lots of movie theaters: the Colonial, the Fantasia, the Egyptian, the Utah, and the Ogden. Oh, there were a lot of them, MW: Were there many hotels? OM: Yeah, there was the Big Old Broom on 25th and Washington, where the Commercial Security Bank is now. The Healey down on 25th and Wall, was a magnificent place. When they tore it down, it had gotten to a point where it was just a hangout for bums. That's why they tore it down, but it was really a magnificent joint. MW: Do you remember when the Ben Lomond Hotel was built? OM: Oh yes. It was going to be called the Bigalow Hotel. Bigalow was a president of the Ogden State Bank. The Ogden State Bank was in the building on the corner where the Blue Door was. When the crash came in 1929-1930 that bank went broke, so Mr. Bigalow had been real good to the people and had loaned them money when he shouldn't have. They took their spite out on him by changing the name to Ben Lomond, and I think Mr. Bigalow went away and died broken-hearted. MW: Did you ever go into that hotel or stay there? OM: No, if I did I wouldn't admit it. I'm married. MW: I mean just go in to it and look at it, because if you go in there now it's really beat up. OM: Oh yeah, my friend, one of the kids I use to play with when I was a little kid, became an announcer for K.L.O. We use to go up there and play the records while he did the announcing. That was when it used to be a good hotel. MW: K.L.O. used to be on top of there? 4 OM: Yes, it is still in there. Then we use to go up on the roof because there was a way up there. My friend would walk around the edge, but I wouldn't. MW: When did you begin working on the railroad? OM: June 14, 1926. This June 14 was 47 years, I could always remember the anniversary because everyone always put their flag out because June 14 is Flag Day. Things are much worse on the railroad now than they were then. My friends always envied me when I got a job on the railroad, because I had a job and they didn't. A railroad job then was considered a really good job. I went to work in the freight office, and it was a big office and all the desks were full. The platform on what they handled the freight was underneath the office. They hired about 100 men down there then, and there were probably 50 in the office. Then, over south in the depot was a baggage room where they had at least 150 men, because they worked around the clock. On the other side of the depot was the commissary and the laundry. The commissary supplied all the diners, and the laundry did all the linen for all the National Parks, and all the diners and the Pullmans. The laundry has now been closed. The reason the laundry did the laundry for the National Parks was because the U.P. had the concessions in the Yellowstone, Zion, and Grand Canyon Parks. They would bring the laundry here in carloads, I think it was a carload each day from each National Park. When they finished the linen, they sent it back out to the National Parks. Now the laundry has been abandoned, the commissary torn down, baggage room eliminated, and the freight office's platform has been torn down. North of that was the general supply, and they supplied all the outfits that worked on the railroad. They use to have section people working all over the railroad, and they use to go out and get in these cars, and they would send the outfit cars out to supply 5 them with their food. Now that has been eliminated. They don't have anything like that anymore. They just have a few section men out of Ogden. The Yard Office was a big operation. They had a lot of people, but all these have been so cut down that freight office workers and the yard office workers are in one building now, on West 28th Street. The Pacific Fruit Express handled the icing of the cars for fresh fruit and vegetables. They hardly ice a car anymore, I think they said last Monday that they had 5 cars that needed icing. They are in the process of dismantling that place and selling the ice machinery. That soon won't be there anymore. They use to have a section of the yard office that was devoted to the P.F.E., employees and they have one man there now, whereas, they had that whole office full at one time. Everything is computerized now, even the cars. Each railroad car has a patch on the side of it with magnetized strips and as the car goes by a scanner all the information is taken off; the size of the car, the number, and all about it so they can keep track of these cars, MW: Have you ever seen a car as it actually goes by a scanner? OM: Yes, I think there's one out here by the Rio Grande Interchange. As it comes off that scanner it goes onto a machine in Denver, the headquarters for the Rio Grande. Running out of Ogden there used to be the Utah-Idaho Central, going north to Preston; the Bamberger, going south to Salt Lake taking all passengers for Lagoon. On a holiday those Bamberger's were just packed for Lagoon. My aunt and uncle use to take my brother and I down there and when it came time to go home, there were so many people waiting for the train that we use to go down the track and find an open window. My uncle would push me and my brother into the car, and we would save seats for them so when they got on they would have a seat. That's the only way we would get a seat 6 because it was jam packed. The O.S.L., Oregon Short Line ran north and south out of Ogden and the Union Pacific ran east and the Southern Pacific ran west. They handled freight and passengers, but now they only have Amtrak handle the passenger’s service. There is one train each day that goes in and cut of Ogden. The one that goes east out of Ogden leaves at 3:45 A.M. in the morning each day. The employees still have a pass right on the trains, but you can go only certain places. I'm going in a couple days to Denver. I have to be there before the train leaves. They get all the paying passengers on, and if there is a space left then I can go in and sit down on the train, otherwise, I can't go. They said they turned 10 people away two or three nights ago. MW: They carry that many passengers? OM: Yes, the trains that come in now have eleven cars on them and they're pulled each way. So it's getting better. But back in the old days before they started all this economy on the passenger trains, if you went west, and that's mainly where I went on the S.P., they had a news bookie on there and he sold magazines and candy. They always had handkerchiefs made out of cactus plant that was woven and it was really pretty, just like silk. They all had them. They sold sandwiches, and at night they sold pillows. As they passed points of interest the conductor would tell you where you were, and there was a place out there where they would tell of a little girl that use to watch the trains go by every day. When she died they buried her on the hill. They would tell about Battle Mountain and all about the Indian battles there. When you went by Reno, boy, that just glittered with lights and I guess it still does cause the trains drive right on the main street there. When you got down into Immigration Gap, they stopped the train and all the passengers would get off and look around. It was really high when you looked down into 7 that canyon. They called it Blue Canyon. The hills are just covered with trees and from a distance they looked blue instead of green. They don't do that anymore, everyone is in such a big hurry now that they put you on there and they have to go. In those days a train ride was really interesting. When you went by the snow sheds on the S.P., I always figured it was a place where they had snow-shovels and things, but they have built this big shed over the rails because of the heavy snows high on the mountains, and they are there so there won't be much snow to clear off the tracks. When they got down to Venetia they would run the train on a big flat-boat and take it across this straight to the other side, then you were let up on another track and went to Oakland. When you got to Oakland, you got on a ferry boat and went across the bay to San Francisco. MW: Were the ferry's owned by the railroad too? OM: Yes, they owned the whole thing. MW: Could you take the train all the way back to Salt Lake or Ogden? OM: Yes, to Ogden on the S.P. All those really good things have been cut out. One of the really nice things to do was eat your dinner on the diner. It always cost you about three times as much as the food was worth, but just to sit there and ride while watching the scenery was really fun. Our kids always liked that, and I liked it too. Then they had the domeliners, and you could go sit up in the top that was all glass. Last time we went with our daughter, she left us and went up on the domeliner and she stayed up there all the time until it was time to get off the train, MW: Mr. MacCarthy, could you tell me what the people were like who worked on the passenger trains, such as the conductor and the porter? What were their attitudes like? 8 OM: Most of the conductors were real friendly and liked to tease the kids a little bit. One of them, especially Patrick Kenny, he was an Irishman, and he treated everyone real good. Everyone liked him, and when you got on his train you had a terrific trip. They could either make it or break it. Some of them were ornery thinking it was their train, but Kenny didn't. The people, when you’re riding with them for a whole day, usually became friendly. You vowed you would never end the friendship. You promised to always write, but of course, a person never did. I suppose there were some romances on there, but none I ever knew of for me. My uncle was a brakeman on the S.P. and after World War I they gave the veterans training so he became a foot doctor, they call them a podiatrist now. They called them a chiropodist then. He became a doctor and he had an office in Oakland, but when it came to a point of whether he wanted to be a brakeman for the S.P. or a doctor in Oakland, he chose the railroad. He quit his doctoring and stayed on the railroad, because there used to be something really romantic about the railroad and the trains. It used to be interesting to go down in the evening on 28th Street and watch the trains go out because that was when they were steam. They would go out just a huffing and puffing and make a big racket while the steam would be pouring out from all sides. It was really interesting. But all that's gone now because they have to have so much speed now. MW: You mentioned the romanticism of the trains. Do you think speed to be the cause for the decline of it? OM: Yes, well you can go to San Francisco now in about 20 hours by train. In a plane you can go down in about 1 and 1/2 hours or 2 hours. I don't think it's nearly as nice, but I guess it depends upon what you want, 9 MW: You probably would be able to tell me more after your trip Tuesday, but what are the outlooks for Amtrak now? OM: One of the fellows in the yard office came back today and he went to Indianapolis to see his mother. He was really thrilled because he had a good ride on Amtrak. He said the trains were clean, they were fast, the service was good, and he was treated well. He rode freight and he didn't have any problems with his pass at all. MW: That's funny because I have heard some people say they have had to stop over in a city for two days and wait for another Amtrak train to come by. They ride again for a few hours then they have to wait again. Do you think they are going to have a problem with that? OM: No, that is not a railroad problem anymore that’s an independent thing. The railroad's once had passengers going all over the country. You could go north, east, south or west on a passenger train, and then they cut them out. On Amtrak you can only go east and west out of Ogden. If they had given the railroads subsidy equal to what they put out for the Amtrak, then the railroads could have kept the passenger business going. I know the passenger business costs a lot, more than the freight because I had a job as a storekeeper on the O.U.R.&D, and we supplied the diners all the material needed to keep them running. They would have called me a purchasing agent but it would cost too much because they would have had to pay me more, so they called me a storekeeper. They were getting material all the time. They were always replacing a window and plumbing fixtures, and it was expensive. They had 2 or 3 men that were just assigned to the passenger yards just to keep the diners and trains going. In the winter time they would freeze up and were a lot of work. I guess they couldn't really run it and make a 10 profit then, but if they would have had the subsidy and a little help, why like Amtrak got, I think they would still be in business. MW: I understand they had a subsidy from the government to help the passengers with a mail contract. Didn't that help them at all? OM: Oh well, they did but that's a little bit more than I know. They use to haul all the mail by train and they had train baggage men and they threw the mail into the cars and separated it and you could plan that if you mailed a letter to San Francisco you knew that in two days it would be there. The other day we received a check from the brickyard out at Harrisville. It was postmarked in Ogden and it was five days before we got it at the freight office on 28th Street. My wife was supposed to get flight tickets for me from United Airlines in Salt Lake City. She cancelled her reservations and when we came back from our trip the air tickets came the next day after we got back. Her sister came from Salt Lake and she took a job at a new store. She said she wanted to mail information out about the new store. She said she mailed it Thursday, and I think she was up to see us Sunday and we got that letter eleven days later from Salt Lake City. When it was done by the rails it was more on a schedule. You could tell what was going to happen to your letter. On television the other day they said when you buy a stamp, 30,000 people work a week to get the letter off for you. That's supposed to be a joke. MW: Would you please tell me a little about the individual lines that ran on Wall Street? I know they are in the process now of tearing most of them up. OM: A lot of those tracks were to serve the industries like Boyle Furniture. Their warehouse is on the east side of Wall. Utah Ice and Storage is on the east side of Wall. A lot of those tracks are to serve the industries on the east side of Wall. The Rio Grande tracks 11 go up to American Canning Company and the lumber yards and up to Boise Cascade. They will have to keep the tracks that serve those industries. There was a time going north the train came on and out on Wall for about three or four blocks and then it turned northwest and went up north. That track will be eliminated, and they will realign the tracks off of the public street so that will be all taken care of. There was once a track that came up from 2nd Street to Washington and that served the Pioneer Lumber and the people that had fruit orchards that loaded their cars out here at Five Points. Of course, most of the orchards are now made into subdivisions so that's gone. They don't load very many cars of fresh fruit here anymore, and they use to load lots of them. They have eliminated the track that came up 2nd Street for the lack of business, and the people said that as the train came up 2nd Street it rumbled so much that it broke the plaster in their houses. MW: What track will they exactly tear out? OM: Well, the track that goes along Wall Avenue. They will put it down in the yards, west of Wall. MW: How will they get to the individual companies on Wall? OM: They will still have to go across Wall, but it won't be running along Wall. They have tracks going north and south along Wall, and that's the tracks that the trains going out of Ogden heading north use to take. The tracks where they have to cross Wall to get to the industries on the east side of Wall will still stay there. The one that goes past the postal terminal that goes up and services Burton-Walker Lumber will have to go across Wall, just north of 25th Street. But the tracks that go along Wall north and south will be taken out. 12 MW: I hate to go across them in a car. OM: Yes, The tracks along Lincoln use to be Bamberger Tracks, bat they are U.P. Tracks now. Those are tracks that allow U.P. to take cars to the American Canning Company, American Canning is on the U.P, and Rio Grande Tracks so both railroads have tracks up to there. The 2nd Street tracks go down through the yard and across 12th Street a mile down. MW: As I was doing research for this project, I noticed that all the derogatory things written about the railroads was written by the Trucker's Association. Just yesterday we had an accident where a women from Centerville got hit by a train as she was crossing a railroad crossing. The truckers are really blowing those type of incidents up. Is it doing any harm to the railroad business? OM: We've had lots of those accidents, but I think it's because people are in their cars with the windows up and they forget, because they get so used to going across that track that they forget it's there. Actually, if you do what the sign says, it says railroad crossing, by stopping and looking both ways you could surely see the train coming. You can't hide a train with an engine and a bunch of cars. This women had her children with her and probably she was trying to discipline her kids and so she wasn't maybe aware of where she was, so she got hit. People are getting hit by trains all the time, right where you can look either way and see a train coming. MW: The important thing though is that the truckers are really blowing this up. Will this in time hurt the railroads business? 13 OM: No, because if the shipper can ship it cheaper by truck, he will ship it by truck, and if he can ship it cheaper by rail then he will ship it by rail. It used to be that the highways were cluttered with transports hauling automobiles. Today you seldom see a truck hauling automobiles on the road anymore. But you can go down to the rail yards and as far as you can see, there will be these tri-levels with automobiles on them. The vandals will sometimes get up on the bridges and shoot the windows out of these automobiles as they go by. There is a terrific amount of damage done to these cars, when they are transported by the rails. Even so they can do it much cheaper, they are off the highway, and they can do it quicker than on the highway. The railroad lost a lot of business in soap by Lever Brothers. They lost all that business, then they put in the Piggy Back service, where a van can be parked at the shippers warehouse where it is loaded. The railroad sends a tractor out to pick it up and they haul it down to the railroad and put it on a flat car and haul it from like Los Angeles to Ogden. It may be taken off here where a tractor is put on it and it’s driven over to Wholesale Grocery or wherever it is going. That's off the highway. They put two trailers sometimes on one flatcar. You can see trailer after trailer on these flatcars. Sometimes the whole train is made up of those. That's taking business off the highway and it leaves more space for the automobiles. Take for instance, when they have a railroad wreck. They had a wreck up in the canyon the other day. Who went up and cleaned that off? The railroad. They pay all their damages and cleared things off and got things going again. When there is a big snowstorm who cleans the highways? The State. The trucks sit there and wait until the state cleans off the snow, then they go on their merry way again. Really the railroad is discriminated against. 14 MW: True, but only the train runs on the track, whereas the highway is used by cars, trucks, and bicycles. OM: Yea, that's true, that's true. However, the truckers are using the highways for profit. The trucks are hauling payloads along the highways and they are so heavy that they break up the highways something fierce. There are certain things that will never go any other way except by rail, like the big, heavy, hard-to-handle things. Anything a shipper can ship by truck, he's going to do it. I don't think these accidents and things like that will really affect anybody. They have to go as cheap as they can. The freight charges are really high, but they are not any higher comparatively than they are in trucks. I know, like this Great Salt Lake Mineral Company started in business out here on the lake, and about once a week we get a cheek. S.P. started that rail out there then the U.P. went out there. Just the other day we got a check for $25,000 in freight charges on the U.P. and about the same amount on the S.P. This is just for the cars going out there from the lake. That's consistent; they pay heavy freight charges. They don't pay any more than anyone else, but they have a lot of business, MW: I just can see that, that is really what the truckers play up for public relations. We have talked just about an hour. In a short summary, what does the future of the railroad in Ogden and the nation look like? OM: I don't know really, but my opinion is that you can see from what they have already done that Ogden will be eliminated as a major terminal. It once was a major terminal, much bigger than Salt Lake, but now everything goes to Salt Lake. Trains from the north come down and go right through to Salt Lake, and then they take the Ogden cars off and bring 15 them back. Trains from the east cane and go right through to Salt Lake, not all of them, but a lot of them. They also take the Ogden cars off and bring them back. MW: What exactly has happened; Ogden was supposed to once be the major railroad center for the West? OM: Well, they are making terminals like for all the accounting for every place in Utah, from Malad to the southern border, is done in Salt Lake. The bills are all paid in Salt Lake. For instance, the Great Salt Lake Mineral Company will ship out a car to Leslie Salt Company or anyplace, and it says on there, "Collect the charges from Leslie Salt Company." You send the bill to Salt Lake to Leslie Salt Company. When the check comes, it is postmarked California. We present bills to somebody and when the check comes for the freight, it may come from Dayton, Ohio. If you mail a bill to some company, you don't really expect to get a check from that company. It will come from someplace else. In Ogden, there is Pillsbury and Framer's Grain, and Evan's Trade is doing a lot of business with us. In regard to freight charges, if they are on the established credit list, they have five days to pay their bill. Even a place as big as Pillsbury has only five days. You can count on getting their check on the due date. If the bill is wrong they send it back, but you hear from them in five days. They are the last of the conformists that do their job like it should be done. The rest of them all ignored the little stamp that requires the bill to be paid within five days. There are others besides Pillsbury that pay their bills promptly, but most just ignored that. But in Pillsbury's traffic department they know all the rules, they are experts and if they say it is so, it's so. They are about the only ones you can bank on for that. MW: Can't the I.C.C. do something about them? 16 OM: Well, they could, but the way they do is they send inspectors around. We have to keep track of when the bill is sent to the customer and when the check is returned. If this I.C.C. inspector canes along and he finds a violation, he checks it to see if it is consistent. If it's consistent, he can fine the railroad and the customer up to $5,000. Just recently they told about some firm and the railroad that was fined for some violation of credit rules. This is so that you don't give anybody an unfair break. Everybody has to pay their bills on time. Just like they charged a merge on a freight car, back in the early days, industry would get a car in and they didn't have any place to put the stuff so they would just leave the car sit, there with the freight in it as a warehouse. It got so that it wasn't fair to someone else who had a warehouse, so they established the Murray's Rules. After 48 hours they are charged for the oar, and so not very many people hold them. There will always be a railroad, because there are so many things that they couldn't haul any other way. Like to haul automobiles by air that would be a toughie. They could probably do it, but it would be expensive. MM: Do they ship many animals compared to what they use to? OM: No, the livestock business use to be really big and the stockyards were just teaming with business. All the commission firms had their offices down there, and they had an assistant agent and three or four people working there. They were required not to hold livestock on a car for more than 36 hours, so they would have to bring it into Ogden, and if they couldn't get to their stop in 36 hours, they would have to unload the livestock and feed them and water them and rest them, and put them back in the car and send them out. Now places like Swift sends the big trucks out, and they go up to the rancher and load the cattle there and haul it to Chicago. They don't care about the 36 hours, 17 because there isn't a law that governs the truckers on that. They use to fine the railroad if they would confine animals more than 36 hours in a car without feed, water, and rest. You see the livestock business is almost gone. You go out by the stockyards and all those corrals are empty, and the livestock building, they are using it for some kind of a school now. MM: Skills center. OM: Yeah, a skills center. MM: How about some of those old fellows that use to ride with the cattle? OM: There used to be a caretaker, when I was a boy, and I wanted to go see my aunt in San Francisco. I had been laid off of the railroad, so a man down at the railroad office in the stockyards had a shipment going out, and he told me be down there ready to go and he'd let me ride in the caboose. The fellow that owned the cattle was there and I said, "What do you want me to do?" "Just get into the caboose and startup," he said. So I did and it took about two days to get to San Francisco. It was kinda of a fun ride, but they don't do that anymore because they don't have any cattle. The S.P. closed down their operations about two or three months ago and it was in the paper. It told how they had to borrow cars from the U.P. to go out there and get the cattle and sheep and bring them in off the range. That was the last cattle trip on the cattle cars on the S.P. because they were going out of business. They don't now haul anything less than carload freight. They don't haul any livestock. All they are really interested in is the really big shipments of whole carloads. They can just load at the shipper’s warehouse and take it right on through and let the points at the end load their warehouse. All the railroad does is just haul it. They don't ship as much grain as they use to. It's still heavy shipping though. 18 MW: Thanks very much for your time then Mr. MacCarthy, if that’s all you want to say. OM: I can't think of anything else. MW: Well, thank you very much. 19