Oral History Program Coy Thurman Interviewed by John Thompson 1 July 1974 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Coy Thurman Interviewed by John Thompson 1 July 1974 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. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed Kelley Evans, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Thurman, Coy, an oral history by John Thompson, 1 July 1974, 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 Coy Thurman. The interview was conducted on July 1, 1974, by John Thompson, in Ogden, Utah. Thurman reminisces about working on the railroad from 1910-1963. He also talks about difficult times during the Depression. JT: Could you tell us a little bit about your early life? CT: Well, I was born in Arkansas. Went to work for the railroad in 1909. JT: You were born in 1894? CT: Yes. JT: So you were just 15 years old when you started working on the railroad. What did you do? CT: Water boy. JT: What did this consist of? What did a water boy do? CT: He carried a bucket of water and a big dipper with him, and went around at work giving the men who were working laying ties some water. JT: Just gave them a drink. Was this in Arkansas? Right around that area? How long did you do that for? CT: Oh, I worked there for years, but I worked in various capacities. Worked water boy, for section man, section man working in the depot as his special helper. Worked at telegraphing, worked as brakeman in the latter part of 1914. Worked out of near Little Rock when he had a big wreck there, head-on collision, six or nine people, everybody on the motorcar was gone. JT: Where was this wreck? 1 CT: Tipton Ford, Missouri. JT: What caused it? CT: Operator failed to give us the order. JT: Were you hurt in it? CT: No, I wasn’t in the wreck but I was on the train crew. JT: This was in 1914? CT: Yes, in 1914, yes. JT: Was anything done to the man for negligence or anything? Any action taken? CT: They never found him, he left. He just left the country. JT: When did you move out to Utah? CT: I came out here in 1914. I left my home and came out here. JT: Why did you come out here? CT: Well, there was nothing to work there in train service anymore because I wasn’t 21 years old, and they only paid me $15 a month as telegrapher. I was looking for more money. JT: That and all the experience you had being around the railroad that long, and they wouldn’t let you work because you weren’t 21? CT: That is in train service. JT: What does that consist of? CT: Brakeman, running the trains. That was the law. That was the law around here at that time. Still that law. You can’t go to work down here until you’re 21 years old in train service. JT: Interesting. 2 CT: I worked from 1914-17. No, until November 16, 1917, was 21 years old. Then I went into train service as a brakeman. JT: Here in Ogden? CT: Yes, no in Evanston, Wyoming. JT: You moved out to Evanston first? CT: See, while I was an operator, I held rights from Cheyenne to Ogden. Came out here as an operator. You see, I’d worked any place they sent me between Evanston and Ogden. That was my district. While I was in train service, my district was from Green River to Ogden. JT: Green River, Wyoming? CT: In 1917 I went into train service and stayed in train service until Uncle Sam wanted me. JT: Uncle Sam wanted you. How much more money were you getting from train service than telegraph? You said you were only getting $15 a month as a telegraph operator? CT: I was a telegraph operator in Arkansas. When I came out here I got $77.50 a month as telegraph operator. But I had to pay $35 a month board and room out here. JT: What did you do when Uncle Sam called you? Did you go overseas? CT: Yes, in about 90 days. They put us in what they call a branch of the cavalry. They took our horses all away from us. They took me out of the cavalry unit and put me in artillery. And then when they got to France, 1917, because I had railroad experience, they took me out of that and put me in train service over there. JT: Did they do that with a lot of people that were drafted, if they had train service? CT: I wasn’t drafted. I enlisted. JT: You enlisted. How about other people, did they get a lot? 3 CT: Well, if they had to have you, they put you there. That’s all. You had to go where... You might enlist for the infantry as far as that’s concerned. If you had more experience and could do a better job in train service than you could in infantry, that is where the AEF, American Expeditionary Force that’s where you went. JT: What did you do there in train service in France? CT: Hauled ammunition from the sea coast up to the front, in shifts. JT: You were on the train itself? CT: Yes. We didn’t have no 16 hours or 8 hours. We worked 24 hours a week if necessary. JT: You a crack outfit? Always get the job done? CT: Yes, we never failed the whole time we were over there. We got track blown up a lot of times. JT: By the Germans? CT: Yes. We’d just have to, we didn’t have somebody to mend the track. We had to get out and do it ourselves. JT: They didn’t give you scouts or any protection at all? CT: Oh, had the air force. JT: Just the air force. CT: And artillery to back us up, yes. But we hauled it right up, well right up to the artillery, firing lines. JT: Interesting. When did you come back? CT: 1919. JT: 1919. Did you come back to Evanston? CT: Yes, come back to Evanston. Then I came down here. They moved us down here then. 4 JT: What were you doing for the railroad then? CT: I was a brakeman then. JT: How did you like that job? CT: Liked it fine. I stayed in train service then up until I retired. JT: As a brakeman? CT: Well, no, I was promoted. You had to have two years’ experience as a brakeman before you could be a conductor, but after I got my experience in, why then they promoted me to a conductor. JT: A brakeman is one of the more dangerous jobs on the railroad, isn’t it? Really had to be on your toes to do that. CT: Well, if may be more dangerous than any other job in train service. There are five men on a train. If the train happens to ditch, why, you all happen to ditch. JT: Did you have any accidents while you were a brakeman? CT: No, not while I was a brakeman. I had a bad one when I was promoted two years later. JT: How much were you paid when you came back after the war? CT: $3.78 for an eight hour day. We didn’t have an eight hour day then. It was $3.78 for a day. Well maybe they did have the eight-hour day when I got back. I can’t remember. They didn’t have it when I went. JT: Was the Ogden depot down here a pretty busy place when you came back? CT: I believe there were 52 passenger trains in and out of there in 24 hours. JT: How about for freight and stuff? CT: Oh, a lot of trains. The trains them days was short trains then. Had small engines and couldn’t pull very many cars. You had 35 cars, that was a train. 5 JT: That was the max? CT: And they were smaller cars. These cars are a lot larger today than they were then. JT: Five-man crew still? CT: Yes. JT: That would be the engineer, brakeman, two brakemen, the conductor, and a fireman? CT: I believe since they got these diesels, they may firemen on them, but I don’t think so. JT: Well, back then, what was the five-man crew? CT: Engineer, fireman, conductor, and two brakemen. JT: The fireman was in with the engineer, right? CT: He’s the one that shovels the coal. That was his job. He had the hardest job of the bunch. JT: On the old steam engines? CT: Steam engines. .JT: Were you in the depot in February 1923 when the depot burnt down? CT: No, pretty bad fire. Believe I was working on the east end of the local then. Worked from Evanston to Green River on what we called a local train. JT: Why do they call that local? It’s going to Evanston. Where did the word local come in like that? CT: Used to, you didn’t have the automobiles you got nowadays, trucks. We had what we called merchandise cars. We had to haul machinery, merchandise, feed, and everything else and peddle it along to all of these stations. Load stock, unload stock. Used to haul a lot of sheep to the summer range down here and the winter range here in Utah, summer range in Wyoming. And we’d bring them back in the fall from Wyoming, back to 6 the winter range. JT: Where would the sheep come from in Utah? CT: Wasatch just this side of Evanston. Emery, down this side of Evanston, Echo and Hennifer, Morgan, all those places are loaded with sheep. JT: That’s all sheep country? CT: In the summer time, you see. JT: Do you remember what the cost was for that? CT: No, I don’t. There’s so much a car. JT: The sheepman would have to pay for the railroad for that though? CT: Oh yes. JT: What did they do before that? Did they herd them down there to Wyoming or...? CT: Ever since I can remember until they got the big trucks the trains always hauled them, always called them sheep loaders. JT: If the train wasn’t a local, what other kind was there? CT: Well, we had fruit trains, solid stock trains. We’d have stock trains going from here to Omaha, straight to Omaha. That would be a through train. That’s what we’d call a hot shot stock train. JT: What does the term local mean then? CT: That means stop at every station. If it didn’t stop, it would be a through train. Yes, like hauling oranges through stock. We would have solid orange trains, lot of them, see, from California to back east. Grapes, we used to haul a lot of grapes. JT: So a train would run from Ogden to Los Angeles, right straight through Utah would be a through train? 7 CT: Through train. We had lots of passenger trains. I was conductor on one. I had 900 passengers and it had two helper conductors to help me, three conductors on the train. JT: You were the conductor then? CT: I was what they called a train conductor. In other words, you were responsible for the entire crew and everybody on the train. JT: You’re the head man, the conductor is on the train. He’s the boss. CT: Because these helper conductors, they done just as much work as you did as far as handling tickets, handling passengers is concerned. For instance, if you had a wreck, somebody got hurt on the train, you were the guy that was responsible. You had to make out the reports, call the doctors, or get them to the hospital or whatever... JT: What train were you on then, one particular run? CT: Well, when I retired, I was on #10 out of here. I was 103 West, 110 East. JT: When did you retire, sir, what year? CT: 1963. Got to quit when you’re 70 years old. Well, you got to quit now before, but then you had to quit at 70. JT: Quite a long career in the railroad. Did you enjoy it? CT: Well, that was my life. That’s all I knew. Except the time I was in the army. You just earned a living, that’s all. JT: Any experiences you had? CT: Had one big wreck. Had an ore train run all the way down. JT: Where was this? CT: Over at Green River run from Granger, top of the hill down to Green River, about seven miles. 8 JT: How many cars. CT: I believe it was 112. JT: Did they, were they all full of ore? CT: All but the 12 head cars, all full of ore. JT: How bad a wreck was that? Did all of them crash? CT: No, about 35 head cars that piled up, burnt up the diesels. The cars didn’t burn up, they were steel cars, but the 12 head cars we picked up, they were wooden cars. They burnt up. JT: How did the fire start? From the engine? CT: It must have. We had a car of gasoline we picked up from the head end, 12 cars between the engine, and they’re always the position that the fire started from, those gasoline cars. JT: What year was this, about? CT: Oh, I’d say about 1945. Something like that. JT: You didn’t go to World War II? Was the railroad in this area pretty busy during World War II? CT: Yes. JT: What were they hauling mainly then? CT: A lot of ammunition, artillery, war stuff. A lot of stuff you didn’t know what was in it, what it was. JT: You just hauled it. CT: We just hauled it. Had no idea what it was. JT: How was the track during the winter up in the mountains with the snow? Was there 9 snow removal gear? CT: What we called snow plowing. JT: Is that like that big old cattle? CT: It was a great big old machine with a big fan on the front of it, right on the tracks. You’d get behind it with two or three engines and you’d push it through the snow, and it’d blow it out, see. Big blades would cut the snow loose and it would blow it out. JT: Was there any one year that was really worse than another year? CT: Well, there was one year we were tied up, but I can’t remember what year it was. Had a lot of sand blown in with the snow, and the snowplow wouldn’t handle it, had to shovel it out by hand. But that was way back. Oh must have been back in the 1930s, early 1930s. JT: How were the 1930s with the Depression and that? Did you work then? CT: No. JT: You didn’t work at all? CT: Well, weren’t many of us did work then, that is on the railroad. JT: Were you laid off then? CT: Yes...See, I didn’t have all that experience in train service. JT: Since 1919 you did, 1919-29, that’s 10, 11, 12 years. That wasn’t considered that much service? CT: No, not when you run one train a day. JT: Oh, they count how many trains you run, not the years. CT: Well, the oldest man went first, seniority, see. JT: They still use seniority system like that now? 10 CT: Yes, I could work a little, see, but not enough you might say to make a living. JT: What did you do then? CT: Well, worked out here on the farm, picking apples and cherries. JT: Anything you could get? CT: Anything I could get. Finally got in with the Ben Lomond Orchard Company out there and got a manager’s job out there running a picking gang in the summertime. Run had 200 pickers picking cherries and apples, peaches. They had a big farm out there, the Ben Lomond Orchard Company. JT: Now was this where, North Ogden, out there? CT: And then after we got all the fruit picked and shipped, we used to ship a carload a day with cherries or peaches, whatever we were picking. Back east, as far back as Philadelphia. And they all went express, see, passenger. Then in the wintertime, I run the same gang, not the same gang, but the same company, a pruning gang. We’d go around and prune all these trees: peach trees, apple trees, apricots and everything. JT: For the same company? When did you get back on with the railroad? CT: Oh it was about 1932, right after the Depression. I wasn’t long getting back after things started to move. I had enough seniority I was called back in my turn, see, I stayed in train service all the way through there. JT: Was it good to get back? CT: Oh, one young wife and four kids. I’ll say it was good to get back. In debt. JT: What wage did you start then, do you remember that? CT: Well, I know we were getting $347 a hundred. JT: That’s a hundred miles, right? 11 CT: Yes, eight hours are a hundred miles. JT: How were your working conditions? CT: Oh, I’d say they were all right. The Union Pacific was a fine company to work for. JT: Is that who you worked for your whole career there? CT: Except down in Arkansas and Missouri. JT: The labor, did they have labor unions? The Brotherhood of Brakemen or Firemen, things like that? CT: Yes, I used to belong to what we called the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen. Then after I got to run a train, I joined the Order of Railroad Conductors. But now it’s all one organization. JT: What were their ideas or principles? Were they more a social club, or were they more of a better-conditions type of organization? CT: Well, we always worked for better conditions. Of course as living costs went up, we had to ask for raises, you know. But the Union Pacific was a very fine company to do business with. As a rule, they always treated us pretty good. JT: Did you ever strike? CT: Oh, I think we had two or three, maybe one, strike or something like that. Didn’t amount to anything. Didn’t tie up anything very long. I believe I was in only one of them. JT: Do you remember the Bamberger Railroad here? CT: Yes, it was electrical railroad, and they ran from here to Salt Lake. JT: Did you like the electrics? CT: Well, I never did work for them, but they had one run from here to Preston, Idaho, to Utah-Idaho Central. And they had one from Salt Lake to Payson, and I forgot the name 12 of it. But they were all electric. Pretty good little railroad, did a lot of business. JT: Did you ever take the wife and kids and go down to Lagoon on it? CT: On the Bamberger, yes. JT: How about the Ogden Rapid Transit Company that was here with the streetcars. Was that a good outfit? CT: Never did work for them. JT: Well, did you use the trains or the cars? CT: No, their cars weren’t interchangeable. JT: Did you ride on them? Going downtown or somewhere? CT: Oh yes. I got to ride for five cents on them. Those days... Well, now, as long as you were going one way, you couldn’t turn around and come back. You’d have to pay another nickel. But when I was working for the Ben Lomond Orchard Company during the Depression, I rode form 28th and Washington to the city limits for a nickel. Then I’d walk from the city limits to the Ben Lomond Orchard Company on foot, every night and morning. JT: Where was the city limits? Out there at Second Street? CT: Yes. JT: How far were the orchards? CT: Oh about seven miles... I walked night and morning. I got one ride in two years, in a pickup. I walked the rest of the time. Worked for $2 a day, took it out in fruit, my wages in fruit. Then I brought the fruit in here. My wife and kids stood out on this street in front of the house and tried to peddle it. People going by could buy the best bushel out there, for 65 cents. Had grapes, plums, apricots, cherries, I had everything. I even took pork, 13 hogs and butchered them, and peddled the meat for wages. Anything you could get to make a nickel, keep from starving to death. JT: Was that pretty much everybody around here at that time? CT: Oh you bet. I’d go up there in Ogden Canyon and cut that deadwood in the canyon and the city firemen, they’d haul it down for fuel. That’s how we got our fuel, couldn’t even buy coal. JT: What do you feel is a major improvement with the railroad? CT: Well, just like everything else, they just kept getting better equipment and faster trains. JT: You think faster trains are good? Are they as safe as slow ones? CT: They’re all right. Fast trains are all right. You got good track, road bed. JT: How was the road bed checked? Did they send somebody out, or how did they check the road? CT: They had section men. So many men for so many miles. JT: Did they go out every day or what? CT: Yes, they worked on that track every day of the week except Sunday. They’d have every four or five miles. They’d have what they called a section crew. But I understand nowadays, they just go out and take a whole gang and got all this machinery and work with machinery nowadays. I haven’t been down there for years. JT: Were you on a section crew? CT: Yes sir. JT: Is that what you did right after water boy in that period of your life? CT: Well, that’s where I started when I was a kid. JT: Is that a lower paying job today than a conductor or brakeman? 14 CT: Oh yes. That’s when I started in 1910, I got 10 cents an hour. I don’t know what they are now. JT: What train wrecks there were, was that even or bad track? CT: Well yes, we’d have broken rails, broken wheels, what we call hot boxes, journals burnt box, various things that can pile you up. Sun kink, weather gets so hot it kinks the tracks, see. JT: How did they get back in 1910, 1920, back in there? How did they get trains off the track and back on? CT: They had what they called wreckers. It’s a big hook they send out to pick these cars up and set them back on the track. Of course you had to build your track back first. You’d generally tie up the track first. They’d build what we called a shoe-fly around it so they could get the cars picked up and got them on their way when the track was torn up. JT: When did the crew, would the crew have to schedule itself to go out to check the track when the train wasn’t coming by? CT: Well, section crews had regular hours except in bad weather, and if a big rainstorm came up, they’d have to go out and patrol their track for high waters. Sometimes wash the track out, see. They’d go out night or day when high water was evidenced, see. Otherwise, they’d work in the day. JT: Who’s over that? CT: They call it a section boss. JT: How would you, back in the early 1900s and that, when you’d have a broken wheel or hot box and you would have to repair the train, how would you send back to make sure another train wouldn’t rip you? Would you just have a fireman out there? 15 CT: You’d send the rear brakeman back. He’s the flagman. He’d go back and use torpedoes and fuses. JT: You wouldn’t let a station know or anything? You’d just send that man back to warn trains that were coming? CT: Those days, yes. But now they got walkie-talkies. They don’t flag anymore. They tell me they don’t even flag at all. Everything was down out of Cheyenne. You talk right to Cheyenne. Crew out of here talks to Cheyenne. You tell them what your trouble is, where you’re at, and he’ll tell you where the other train is, and he’ll notify the other train. JT: Down there near Las Vegas, Nevada, on the desert, you have something, you’d just talk to Cheyenne? CT: No, no. That’s a different section of the railroad, from here, Ogden to Cheyenne. But you have Ogden to Los Angeles on this end, see, and there from Ogden to Pocatello, and Pocatello to Huntington or to Coeur D’Alene I guess. I don’t know how far the UP goes up. Huntington I guess it is. You see, we have districts, different districts, divisions and districts. But then, from Cheyenne to Omaha, why, the dispatchers handle all that in there, see, from Omaha. Then from Denver to Kansas City down that line, you got another set of dispatchers to handle that end of the railroad. So it’s then they have a lot of CTC, Central Train Control, I understand nowadays. You can run a train on either track, cross them over and dispatch does that. It’s automatic you see. He does that from the office. JT: How do you get a job like a dispatcher or the yardmaster, or something? Where do you come up for them? CT: Well, a dispatcher, you start out as an operator like I first started… Telegraph. And then 16 when you went into the dispatcher’s office, you had to know the Morse Code. You’re working with the telegraph, see. And then you handled the trains. You fixed all the meeting points, passing points, and call in the trains and things like that. That’s a call job. What they call a train sheet. But nowadays, that’s all different. JT: Getting all computerized, that type of thing? CT: Yes. I’ve never been back in 11 years since I’ve been in train service. JT: You still in a union or anything with the railroad? CT: You have to call a lifetime member when you quit. They send you the magazine but you don’t pay any dues, see. You’re just kind of an honorary member. I don’t have any lodge or any organization that I belong to with the exception that one. I don’t pay any years after you’re 50 years a member. They send you a card every year, says life member on it. JT: Did you like to see the diesels come in? CT: Oh yes, sure. I lost this eye from a coal burning engine. Cinders in this eye. JT: When was that? How long since you lost it? CT: Oh it didn’t go out on me until oh, three years ago. It started to cataract in there. After the cataract started, they got to where they had to take the cataract out. They went in to take the cataract and my eye went out. JT: Sorry to hear that. Diesels just easier to operate, easier to maintain? CT: Well, I don’t know about that. I’m no mechanic. I imagine they would be, though. They didn’t have the smoke and the cinders and the dirt and the coal, and all that stuff. The smoke, you didn’t have the noise. You take those old boys we used to have. You couldn’t hear yourself think on them. Diesels were very quiet compared to them. They 17 were smaller and more powerful. Some of those big engines, those were monstrous things. JT: What was that, Big Brother? That big engine they had a name for? CT: Well, the biggest engine we had were 800s, 834 it’s in, it’s still running. It’s up at the World’s Fair now, Spokane. That’s the only steam engine I know that’s in service, that is operational. The rest of them have all been scrapped. JT: While you were a conductor on passenger service, did you enjoy that job? I mean the passengers, did you speak with them a lot? CT: Well, you didn’t have much time to speak with them. You were pretty busy. You might be walking down and taking tickets, but the old noodle is working up here because those tickets got to be right. And a lot of times you have inexperienced ticket agents that make the tickets out wrong, see. And if his ticket’s not made out right and you think there’s undercharge on the ticket, then you got to send in a report on it, see. JT: You don’t ask for the money or anything? CT: Well, if you know, you do. Like if you know you’re right, like you go from Ogden to Green River. That’s where I went on passenger trains, and this agent here sold a ticket, and he sold it too cheap. Of course I know the fare because I had a fare book. In fact, I had a fare book from here to Omaha. Man had a ticket from here to Omaha, and I see something wrong with that ticket, well I just look up the tariff on it, see. And if it didn’t look up to what it should be, I go back to the passenger and tell him there is a mistake made there on the ticket and asked him for the difference. And if he didn’t want to make up the difference, I didn’t argue with him. I’d just wire it in, and they’d handle it. JT: Did you ever find stowaways on the train? 18 CT: Oh yes. JT: What did you do with those people? CT: Well, depends on what nationality they were. If they were a Jew, you’d have a problem on your hand. JT: How’s that? CT: Well, they’d try to beat you out of everything they could. We’d just wire ahead to what we call a special agent, see, to meet the train and let them handle it. Don’t argue with them. Now, for instance, I was coming out of here one time coming from San Francisco. I had two Jews pulling their wives and they had two bedrooms. Each man and his wife had a bedroom, see, and they had a door between the two bedrooms, see. Well, these two Jews bought a single ticket for them, see, but they didn’t buy anything for their wives, see. So they get on the train, conductor comes by to take up the tickets. He knocked on the door like you did. You’d open up the door, there’s one man in there, see. The women, they go through this little door into this other Jew’s apartment, see. And you get his ticket, and shut the outside door, and you go to the next door and then the two women in there come back, all the way San Francisco to Ogden. All these Pullman cars have porters on them, see. He got mad because he wasn’t getting tips out of them. He’s making their beds, see, taking care of the apartment. So he, living here, going back through it, checking these tickets against my passengers, see. They have what we call an identification stub. JT: Above their apartments? CT: Yes. So I says, went back through there, and I says to this porter, “How’s everything in here?” He said, “I’ll tell you boss, there’s four people in there, and there’s supposed to 19 be two people in there, two Pullmans back there in those two drawing cars, but I see four in there.” I said, “Well, I’ll check on it.” So I went back there and knocked on the door. He’d come to the door and gives me his ticket. I said, “This just calls for one party. Where’s the other ticket?” “Oh, it’s just me in here.” I said, “Oh no, there’s two in this compartment.” “Oh no.” We just argued up and down a minute. I said, “I’m not going to argue with you. If I don’t get another ticket, I’m wiring to Evanston for the special agent to meet this train in Green River, and we’re going to find out where these other two people are. Because there’s two people in this one and two people in that one.” So he went next door, and of course there’s just one man in it, see. That’s the way they work it on me, see. They pull everything on you, to best you. Generally speaking, you have very little trouble with the traveling public. As a rule, they’re very nice people to work with. JT: Did you have experience with people looking for jobs, hopping trains, and trying to get from one area to another? CT: Oh yes. We used to have lots of transits, yes. JT: What would you do with those people? CT: Well, we’re supposed to tell them to get off, see. JT: You wouldn’t kick them off or anything? CT: If they didn’t get off, why, we’d just wire ahead to our next terminal and the special agent. JT: What would the special agent do, try to get fare from them? CT: Well, as a rule, if they didn’t get fare they’d just get down over on the highway, see. Get off the right-of-way. But I’d never kick a man off if he’s broke. 20 JT: That’s nice. CT: Well, I never done anything in my life but I did do my duty. I always wired ahead and told them what I had. A lot of times I might ask them to get off, especially out of here. They’d come to me and ask me, and you can’t tell them to get on. If you tell them to get on and anything happens and they get hurt, then they turn around and say the conductor told me to get on, and I’m going to sue the company. It’s on me, see. So you can’t do that. Tell them no, we don’t carry passengers on here. Treat them nice, see. I don’t care who he is, black or what color he is, I never abuse anybody any time or anyplace. I’ve always got some excuse for them. We’re all here and we’re all going to live. JT: Well, looking back on the years now, any closing statement? CT: Looking back, if I had my life to live over again, I’d try to get an education. That would be the first thing. JT: How far did you go in school? CT: Oh, I made it to the third grade... three months a year... If I got the education I wouldn’t work for the railroad . Not when I could, like these guys in Washington DC, now I’d be making paperwork. I wouldn’t work every hour of the day and night when I was called in all kinds of weather when I could sit back. I don’t know if I could do that or not. All I want is what’s coming to me. Well, I’ve got no regrets. I had eight, seven brothers and sisters. We all managed to live well. We’ve all done pretty good. I’ve lost one brother with the flu, when they had the flu epidemic way back. And lost my eldest son. Outside of that, why I’ve got no regrets, I’ve done all right. JT: You still ride a train at all? 21 CT: They won’t let you ride any more. They ain’t got enough trains to take care of the business. What they got, I’d say, there certain times of the year when you can ride. I’ve still got a pass on the Amtrak, but you can’t get on. Won’t let you on. Paid passengers come first. JT: Well, sir, I want to thank you very much for your time. 22