(erielack) Good old summertime on the EL RR

[WSmith5957_@_aol.com]

   First let me advise my friends on the FEC Chapter that I will not preside 
at the June meeting of the Chapter acct my wife & I will be on vacation. 
Having said that I will now relate a little incident from the former DL&W yard in 
Binghamton, New York.
    As a low seniority fireman, I was limited to a few yard jobs, one of 
which was the afternoon East End job of the 'new' yard (so called because it was 
built in 1910). This was a pretty good job because of being away from all the 
officials at the other end of the yard with its' yardoffice, tower 'BY', 
roundhouse, etc. 
    As long as we got the pickups ready for the eastbound freights and the 
other jobs like the Syracuse and Utica trains, we were left alone by everyone. 
One of the men assigned to the eastend was a carman who'd pick dandelion greens 
in a nearby field and also knew which mushrooms were good and he'd pick them 
too. These mushrooms would be cooked in a large fryingpan on the potbellied 
stove in he eastend yardoffice along with some Italian sausages which the carman 
bought uptown. My part in the afternoon meal was to go to the nearby 
Lawrences' Dairy store & get a gallon of milk (49c if u brought ur own jug). We took 
turns buying the milk & one hot day it became the turn of the yard conductor, 
Louie Palkovic, to shell out his money.
     Louie was a BIG guy who was retired from the Binghamton police 
department and although now in his 50s, nobody wanted to mess with him. He had a 1953 
Buick 2-door that gleamed & he also carried a tarp that he covered the car with 
when he arrived. Like many of the older railroaders he had a small leather 
changepurse with a snap on top that i'd only seen whenb my grandmother gave me a 
nickel, but a lot of the older men had one. When he clicked it open, you 
really expected to see a moth fly out. The Irish engineers & brakemen (who had 
many relatives on the police force in Binghamton) told me that when the cops were 
going to raid a bookie joint on Chenango Street or perhaps a house of ill 
repute, they'd always send Louie through the door first in case someone should be 
there to hit you over the head with a chair. Louie wouldn't be hurt and Jim 
Ryans' brother-in-law wouldn't either. The other little story was that whenever 
a little 'present' from a businessman was to be recieved, one of the Irishmen 
would send Louie up the street to check doorknobs & make sure that 
law-abiding businessmen had secured their premises. Louie wouldn't have understood about 
graft anyway. 
       The day I have in mind was hot and Dick Marsh, a brakeman, said "Hey, 
kid, get 49c off of Louie & get us a good cold gallon of milk at Lawrences". 
Louie got 2 quarters from the depths of his change purse & handed them to me. 
Mr Marsh followed me out the door and advised me that the crew was going to see 
how tight Louie really was & that I was not to give him the penny change when 
I came back.
      I came back & put the milk on the table with the sausages, rolls, & the 
bucketfull of dandelion greens which had been covered with vinegar & oil (we 
ate these meals with our hands). Louie looked a little uncomfortable as we 
chowed down. Finally about halfway through the meal out it came. "Walter, did the 
price of milk go up at the dairystore?"  I got to my feet and fumbling in my 
overalls, came out with the penny which I ceremoniously handed over and Louie 
placed in the old changepurse.
NOBODY laughed.
      What got me thinking of this old guy was an 8x10 black & white foto I 
took of him on the bottom step of our switchengine at the eastend. He had just 
shoved an empty hoppercar in the clear of the switching lead all by himself. 
It still had a little roll on it, but it would have stopped short of the clear 
& he PUSHED it by himself. That's why nobody laughed at him.
Regards to you all,
Walter E. Smith
Employee #102156

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