Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1897-07-22
w FROM OYSTER sogP
How ~ Ingenious Locomotive Engineer
Saved His Train and Passengers.

nov mu AhEtnIDus A<oCohlOkaFe engineer
Saved His Train and Passengers.
He was more than an ordinarily &C
complished liar for an amateur, and
they all knew it when they asked him
for a story.
81 can tell you how / once ran an en-
CINE and saved q traiEload of people
with an oyster stew if you want to
more exciting than that, +" he said apollo
getically.
That's good enough" they all de-
clared. give us that"
"All right, then, here goes, " he said
as he settled back in his chair. II was
once engineer on a road that ran for a
long distance through the forests of
northern Wisconsin, and we were fire.
quently bothered by forest fires. They
were particularly bad at the time /
speak of. One day | had run through
one big blaze, only to find that there
was a bigger one ahead. The worst of
it was we We're low on water, and there
was no chance to fill the tank without
dashing through the fire ahead of us. /
sent the fireman out TO see if we had
enough to make the run, but he came
back and told me the boiler was almost
dry.
Il was puzzled for awhile. 1t was
death to all of us l knew to stay there,
but how to get out was the question.
Suddenly a happy thought struck me.
There was a milk car just behind the
first baggage, and j made for it. How
much milk have you got?' / says to the
fellow in charge. About 40 cans, I
guess, he answered. Why do you ask?'
Never mind, says /. What's that in
those cans in the corner?' Oysters, he
answered. But why do you want to
know Never you mind, / told him,
and then ! ordered the other train hands
who had come up to see why we had
stopped to tote that milk and those oys-
tiers up to the engine.
"They did it in spite of the kicking
of the milkman, and when they had
brought them up / ordered them all
chucked into the tank. The conductor
came up, too, and declared it was a
funny notion to be making oyster stew
in an engine boiler, when we were in
danger of being burned alive, but /
soon convinced him that it was neces-
sary if we did not want to stay there
and roast.
well, we finally dumped in all the
milk and all the oysters and started
ahead. You ought to have smelled the
steam that came back into that engine
cab. 1t would have made you think of
an old time church festival. Whewl
How that soup did SMELL 1t made the
engine jump, though, and that was all
we wanted. We got up a great head of
steam in no time, and the way we
plunged through that next fire belt was
a caution. As we pulled up at the sta
ton just beyond L opened up and began
TO whistle. A great cloud of oyster soup
OF vapor shot into the sky, of course,
and didn't come down till we were far
out Of sight. Then it settled like a
thick fog-oysters, soup and all. Every
body noticed it, of course, and there
was a country scientist in the town
who was sure it was the greatest phe-
nonenon of the age. 1t was raining
oyster soup up there be was sure, and
the next issue of the weekly papers were
full Of it-not the soup, but the news of
1T. After the residents up that way had
all swallowed it-not the soup, but the
story-we told them about it, and that
was the ~silliest locking scientist ! ever
saw. Chicago Times Herald.