Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1906-06-23

points with the ash of San Francisco
cigar, and Neighbor would begin to
heave from the middle up like hippo
potamus, and Callahan would laugh his
whiskers full of dew, and HALEY would
yell with delight, and the slaves in the
next room would double up on the dead
! at the story, Blackburn would sit with
his laugh all in smile. but never a
noise or word. He enjoyed it all, not
| a doubt of that, only it was all tenn
pered, reckon, by something that had
gone before At least that's the way it
now strikes me, and I watched those
big fellows pretty close-the fellows
| who were to turn while I was growing
up among them into managers and
presidents and magnates and some of
them from every day catch-as-catch-can
men with the common alkali fecking
their boots into dead men for whom
| marble never rose white enough or high
I enough.
Blackburn was four years at the
Wickiup on the night trick. 1t wouldn' t
have seemed natural to see him there
in daylight. 1t needed the yellow gloom
of the old kerosene lamp in the room,
the specked. knotted. warped, smoky
pine ceiling losing itself in black and
cobwebbed corners, the smoldering
murk of the soft coal fire brooding in
the shabby old salamander and outside
in the darkness the wind screwing
down the gorge and rafting the shrunk-
en- easements to raise Blackburn in the
dispatcher's chair. Blackburn and the
lamp and the stove and the ceiling and
the gloom-in a word, Blackburn and
the night trick-they went together.
Before the short line was opened the
No. and No. trains caught practical
~ all the coast passenger business.
They were immensely heavy trains.
Month after month we sent out two
and three sections of them each way,
and they always ran into our division
on the night trick. Blackburn handled
all that main line business with a mile
age Of sos, besides the mountain
branches, say 400 more; and the pas
mostly at night, for l and 5.
Now three men wrestle with Black
burns mileage, but that was before
they found out that dispatchers, al
though something tougher than steel, do
wear out. Moreover, we were then a
good way from civilization and extra
men If a dispatcher took sick there
was no handy way of filing in; it was
just double up and do the best you
could.
One lad in the Office those days every
body loved-Fred Norman He was off
the Burlington, kid of fellow who
looked. more like a choir boy than a
train dispatcher. But he was all light
ning-a laughing, restless, artless boy,
open as book and quick as a current.
There was better reason still, though,
why they loved Fred-the boy had con-
sumption. That's why he was out In
the mountains, and his mother in De-
troit used to write Bucks asking about
him, and she used to send us all things
in Fred's box. His flesh was as white
and as pink as mountain snow, and he
had brown eyes. He was a good boy,
and / called him handsome I reckon
they all did. Fred brought out tennis
set with him, the first we ever saw in
Medicine Bend, and before he had been
playing an hour he had Neighbor, big as
a grizzly, and Callahan, with a pipe
In one hand and a tennis guide in the
other chasing all over the yard after
balls, and HALEY trying to figure forty
10 orb 4l,o
ford drive. don't say what he was to
me: only that he taught me all I ever
knew Or ever will know about handling
trains, and, though I was carrying mes
sdges then and he was signing orders,
we were really like kids together
Fred for long time had the early
trick. He came on at 4 in the morning
and caught most of the through freights
that got away from the river behind
the passenger trains There was no
use trying to move them in the night
trick. Between the stock trains east
bound and the both way passenger
trains, if westbound freight got
caught in the mountains at night the
engine might as we'll be standing in the
house saving fuel: there wasn't time to
get from one siding to another. So Fred
Norman took the freights as they came,
and he handled them like ringmaster.
When Fred's whip cracked, by Joe! a
train had to dance right along, grade or
no grade. Fred gave them the rights,
and they had the rest to door bust
hess to do with the superintendent or:
with Doubleday, Neighbours assistant
In the motive power.
There was only one tendency in Fred
Eorman's dispatching that anybody
could criticise. He never seemed, after
handling trains on the plains, to appre-,-
ciate what our mountain grades really
meant, and when they pushed him he
sent his trains out pretty close togeth-
.er. 1t never bothered him to handle a..
heavy traffic. He would get the. BUSH
hess through the mountains just as
fast as they could put it at the division. !,
but occasionally there were some hair
curling experiences among the freights