Memoirs of a Depot Flunkey

 Memoirs of a Depot Flunkey

by Walter E. Paul

The shrill squeal of a distant locomotive whistle cut the frosty evening air. The boisterous group encircling the grimy, pot bellied coal heater surged toward the waiting room door and spilled out onto the narrow plank and cinder platform. A half mile away a shimmering headlight swept waveringly around the curve, silhouetting the little red coal dock, the two stall engine house, three or four spindly switch stands and the snow laden forest crowding in on either side. Panting as if weary of dragging its little string of wooden coaches across spruce and cedar swamps and over pine clad ridges the small eight wheeler steam locomotive rattled and jolted to a wheezy stop beside the squat little depot. A tall plume of smoke from its slender stack drifted lazily upward and its headlight stabbed the darkness ahead toward the end of steel at the river bank a short distance away. 

Humpy Russell the hoghead and Jack Williams his fireman stuck their heads out the cab window as they leisurely cut and stowed away fresh chunks of Pieper Heidsick. The mail clerk and the baggageman slid open their doors and leaned idly against the jambs as they waited to watch the passengers alighting from the train.

“Wait Walt,” Bill the agent said putting out a restraining hand as I moved to commence the work he had outlined for me. “We can’t do anything yet. Let’s watch.” We stepped to one side and watched. 

The first two coaches, interiors blue with tobacco smoke, reeking with hard liquor and human filth, commenced vomiting humanity in various stages of inebriation onto the depot platform. Lumberjacks, clothed in woolen trousers, striped mackinaws, rubber soled pacs, woolen caps and with bulging packs on their backs walked, stumbled, crawled or fell down the coach steps. Some could still ambulate unassisted. Some lurched alternately against the train and the depot in their befogged erratic course. Some for mutual help, arms locked in arms, in pairs or threes went shouting on their way. Some were carried by friends each grasping an arm or a leg as his own condition permitted.

With the lumber- jack coaches emptied more sedate passengers from the better coaches tramped by,- timber cruisers, homesteaders, business men, women and children. They all had now reached the end of the line beyond which lay only virgin forest and muskeg clear to the Canadian Border.

With the crowd out of the way Bill and I rolled out the high wheeled baggage trucks and commenced our work of unloading the baggage and express and stowing it safely in the depot ware-room for the night.

Thus ended my first day of railroading.                                                                                                                                            

It was a bustling town, this Big Falls. Once called Ripple, its rapid growth just preceding and following the advent of the railroad seemed to promise something bigger than a mere ripple in the stream of pioneer life, hence the new name of Big Falls which had reference to the thirty five foot drop in the rocky bed of the Big Fork River close by. The town boasted one hardware, two general stores, a blacksmith shop, two hotels, four restaurants, a bank, a drug store, a grade school, eight saloons and a small institution for the incarceration of the lawless. In a modest whisper one might also mention Beaton’s joint snuggled up against the railroad embankment down by the river, the haunt of painted dames of unsavory repute. A doctor, a dentist, an undertaker, a lawyer and a choice assortment of gamblers, thieves and pickpockets represented the professional gentry of the town. The clergy of three small churches were available to properly baptize one upon entering this life, and stood equally ready to give ones defunct remains such attention as they might seem to merit upon leaving it.  Suitable sky-piloting was available in between for those whose mental and spiritual horizons were high enough to appreciate it.

The depot was a squat, rambling affair. Bill and his family occupied two rooms in one end and two rooms in the middle. The stuffy little office had a bay window and a telegraph desk on one side, a large steel safe and a stationary cupboard on the other. A cast iron coal heater occupied the center. A small square wooden tub on spindly legs with a clothes wringer perched on one edge stood in the darkest corner, and was used to wring out damp cloths to be placed between the leaves of immense canvas bound tissue books in making tissue copies of way-bills and various reports.

The small, low ceilinged waiting room had low board seats along three sides and another coal heater in the center. Beyond the waiting room were two bedrooms where Bill’s family slept. The wareroom long, wide and high occupying the north end of the building had a temperature closely matching the out of doors, summer or winter. The whole structure had obviously been put together with a certain disregard for the finer points of carpentering. It was painted a dirty gray on the inside and a dark red on the outside.

There being no electric lights in town the depot was dimly lit at night with kerosene lamps, some suspended from the walls in iron brackets, others with tall bases stood on Bill’s desk and on mine. Two large kerosene lamps the size of a bushel basket crowned a tall post at either end of the platform but seemed only to emphasize the surrounding  gloom they were supposed to illuminate.

Beyond the track in front of the depot, tamaracks, spruces and alder brush crowded close to the right of way ditch. South of the depot just beyond the house track switch was a two story red section house, the coal dock and the wye. Two hundred feet north of the depot stood a large beer warehouse the function of  which was to absorb any surplus stock the current public thirst could not consume immediately after the beer cars arriving daily on the local freight had been unloaded.

When shipments were delayed this warehouse was drawn upon to wash out any threatened draught  

 A wobbly plank sidewalk nailed to sagging stringers led from the north end of the depot platform to the nearest business establishment a block away,- “Cyr Bros. Saloon,-Choice Liquors and Cigars,” the swinging squeaky sign board proclaimed, then as an afterthought was added like small print in an insurance policy, “Cots, 25¢  per night.” Fleas, bedbugs and cockroaches were taken for granted but not charged for. In the after train time rush of business customers were not too finicky. It was said considerable loose change and even whole rolls often passed from the pockets of sleeping customers upstairs to the cash register in the saloon below between the time the cots were occupied in the evening and vacated come morning.

Bill was a likeable guy. Stocky, thin, graying hair, he had a quick temper but a pleasant smile. Often when my work merited a reprimand he quietly picked up his crook stemmed pipe, crammed it with Peerless, touched a lighted match to it, took two or three drags in silence then with a smile on his face patiently pointed out to me my errors and suggested ways of betterment. He often spun yarns of his experiences on an eastern road, while I, a gangling kid of 18 fresh from the backwoods, listened with sagging jaw in wrapt attention.

His wife with a temperament much like his, was pleasant and friendly, always ready for a laugh, but not afraid to spit in the eye of Satan himself if occasion seemed to require it. She was a good mother to her young brood and tried to keep them from bothering their dad in the office. Sometimes they would get by her and step  cautiously into the office to try the old man for a touch, or, failing in that just to hang around until he hollered, “Scat! You younguns!” when they would vanish like last months pay.

Part of my duties were to tend the fires, keep the ashes cleaned out of the ash pans, sweep and dust and make a daily check of all cars in the yard. I sold tickets for the outgoing passenger train, also for the local freight which carried male passengers. There were freight bills to make out for the consignees,-expensing, it was called,- getting the data from the way-bills the conductors brought in with the freight. I soon learned that the freight rate classification of different commodities was something nobody ever learned completely. The frequent supplements, additions, re-classifications and cancellations for the big Western Classification book was a headache to say the least. Bill however did all the revising. I merely copied onto the freight bills what I found on the way-bills after he passed them over to me.

With obstreperous drunks Bill had little patience and told them off in no uncertain terms. If they showed signs of belligerence, either oral or physical, he would step to the wall phone, give the crank a spiteful twist, jerk the receiver off the hook and tell central to run down the town Marshal and send him over to restore peace. Sometimes the drunks showed up in small groups absorbed in discussing their mutual problems when the babble might range all the way from quiet, crying jags to wild shouts of the most blasphemous profanity and filth, often accompanied by violent and mostly aimless swinging of gnarled fists. Or, perchance a friendly if somewhat shaky  uncorking of a bottle gingerly extracted from a capacious mackinaw pocket might produce a temporary lull in the commotion.

Sometimes the drayman brought sample cases of various sizes and weights to the depot, littering the platform with them. As morning train time approached some sleepy traveling salesman would come over from the Robinson Hotel to check them. The first few sample trunks I rassled with were a problem. Just as I had lifted them nearly to the baggage car door something would slip and back they would bounce onto the platform. Frank Coppersmith the brakeman after watching my awkward antics one morning growled, “Take it easy Skinny or you will bust a gut. Get around on the other side of this baby and grab her like this.” Suiting action to words he grabbed the upper right hand corner of his side of the trunk, tipped it back a little then grabbed the lower left hand corner with his other hand. I on the other side obeying his orders put my hands opposite to his on my side of the trunk. “Now” said he, “tip ‘er way back like this. Up with that bottom corner, higher, higher! Now! Heave ‘er in!” Sure enough the big trunk toppled with a resounding wham through the baggage car door, made one more flop crashing up against the opposite door just a bit too late to swat old man Milliken the baggage man, like a fly against a kitchen wall. “What the blue double X blazes do you asinine so and sos think you are doing?” He yelled at us his wrinkled face purple with wrath. “If you had the brains of an imbecile cockroach you’d know better than to throw that thing at me like that!” Milliken was a crusty old coot and saw little humour in life. Anyway it pleased me greatly when I had learned how to cope with the formidable trunks and could hurry one down the platform at a lively clip, tumbling it first on one corner then on another. If it were not too cumbrous I could even grab one sturdy handle and the edge of the opposite side and do a fair job of slamming it at Mr. Milliken  myself.

When I started work at the depot I could already telegraph a little, sending perhaps ten or fifteen words per minute, and receive slowly if the sender was an especially good one and didn’t rush me. What a thrill it was when Bill allowed me to send my first message. I squirmed and sweat, chewed my lip and tried to control the nervous quiver in my fingers as I slowly worked off the dots and dashes. Much to my surprise the receiving operator did not “break” and when the ordeal was over he came back with the proper “OK.”

The chatter of the shiny relay and sounder on Bill’s desk fascinated me. I often listened to it, probably more than was good for the work in hand at the moment. Most of the stuff came so fast that I caught only a word or figure here and there. There were train orders, train OS reports, messages and other business all done on the one crowded wire. Later another wire was strung from Brainerd to Big Falls and a second set of instruments installed on Bill’s desk with a resonator for the sounder standing on one leg like a dozing shikepoke.

When alone in the office I often slipped into Bill’s chair at the telegraph desk to practice sending on the key with the switch closed so nothing went out on the line. Gradually my fingers and wrist became more limber and my ears gradually caught onto the tempo of the chattering sounder. Out of the metallic clatter there gradually developed sense. Not only words but sentences then whole messages began coming to me as I listened. Bill, noticing my interest began allowing me to send messages under his supervision, sometimes I sent them while alone.

All through messages were relayed at Brainerd. Our local wires ended there in an array of over two hundred crowfoot battery cells, standing in orderly rows in the depot basement. Commercial messages were relayed at the Brainerd Western Union Office presided over by David Craig the venerable white haired manager and operator.

The construction office of the B.F.&I.F.Ry. located in Big Falls had the privilege of sending much of their wire business on the railroad wires to their offices in Minneapolis. The rest of their business went at commercial paid rates to Brainerd and from there by Western Union.

One day while Bill was uptown collecting bills the clerk for the construction office brought over a long message for their Minneapolis office telling me what his boss, Mr. Huss would do to my neck if the message was delayed. Thinking it was a commercial message to be paid for I hurriedly counted the words, assessed the charges then called Mr. Craig in the Brainerd Western Union Office. When he answered I proceeded to slowly send this long message, my hand trembling so that he had to break frequently. Finally we reached the end. I gave the signature and closed my  key. Back came his reply,- “OK D”. Bill, walking in just at this point heard his “OK” and glanced over my shoulder. 

“Where did you send that message, Walt?” he enquired.

“To the Western Union in Brainerd.” I replied, sensing that something might be wrong.

“Holy Moses” he gasped, “Old Man Huss will have your hide nailed on the barn door if he gets a bill for that message. That should have gone free on the railroad wire.”

Reaching for the key he called Craig back and told him to bust it, the message was railroad business.

“Bust nothing,” Craig replied, “I worked too hard with that punk helper of yours to bust it. It is going Western Union.”

“Well,” Bill told him, “If you will bust it this time I will post the kid up so he won’t do it again.”

“O.K. for this time” Craig replied “but tell him not to let it happen again.”

Incidentally, in later years when I went to work in the Brainerd depot, Mr. Craig and I became very good friends. 

I roomed and boarded with my sister Grace’s family who lived in a large square house below the hill at the foot of the falls. This was fortunate for me as I had never been away from home before so escaped much of the homesickness that is often the lot of young fellows finding themselves for the first time alone among strangers and in a wild frontier town. I had a cold upstairs room with no heat in winter except what little came up through the small register in the floor. However I had a comfortable bed and plenty of covers so, by quick undressing in the evening and quicker dressing in the morning I didn't mind.

When spring came, freeing the river of ice the log drive came down. Millions of feet of white and Norway pine flowed in a heaving mass day and night over the rapids, bumping and grinding over the rocks, plunging into the deep pools and finally shooting out into slower water at the bottom. The townspeople became accustomed to the constant rumbling of the logs going over the falls. However when a jam formed day or night and the mass of logs stopped, the sudden quiet soon brought crowds of people to the river to see the drivers work to loosen the key logs and start the mass to moving again. When they were unable to do it with their peaveys and brute brawn they would  search out the exact spot where the trouble lay. Tying a bundle of dynamite sticks and a long fuse to the end of a pole they touched a lighted match to the fuse then carefully poked the bundle deep down in the brown swirling water under the seat of trouble. Having placed the charge to his satisfaction the shooter  casually picked his way over the tangle of logs to shore where with his fellows he watched the lazy play of a wisp of blue smoke close down to the surface of the water. Soon there would come a loud grunt and a big column of water shooting upward. Whole logs and broken fragments belched upward fifty feet or more into the air. If the shot was successful the whole mass of logs started instantly and the drive was again on its way down to the big mills on the Rainy River.

When the railroad was finished to Little Fork twenty miles north, arrangements were made for the construction train leaving early each morning to take such passengers and freight as might show up for that point or for the homesteaders between Big Falls and Little Fork. Passengers crowded into the wooden caboose. Their freight and baggage was loaded into box cars partially filled with construction material or onto flat cars of ties and rails.

Progress over the newly laid track across the muskeg swamps was slow. The puffing little locomotive swayed from side to side, the bell occasionally giving out with a sudden clang. In places the rails sank under the weight of the passing train until mud squished up against the wheels. The locomotive drivers sometimes took on the appearance of wagon wheels after passing over a muddy road.

This was before the Hours of Service Law went into effect and the train and engine crews often worked man killing hours. They only survived by taking turns sleeping on the job while their associates did some of their work for them. Often while laying track the engineer went back to the caboose for two or three hours sleep on the seat cushions while his fireman handled the engine, then the engineer would take charge while his fireman slept. Same way with the conductor and the two brakemen, they would all grab what sleep they could through the day to make up for the few hours of rest at night. The construction train usually returned to Big Falls around six in the evening then switched until ten or eleven oclock. Astir again by four in the morning they put their train together, watered up and were ready to leave by 7 Am so they could start laying track by eight.

Freights coming in from the south often switched until the small hours of the morning. With only a few hours left before time to leave for Bemidji the engine crews often took a brief nap on their seat boxes in the engine cab while the train crew stretched out on the dusty cushions of their crummy on the rear end of the train.

At first Bill always rose about 4 AM to sell tickets and get a clearance from the dispatcher in Brainerd for the morning trains. As I gradually improved on the wire he finally left it to me to clear the trains and to sell tickets as well. Not being a duly qualified and examined operator I had no right to handle train orders or clearances but there was a certain laxity about such matters on this little line that would not be tolerated today. Anyway it worked. The morning trains left on time. The dispatcher got his OS. Bill got his sleep. I got a little experience that helped to give me confidence and encouragement.

Scarcely a day went by that did not have its incidents to cause a laugh or to create a ripple of excitement. There was the case of John, the engine watchman. He tended the construction train engine at night. He kept the fire going in the fire box and coaled the tender from the coal gondola spotted just into clear on the Bradley Timber Co. spur, close by the depot.  

One night getting his work done earlier than usual John went over town to spend a few chummy hours with his friend John Barleycorn. Returning late, sleepy and somewhat befuddled he lay down between the rails to get some shut eye directly in front of the engine he had coaled earlier in the night. Before daylight the crew came to work and moved the engine, four cars and the caboose down to the south switch and out onto the main entirely overlooking John lying between the rails. Rolling him over and over, skinning his face, bruising his ribs and tearing the clothes half off him the train finally left him well ground into the cinders. Realizing that something had happened but not yet knowing what, John painfully picked himself up, stretched his arms and legs to see if they were still intact then shuffled slowly over town where friends cleaned and patched him up and put him to bed to finish his nap. After sobering up John swore that never again would he touch a drop of anything stronger  than the purest water. So far as I ever heard he did just that.

Down by the river and snuggled up close to the railroad grade a man by the name of Beaton owned and operated a two story, sheet metal sided joint with a bright red light marking the main entrance to guide prospective customers of loose morals.

One evening just after the passenger train had unloaded and backed down to its parking place near the engine house, the town fire bell set up a clamor. Hurrying to put away the last of the express and baggage I locked the office and wareroom and scampered down the track toward the ruddy glow now rising from Beaton’s Joint. The night was dark so I trotted carefully over the ties and rough gravel of the track. As I approached the first road crossing a short stout figure came waddling onto  the track ahead of me and hurried toward the fire. As I gained on the figure I soon recognized it as none other than Beaton himself hurrying as fast as his pudgy form and short breath would permit, and apparently talking to someone or to himself. I slowed down to his pace, kept my distance and listened. What with his puffing and blubbering he was trying to pray, his line going something like this- “Oh, God! Don’t let it burn, don’t let it burn! It’s all I’ve got. Don’t let it burn, God!” Then swinging  an arm toward town he  continued,- “There are all those church people over there who are glad to see it go. Oh God! Don‘t let it burn.” The incongruity of a plea for Divine intervention to save a place like that was almost too much for my sense of humour. As we neared the fire he slid down the railroad embankment to see if he could save anything from his precious establishment. Someone had already saved the cash register. The frowsy inmates were huddled under  a nearby tree. Hotter and hotter burned the fire, the steel sheathing glowing a cherry red. Soon the wooden structure was consumed, the sheathing collapsed like a house of cards and the show was over.

Sometimes I commenced work in the early morning before many folks were abroad, then quit in mid-afternoon. At other times I went to work in the after-noon and continued until late at night, being thankful that Bill and his family slept in the same building so I would not be entirely alone in case of trouble with tough customers who might show up and clamor for admittance through the locked outside door.

It was while working these late shifts that a friend of Bill’s from the east came to visit the family. Jasper was his name, a kindly middle aged man of dry humour and quite talkative. Being short of beds a cot was made up for him each night in the sitting room just the other side of the office door. After the family had retired Jasper would come into the office in his stocking feet to sit  smoking his smelly pipe while quietly visiting with me. He would pause now and then to spit in the coal bucket or to reload his pipe. I liked him and appreciated his company in the lonely hours of the night. When ready to retire he would knock the ash from his pipe, spit once more in the coal bucket then rise and stretch. Turning toward the door he would pause with his hand on the knob and whisper-“Now Walter remember, if there is ever any trouble in the night and someone tries to hold you up, just tap your foot on the floor like this - - - - and I will hear it the other side of this door and come to your help.” Just what kind of help he had in mind I never knew. Anyway I had no trouble although one night I did overhear two guys just outside the bay window whispering to each other about the possibility that I might have some cash on hand. However the outside door was securely locked so I knew that before they could open it or break through the window I could raise enough uproar to rouse the family including Jasper, my self appointed watch dog just the other side of the office door.

Sometimes late at night when hunger assailed me I put on my hat and coat, stepped outside, locked the door behind me and after casting a few furtive glances around in the gloom would hurry down the platform, across the dark strip of wobbly wooden sidewalk, past the flickering light over Cyr’s saloon door and over town to a beanery huddled in between a hardware and a card room. For two bits I could get a fairly complete meal including a small steak, or for an extra dime there could be pork chops and a wedge of pie.

In cold weather fire in the pot bellied heating stoves was never allowed to go out. Lat in the night the coal fire in the office stove would burn low and the outside chill would begin to seep in. After a little prodding and stirring with the iron poker into the blackened crust of soft coal, yellow gas formed over the slumbering coals. This had to be done with discretion and moderation so the gas would burn off gradually, otherwise there would be a sudden puff and choking gas would burst out into the room. When the coal was burning brightly I closed the stove door, opened the circular draft part way and shook down the accumulated ashes. When the lower belly of the stove began to glow a dull red I would open the stove door to check the rising heat, The flickering yellow light played on the office wall as my lids grew heavy and my head commenced to nod. 

The telegraph wires had a way of humming a weird tune in a brisk wind, especially noticeable at night when the place was otherwise quiet and deserted and I sat nodding in provocative drowsiness that beguiled me so temptingly from the figures I was supposed to be writing down in their proper places.

Figures and I just didn’t seem to be fitted for each other. A long column of figures was more fickle than a dizzy headed girl, and I understood the one no better than the other. Figures added up one way the first time, then upon verifying by another addition the result would be entirely different. But, I could stand and gawk at a moving locomotive, watching with fascination its shining, oily, piston rods slide in and out with the side rods dancing up and down. The smell of hot engine oil in steam was pleasant to my nostrils, and the low hum of the pop valve just before it lifted spoke of a giant straining its sinews and flexing its muscles impatient to be about its business.

The operation of trains also intrigued me. I learned something of how they were authorized to come and go by telegraphed train orders copied on thin oily sheets of pale blue or yellowtissue paper, where to meet other trains, where to wait, where to take the siding. Being at the end of the line Bill did not receive many train orders, perhaps six or eight a day. I admired the calm, careless way he had of answering the dispatcher, the smooth swift movement of his stylus over the flimsy tissues and the precise Morse he threw back at the dispatcher in repeating the order. This, I thought, was much more interesting than figures, dollars and cents, tariffs and rates on logs, poles, whiskey and what not.

In the fall of 1907 the Big Fork and International Falls Railway was completed to International Falls and turned over to the Operating Department. This road was owned entirely by the Northern Pacific. Its southern connection at Big Falls, the Minnesota and International was owned partially by the Backus interests and partly by the Northern Pacific. Depots had been built at Little Fork and International Falls.

The depot at Little Fork was nearly a mile from town. Travelers often enquired why the depot was so far from town. The stock answer was,- “Because the Railroad Co. wanted it handy to the railroad track.”

The night the first passenger train ran through to International Falls a party of young people in Big Falls out for a lark come into the waiting room asking if the train would stop at Grand Falls just across the river if they bought tickets. On being assured that it would have to stop for even one ticket they bought twenty three, price two cents each. Getting off at Grand Falls they walked back.

One afternoon as Bill sat at the telegraph table totting up his cash book for the day the sounder began sputtering out his call. Opening the key he tapped out his answer, reached for a yellow telegraph pad, took his pen and copied a message from  the Superintendent’s Office in Brainerd. It read,- “Instruct your helper to report to H.A.McCormack, Agent, International Falls for work as operator and ticket clerk.” Sliding the message over to me Bill said,-”Well, Walt, there you are. How about it?”

As he crammed a fresh load of Peerless into his ever present pipe I read the message. A thrill of excitement ran up and down my spine. Here was a change. A promotion. A new town. More responsibility,and of course more pay. I knew I was still rusty on the wire, unable to take an ordinary message without breaking several times and never having taken a train order on my own without Bill’s kindly supervision. I re-read the message then told Bill, “Wire him back, ‘Yes’.”  . 

Next afternoon, clutching a bulging suit case in my hand and with air castles in my head I said good bye to Bill. Boarding Si Shannon’s dingy freight  caboose I clambered up the short inside ladder to a seat by an open window in the cupola where I could get a good view of the passing scenery. Soon the long freight train began to roll, the locomotive up ahead shooting jets of black smoke high in the air as the cars ahead began to rumble and sway from side to side over the rough track. Across the  Big Fork River bridge we rolled, up a rise then out across the muskeg toward the border. It seemed as though the steady “Clackety-clack- Clackety-clack- Clackety-clack” of the caboose wheels was in a way expressing the thought uppermost in my mind,- “International Falls, here I come.”