Had a General Mills "boxed dried potato" side w/dinner tonight. It brought
back memories of the "recoup" at G.M. at West Chicago. The principle was
simple, each case of damaged product from the loading process was brought to
a fenced in area called the "recoup" w/in the warehouse. Once a
week(Tuesdays) you could plunk your $2 down and fill a standard
grocery(paper) bag w/all it would hold. Limit was 2 bags. Every once in a
while I would catch one the "mails" off the cndrs extra list and upon arrival
at the "agents office" (anybody remember "Nick") I'd go to the G.M. foreman
and plead my case that I missed recoup day and might not be back before the
next one. He'd let me partake from the pen. So I would shortly have two bags
filled to overfilling w/Scalloped,Augratin,etc,etc,etc. What a bargain even
then! The only catch was a certain ydmstr at Eola knew that the train and
engine crews got"discounted" products from the warehouse so he expected his
cut when you detrained in front of the yard office. Any body remember
Charlie? The implied message was if you don't contribute to the Charlie food
pantry you can sit at Farnsworth Ave until xxxx freezes over. So if you were
working the 5:00A.M. or 1:00P.M. mail you couldn't care less as you were
probably going to get O.T. and maybe 12 anyway. But on the 9:00PM. mail you
were going for the "quit" and needed Charlies cooperation so you contributed.
Who says politics makes for strange bedfellows? Railroading wasn't a whole
lot different. Leo
|