As I've said before E.B. Smith (Smitty),(Grandpa) was a character. After
decades of midnights,4pms,extras,weekends,etc he could hold one of the two
helper
spots on the top paying,preferred day job at Eola Yard. The Alley Job, which
wallowed in overtime,air pay and penalty lunches not to mention most of the day
spent away from any yardmasters or mgmt oversight.
So you would think everything in Smittys' world would be wonderful but there
was one irritant. If there was a vacancy for a foreman on the 8 A.M. shift in
any of the yard jobs and there were no qualified foreman on the Eola extra
board; then the oldest qualified foreman working as a helper on that shift was
"held off" his job and set up for the day to foreman to fill the vacancy. Now
in
a normal 8 hr shift yard that would be acceptable to anyone as who could
object to working as foreman, earning more money,doing less physical labor and
on
the same shift? But if you're held off your helpers position on an overtime
job spending the day switching industries vs. a minimum day pounding the lead ?
So Smitty had a simple solution when he'd show up and the Ydmstr would advise
he was foreman on the extra going to Montgomery to switch stock all day,or
the roustabout or even the East or West yard job.
Any guesses ?
According to the following
guys(Spencer,Gorman,Mathers,Gunderson,Marcus,Rosich) who were all younger than
Smitty and spent years watching and learning he
said OK and went about the days job,and went about it,and went about it until
whatever job he was assigned to had worked until the Alley Job had returned
from the industries and tied up. He always got more O.T. than the Alley.
Leo
P.S. There are no dumb questions. If you've never worked on the RR and want
to ask about some of the terms,practices,etc please do so. These stories are
meant to share the experience and knowledge from generation to generation just
like the guys who's names I mention did with me.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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