Leo, Your story about the sugar jogged my memory about a similar happening
years ago that was much sweeter than yours. One morning while I was working
the daylight switch engine at Keokuk, Iowa, the yardmaster got a phone call
from someone up at General Mills that the empty boxcar we had spotted for them
wasn't exactly empty. So we returned to the plant and looked inside the car
and what we discovered was about 137 bags of sugar each weighing 200 pounds
still laying on the floor of the car. We took the car back to the yard and dug
out another empty for the industry. Every one who wanted some sugar took home
a couple of bags and there was still close to 100 bags left, so the yardmaster
who lived in a very small town called Alexandria, Mo. took the remaining bags
down there and passed out the free sugar. It seems the small general store in
Alexandria didn't sell another bag of sugar for about three years. I kept my
bag in my basement, and it absorbed moisture and got as hard as a brick. I
would just break off a chunk with a hammer and disolve it in whatever when we
needed sugar for cooking. On another sweet note, Hubinger would make a high
fructose syrup from corn which the loaders would put in a gallon glass jug and
give to the switch crew when we spotted their tanks. It was great for making
sweets at Christmas time. Now wasn't that a sweet story? Archie
----- Original Message -----
From: qutlx1@aol.com
To: cbq@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 7:21 AM
Subject: [CBQ] Shopping
Shopping is a national pasttime and also a necessity of life. Working on the
RR made shopping a little easier as it was often easy to secure lifes needs
right at the source.
For example General Mills would allow switch crews access to their "recoup
bin" once a week and for $2/grocery bag you could fill it with anything in
the
recoup. Limit two. There was a specified day for this shopping and if you
were
an extra man on the job and missed the assigned day a request would usually
gain you access.
Great Western Sugar had a logical rule that any sugar spilled on the floor
while unloading the hoppers had to be thrown out. Switch crews could have as
much of it as they wanted. Since the piles got fairly substantial it was easy
to
shovel from the top of the heap and have 5-10 lbs of sugar in about a minute
or two.
Many more examples but I've got to go catch a train to CUS. Really.
Leo
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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