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My first days work, after I got out of Marine Corps consisted of unloading a fifty ton boxcar loaded with rock salt in one hundred pound sacks. I had two college boys working with me. It was June in Southern Illinois, so it was hot in the ends of that car. But it didn't brother me too bad, as I was just back from Vietnam! On Thursday, January 23, 2014 2:35 PM, Richard Kistler <rckistler@windstream.net> wrote: Folks - There were some dandy jobs on the railroad, I worked the clerks
extra board in the late 1950's. Seeing the men unloading a box car was similar to working the freight house foreman's job at Nebraska City. All the big stores there such as Montgomery Ward received store merchandise by boxcar. It was fun unloading furniture, tractor tires and boxes and boxes of goods in August, couldn't get a breath of air back in the car, so you just sweat it out. At Holdrege, NE I worked the night job Friday and Saturday 2000 hrs to 0500 hrs. A large creamery was across from the depot, 4 or 5 of the seven passenger trains that went through Holdrege during those hours carried mail, express and cans of cream. I well remember loading nearly 400 cans of cream every night onto the baggage carts and lugging them west of the depot so the creamery could pick them up. Tons of sack mail and newspapers for Holdrege proper and three Star routes, which went into the freight house and sorted out onto other baggage carts, which by morning, especially the Saturday shift with Denver and Omaha newspapers, well filled the freight house. It was fun to grab a sack of Sears or Penny's catalogs and throw them half way across the freight house to the proper cart. But, that was railroading then, it was a job with higher wages than anywhere else. Richard Kistler __._,_.___
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