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