Railroaders' Nostalgia > Harvesting fruits and vegetables while on duty

While reading a thread just now over on the Model Railroading section about how to add weight to an Athearn Turbine Tender, somethig Aronco had added to the thread got me reminising about a few Union Pacific memories. You can go over there and read my reply. The original post was dated yesterday 04/15/16. So here are a couple of more produce stories. First one. Conductor HA Vo,the Vietnamese conductor famous for putting empty coal hoppers into the waters of the Los Angeles Harbor, was the conductor on the Crestmore Local out of UP East LA Yard. The job mostly took Trailer Train cars out to Cal Pro in Miraloma for repair and returned with the repaired ones. The job had a CA-10 caboose that VO considered his personal property and no one but him was allowed in it. Everyone else rides up front. Spadra Siding just west of Pomona,Calf., is now main track one, runs along a huge orange grove belonging to Cal Poly University Pomona's Aguculture Department. One of the trees was grafted and produced oranges,lemons, & grapefruit. The train alway got put into Spadra Siding and VO would always call for the train to stop using the radio in the caboose some where near his secret tree but never next to it as not to give anyone on the headend the oppertunity to discover his bountiful tree and harvest all of his future fruit. West bound road crews stopping at West Spadra would go looking for VO's Tree as it was called, but I never heard of anyone finding it. Vo's CA 10 caboose was always spotted at the west end of bowl track #1 on the retun trip and the next days Cal Pros were humped into bowl 1 with the caboose already on the rear of that days train. that was until Rick Long derailed a big mess that distroyed the last coupla caboose in LA as it sat at the west end of bowl one. Another story was told to me by Kenny Eaton about his Brakeman Herbie Kyles. Kenny used to work the night local out of UP's Colton office that was just a stones throw away from the old Colton Tower at the ATSF & SP diamonds. The Job got their cars from the Santa Fe B Yard.  At the west end of the B Yard an industry on the west side of the tracks about 400 yards east of the Rana signal produced what I was was told were onion rings.It smelled like onions 24/7. Kenney told me that the onoins were larger than VO's grapefruits and were very sweet. Herbie loved them and would eat them like apples. He would hold his flannel shirt out like an apron, fill it up with onions, and take them back to the caboose. Well one Sunday night the owner of the Bussiness showed up with his motorhome and boat or something to park it on his property and he caught Herbie in the process of his shopping trip. Busted, he started to shame Herbie about stealing another man's belongings and how would he like that to happen to him and what would his boss do to him when he found out let alone his wife and family. Well as Gryalite once said while taking a bunch of us to eat at Idle Spurrs in Barstow using the company credit card "It is much easier to beg for forgivness that it is to ask for permission". Herbie begged and it was taken care of right there on the ground and he never did that again.If you want a watermellon story head over to the Model Railroad section.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/16 23:59 by Fredo.

Vo let me and Gerry Balengeri ride "his" caboose one day, both ways, on the Crestmore. We went as far as Pedley then came back. Sweet ride. 

I remember the onion ring place. My eyes would water whenever we had to shove that spur next to it. 

We are retired growers and had leaf lettuce, cherry tomaties and cucumbers in East San Jose in the 90's. San Jose saw a huge influx if Vietnamese---80,000 by the mid ' 90's.  These people are survivors and do not live by the same rules many of us do-- one day my husband arrived at the ranch to find a vietnamese guy with a huge gunny sack helping himself to our cucumbers-- my husband got out if hus truck, grabbed the sack full of cukes, put it under the wheels of the truck and ran the truck over and over it, and then handed the sack back to the guy and said "next time , it will be you".  No more theft problems. 
C

Carol Voss
Bakersfield, CA

Carol, Thank you for the correct spelling of Vietnamese. Herbie and Bob,the engineer in the watermellon story on the Model Railroading Board wern't Vietnamese. However since one was caught and the other almost did they learned it wasn't a good idea to do that sort of thing again. Vo on ther other hand got his lucky brake conincidentally at the same place as the citrus tree, Spadra, about 15 years later. Vo had TO member SW1500 as his engineer on a local. Someone had broken into a container on a train and dropped off a bunch of Persian style rugs along the right of way at Spadra. SW1500 saw the UP Special Agents, PO's as known on the SP, hiding in the same orange grove waiting for someone to show up for the rugs. When they were finished swicthing a couple of customers they were shoving to the next spot. When they were nearing the area where the rugs were Vo who was riding the lead car of the shove started giving the hoghead car lenghts to a stop. Knowing they were approaching the rugs the engineer picked up the speed so Vo couldn't drop off the gather up the rugs. When they finaly did stop Vo was pissed and started yelling at SW1500 until he told Vo of the railroad cops waiting for someone to pick up the rugs. Then it was"Oh God thank you, thank you,for keeping me out of trouble".

One night in Santa Monica I was at the beach account the grunion were "running" This is an interesting spectacle. However it is against
Fish and Game laws to catch grunion (Calif) other than by hand. I came across Vietnamese netting them in by the hundreds if not
thousands! I notified Fish and Game within the hour but whether anything was done I do not know.
All the Coast men were very aware of the Garlic fields around Gilroy and further south the lettuce around Watsonville Jct but we won't get 
into that!!

Fredo Wrote:
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>If you want a watermellon
> story head over to the Model Railroad section.

Great story.  I guess we've all been in a situation like that in one form or another.  Occasionally the brain works quick enough to save the associated butt.

John

Being as they used to hold us at Spadra all the time, I would usually walk down and pick a few oranges. Never did find Vo's "magical tree". I always wanted to grab a couple of the "smudge pots" they had (and still have) to use as back yard decorations at my house, but after checking them out, they are still full of oil that they would burn on freezing nights to protect the orange crops.

Here's a shot of the orange groves on the left from March 2007 when they started the Spadra track project which is still on hold.-BMT

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On the vcry in oxnard, it was nothing for one of the Alco's running boards to be full of boxes of strawberries, lettuce, and anything else you could build a salad with when it got back to the shop. Then we would go get shoestring potatoes by the frozen bag from a place next to the yard. Smuckers was there too, but never quite figured out how to get a drum of jam on the engine.

Posted from Android

When I was fireman on the SLO Surfliner, we would meet the eastbound Starlight at Camarillo.  My engineer and LSA would go over to the strawbwerry field and pick fresh stawberrys.  Man were they huge.  The LSA would take them back to the Amcafe and wash them.  Man were they good.

Back in the mid-80's I was working the engr's extra board at Emporia, KS. In the fall, I got sent up the Strong City branch to work a series of Courtland turns out of Abilene bringing in milo and soy beans. We went dead up there somewhere, and waited hours for our taxi. He finally showed up about day break. We were all kicked back trying to sleep on the ride down to Concordia, when all of a sudden the driver slams on the brakes, stops on the side of the road, jumps out of his Suburban, runs out into a field and starts pulling up Turnips, of all damned things. He said he'd been watching them for weeks, and they looked like they were ready. He couldn't wait to get home and eat those nasty things.

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Was pestering a friend for modeling details -- a former UP trainman -- and he said "if you model one of the cabooses from the ---------- branch runs, remember to hang a couple of pheasants over the back rail."

On the Boston & Maine Rockport (Mass.) Branch, there was a balloon track at the end of the line to turn steam engines.  Crews would often stop there in between runs to pick wild blueberries to bring home.