Railroaders' Nostalgia > "Fate is the Hunter"

"Fate is the Hunter" is a great biography written by a pioneer airline pilot, Ernest K.Gann. The reason for the title is that he survived long into retirement in what in the early days was a dangerous calling, and also survived flying during WW2. Many of his colleagues didn't. He wondered why he was so lucky. Skill and knowledge was part of it, but some of it was pure fate. Some of those that didn't survive had the same skills and knowledge. Later in life, he fondly recalled those who survived and those that didn't.

My career as an operating employee in a large terminal is more than a decade in the past, and I have moved away to another town.

The events I am about to describe took place in the early 1980's. In those days of full crews, there were more than 400 operating employees based where I worked. The workforce was transitioning from the men who returned from the Armed Services after World War 2 to a great number of employees who were brand new or had less than 10 years service.

How do I put this? Most of us were earning good money, and we were in a party town. The railroad was short on people to run the trains and perhaps they turned a bit of a blind eye to substance abuse.

The railroad was conservative in other ways, the 1980's saw the first women hired in the operating trades.

"S" was a good looking woman from the Midwest, with a smile and a happy attitude. She was a single mom with a need for a good paying job.
Truth be known, there were many of us who were a little bit in love with her and wanted her to succeed. Quite quickly she found a husband.

Just after she hired on, she made a student trip with "H", and myself. "H" was a grizzled old veteran of the steam era from a tough port town.

He was not a great talker. He surprised me with an observation after "S" had been flirting with us. When she was away from us he said "Watch out for that girl. She is not paying attention to what is going on and she is likely to get fired or killed".

A year or so passed and "S" had a steady job on a daytime switch crew.

The only long service employee was "R", the switch foreman. "R" was a tough character from a big city with a difficult past and a penchant for drink. He was a good switchman however. "K" was the engineer, a young man whose father was a railroad official. Officers kids seemed to go one of two ways, to follow in their fathers footsteps into officialdom or to rebel. K was of the second kind, who thought railroading was a bit of a lark and bent the rules abit. "D" was the other switchman. He was a tough guy and avid outdoorsman. He was from a big eastern city. He was sober, almost defensively so because he had a younger sister who had a drug habit.

It was a warm August day. The switcher was switching out a coal empties. The car department would pick out out cars that were scheduled for maintenance, and the switch crew would switch them out of the train. "R",the foreman would read the switch list and instruct "S" when to "pull the pin" to uncouple individual cars from the moving train, and "D' would catch the cars and ride them toward the repair track.

Occasionally, a car would fail to uncouple. "S" would clamber across to the other side of the moving cut of cars to uncouple from the other side. The safe way to do this was to stop the cut, have the switchman climb over to the other side while it was stopped, and then restart the movement. "S" was eager to please, and crossed over using the end platform on the car while the cars were still moving. The movement was being carried out without air on the train. "R" , the foreman radioed "K" the engineer, to stop the movement using the engine brakes. While "S" was halfway across the platform, the slack ran out, and she was thrown from the end of the car and under the wheels. She lost her right leg. Her injuries were so severe that she barely survived the trip to the hospital and she was evacuated to a big city. For weeks, it was undetermined how much of her leg would be saved.

There was a huge outpouring of sympathy and affection for her. When she stabilized, she had lost her leg above the knee and faced months in a rehabilitation facility. The railroad tricked her into taking a cash settlement. Finally she came home, and put a brave face on handling her disability.Friends encouraged her to take up horse riding and she adopted the whole show riding culture. She had another child, and finally split with her husband. She later became housebound and a recluse. In time, we lost track of her.

Is she still alive? Hard to tell because she is not on social media, and those who were working with her that August day have all passed on or have disappeared from public life.

"R" moved back to the big city and the railroad grapevine said he committed suicide a few years later. "K" later was involved with a "Rule G" infraction, and rather than go through drug rehabilitation, he quit and became an addict. He too vanished from public view, so it is hard to say if he is still alive.

"D" went on to be a family man, carried on his railroad career, and pursued his passion for the outdoor life. A few years ago, he had a valiant but brief battle with a very aggressive form of cancer, and died before he was eligible to retire from the railway.

The day the accident took place I was off duty, but I ran into the switch crew during their lunch break. We chatted briefly about nothing in particular and they returned to work while I did some shopping.

At some time, there was a flurry of emergency vehicles racing past and I remember thinking "Something bad has happened".

By and large, as a group of workers, most survived to retire. Disease and accidents claimed a few, and some went on to other life styles. A few simply "drifted away" like some on that crew did. I always hope they found a better life but I think some didn't.

There are some surprises. One colleague who "hit the skids' early went on to clean up his act and have a family and even he was amazed to have made it.

Hence "Fate is the Hunter" as a title for this post.



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/18 10:46 by eminence_grise.

Thank you...great short story about life...

eminence_grise Wrote:
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> There are some surprises. One colleague who "hit
> the skids' early went on to clean up his act and
> have a family and even he was amazed to have made
> it.
>
> Hence "Fate is the Hunter" as a title for this
> post.

I was fortunate in my almost 22 years of working for the Portland & Western to have had no injuries nor an was I involved in any HFIs (Human Factor Incidents). And I know of only a few who were injured, none lost limbs but one nearly so and never railroaded again (he was coming down the end ladder of a box car with a high hand brake when another car rolled into it and dragged him 90 feet after landing with his knee on the coupler). Fate is the hunter and sometimes we'd get annoyed at the safety culture at P&W and how we now switch the yard but it kept a lot of people healthy and able to retire, like me.

I also learned for the incident that I mentioned of the 'brotherhood' of operating employees. The incident happened when I was very new. Years later, working as the engineer on P&W's Eugene Hauler, I bumped into Doyle Mac who was on another train in Eugne Yard and his first question was if I knew how 'J' was.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/08/18 18:16 by roustabout.

One recollection I have of this crew is that they called any newer employee on the crew "bonehead" rather than "rookie". That was the name Archie Bunker had for his son in law in the "All in the Family" TV show. "S" was the "bonehead" and had accepted the title.

"D" kept track of the other crew members after the incident, and that is how I know of their outcomes.

He had plans for life after retirement, however the type of cancer that took him was so rapid, most of us had no time to say goodbye.

eminence_grise Wrote:
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>
> He had plans for life after retirement, however
> the type of cancer that took him was so rapid,
> most of us had no time to say goodbye.

And then there's this: About 2006, there were four of us engineers on the P&W who were diagnosed with prostate cancer. We were all treated successfully although one, Bob Pauley (ex-SP engineer from the LA area), passed a few years ago from other ailments.

roustabout Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> eminence_grise Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> >
> > He had plans for life after retirement, however
> > the type of cancer that took him was so rapid,
> > most of us had no time to say goodbye.
>
> And then there's this: About 2006, there were
> four of us engineers on the P&W who were diagnosed
> with prostate cancer. We were all treated
> successfully although one, Bob Pauley (ex-SP
> engineer from the LA area), passed a few years ago
> from other ailments.

Sorry to hear about Bob Pauley. Met him a few times when I was going to se the clerks in Albany.