Once more settled into the routine of college work the time passed
rapidly. Scott began to wonder what he would do with himself during the
Christmas vacation which was now close at hand. He had for some time
imagined that some of the fellows who lived near there would take pity
on him, a stranger from a distant land, and invite him to spend the
holidays with them. He knew he could rely on that at home. But the time
was now close at hand and no such invitation had materialized. The
reason for it, when he found it out, astonished him more than ever. He
found that none of them had any idea of spending that time loafing at
home. The senior class was going to the lumber woods the day after
Christmas, and all the others, rich and poor alike, were going to work
at some job or other.
The thought seemed ridiculous at first, but as he noticed the
self-reliance and independence of the men around him and recognized
their ability to care for themselves anywhere, at any time, it began to
look more reasonable; instead of looking down on them for their
eagerness to earn money he began to admire them for their dignity. It
occurred to him that it would be a novel experience to try a job for a
while himself. He was ashamed to think how ignorant he was of such
things and how helpless he should be if he were really suddenly thrown
on his own resources where he would have to find a job for himself. Any
of his classmates could find a dozen jobs while he was trying to think
where to look for one. He was about decided to try his ability to
support himself, when this problem, like most of the practical problems
which had confronted him since he left home, was settled for him by his
roommate.
That young gentleman sauntered into the room one afternoon about three
days before the holidays began and seemed to be in a particularly
cheerful mood. With considerable show he pulled a strip of paper from
his pocket, stretched himself luxuriously in his chair with his feet
protruding from under the opposite edge of the table and cleared his
throat loudly. “Now, young man,” he began, in as deep a voice as he
could command, “what do you intend to do this Christmas vacation? Are
you going to work for an honest living or loaf and grow fat
ignominiously?”
“Well,” Scott responded, falling in with his humor, “I was going to ask
your advice about that, sir.”
“Very good. Then my advice to you is that you work. If you loaf you will
have to loaf alone, which will soon become more tiresome than working,
unless you want to fall back on your old friends, the millionaires,
which would be degrading. Work during the holidays and buy a canoe for
Itasca with the earnings. How’s that?”
“Fine,” Scott exclaimed. “Do you think I could earn enough for that? I
am pretty green, you know.”
“Never mind about your color,” Greenleaf assured him; “most of the men
who work extra for the holidays are more or less of that shade. You
won’t be noticed. That point settled, now let’s see what kind of a job I
can give you. I have been looking into the matter a little, and have a
list of vacancies here from which we can choose something agreeable.”
Scott was very curious to see what the nature of the jobs would be. In
his own mind he had pictured such positions as temporary clerkships in a
bookstore, a bank, or wholesale house; private secretary to a railroad
president, or some kind of investigational work for some ambitious
professor. There his imagination had failed him.
“First,” Greenleaf continued, eying his list, “there is an extra
salesman wanted at the Palladium.”
Scott gasped audibly.
“That,” Greenleaf said critically, doing the choosing for both of them,
“we’ll not consider, because they pay only a dollar and a half per day
and keep you standing up half the night.
“Next there is the job of carrying extras for the postman. That is no
good because they do not pay any more than the other and it is likely to
run out before the holidays are over. Cold job, too.
“Then there is a billing job in the express office. That is some fun and
they pay two-fifty, but there is only one opening there and it is inside
work.
“Next, writing tracers in the freight office, two-fifty, but a dog’s
life and too much brain work.
“Next. Working on the sewer gang. Two dollars but too many ‘hunyacks’ to
work with. Too hard work any way when you are not in training for it.
“Next. Work here at the Station at fifteen cents per hour. See too much
of the place now. I want a change of view for my holiday.
“Last. Trucking in the transfer shed at twenty cents. That looks to me
like the best shot. Outside work, plenty of exercise, a chance to work
extra if you want to, and we can both work together. How does that
strike you?”
Between the character of the jobs, so different from what he had
imagined, and the marvel of wondering how Greenleaf ever got in touch
with so many different lines of work, Scott was too astonished to give
an immediate answer.
“Not much variety in the winter time,” Greenleaf apologized. “Oh, here’s
another one. Driving an extra delivery wagon for the Kings’ Palace.
Two-fifty, but that’s probably gone by this time. Mean job, anyway,
especially in the winter, and too long hours. No, I’ll go down and
telephone the transfer shed to hold two jobs. Are you game?”
“Sure,” Scott answered faintly, and Greenleaf popped out on his errand.
While he was gone Scott spent his time in wondering what kind of a job
he had gotten into, for he had never heard anything about a transfer
shed, and had no idea what Greenleaf had meant. Before he had been able
to figure out any satisfactory solution Greenleaf returned.
“It’s all right,” he cried; “they said they’d save us two trucks, and
said we could come down Friday morning at 7 A. M. I tell you we’ll get
some lively work there.”
Scott, who was ashamed to confess his ignorance, kept a discreet silence
except to confirm any of Greenleaf’s statements which seemed to need
confirmation. He turned the matter over continually in his own mind, but
having nothing to work on never came to any conclusion.
At last the vacation began and the two boys presented themselves, or
rather Greenleaf presented them both to the foreman at the shed. They
were assigned to a westbound gang and directed to study the signs on the
platform till it was time to begin work.
The transfer shed was located in an enormous freight yard amidst a
network of forty or fifty tracks. The shed itself consisted of a large
warehouse with offices on the second floor and, extending from either
end of it, a covered platform some twenty feet wide and about a hundred
yards long. Its floor was of heavy planking, the splintered condition of
which seemed to indicate heavy traffic of some kind. It was on a level
with the floors of the box cars which were standing four rows deep on
either side of it. Iron skids were laid from the platform to the
car-sills, forming a gang plank.
Stuck in the posts nearest the gang planks on one side of the platform
were four tin signs bearing the names of the cities in the West, or such
mystic signs as “1st Div. Way,” “Valley Way,” “East Local,” etc. Scott
noticed that all the cars on that side were empty, while those on the
opposite side of the platform seemed to be loaded to the roof with every
conceivable kind of freight. He had not yet figured out the significance
of all this but he studied hard and soon had a pretty good idea of their
general location on the platform. He had also mastered the fact that
when he found there were four signs connected with each skid, that the
top sign referred to the car on the first track, the lowest one to the
fourth, etc.
Just then there was a great rumbling noise in the direction of the
warehouse and a swarm of men, each pushing a two-wheel truck, burst out
onto the platform and assembled in little knots around the doorways of
the loaded cars. One man with a tally board in his hand stepped out of a
car some distance down the platform and beckoned to them.
“You belong to five,” he shouted. They nodded assent.
“Get two trucks out of the warehouse, and get a move on you,” he
growled, as he turned again to the gang of men who were loosening the
tangle of freight in the doorway of the car. The tone of voice rather
galled Scott, but he had chosen his job and knew that he must accept its
conditions. Some of the trucks in the warehouse were pretty badly
battered up, but the boys soon found two with smooth handles and easy
running wheels. When they came out the work had started in earnest, and
men were dodging in and out of the cars, some with loads, some with
empty trucks. All seemed to be in a tremendous hurry.
As they approached the car where gang five was working the man with the
board asked them if they were old hands. They said that they were not
and asked what they should do.
“Take things where I tell you and keep on the jump. Hang the ticket I
give you on the nail to the left of the door where you leave the stuff,
and be sure it’s the right car. Those tickets are collected from time to
time—Fargo [he yelled at a passing truckman, and handed him a small slip
of paper]—and if you’ve left anything wrong you’ll be stuck for the
freight. You’re six,” he said to Greenleaf, “and you’re seven,” to
Scott.
Scott took his place in the line and soon found his truck loaded with
small boxes piled mountain high.
“Fifteen for Moorehead,” the loader called.
“Right,” came the echo from the check clerk, the man with the board. He
was seated beside the car door, and as Scott passed him screamed
“Moorehead car,” and shoved a slip into his outstretched hand.
Scott found that the management of a two-wheeled truck was a good deal
more difficult problem than he had ever imagined it to be. If he let the
handles get an inch too low the burden became almost beyond his strength
and twice he raised them so high that he was lifted bodily from the
ground in spite of his violent efforts to stay down. It was a question
of balance, and some of the men around him seemed to have mastered it
perfectly. Some walked steadily and easily along with a load that would
have filled a horse-cart, others tore past with a barrel or large box
not only perfectly balanced but carrying them along with one foot on the
axle of the truck and their bodies suspended from the truck handles by
the armpits. The trucks seemed to shoot here and there, even almost at
right angles into a car door, without any effort on the part of the
truckman or without his so much as touching his foot to the floor. Every
time Scott’s truck ran over a chip or struck the edge of a skid, his
handles showed an almost uncontrollable tendency to throw him in the
air, and several times he narrowly escaped spilling his load in that
way. When he finally reached the Moorehead car safely a storeman met him
and showed him where to dump his load. He stuck his slip on the nail
with the others and ran back to the car. He found that by continually
running with his empty truck he could just about make up for his
slowness on the outbound trip, and maintain his turn in the gang. It was
a disgrace to lose a turn.
Greenleaf had done a little trucking in the warehouses around Duluth and
in half an hour was racing with the best of them, and was on joking
terms with every man in the gang, except the gruff check clerk, who had
been raised to that position temporarily, and was afraid to joke for
fear of losing his dignity.
It was marvelous to see the way these men could handle loads of any
weight and any shape on those little two-wheeled trucks. Nothing seemed
to be too heavy, nothing too cumbersome to be balanced on a truck and
wheeled away by one insignificant man. Hogsheads of tobacco weighing
twenty-six hundred pounds were wrestled onto a truck by five or six
husky men, and, once on securely, were trotted out unassisted by one
consumptive looking Austrian.
At last Scott thought they were stuck on a crate of glass some ten feet
long, four feet high and six inches thick which stood on edge against
the wall and seemed too heavy to be moved by human force, but, he soon
found, to his own humiliation, that he was mistaken. The loader, or
caller, broke up with his steel freight-hook the cleats which held it,
sized up the situation and called to Scott: “Break that out of there.”
Scott knew what that meant from watching the others. He stepped forward
and with his foot on the axle of the truck drove the sharp blade deep
under the edge of the crate. He then threw all his weight on the handles
in an attempt to raise the load on the blade. The crate bobbed up a
little but dropped back with a bump and jerked Scott violently up in the
air like a cork. He tried three times with all his might but never got
the box more than an inch from the floor.
At this point the caller interfered in a most humiliating manner.
“Better put some bricks in your pocket, boy,” he jeered. “Get out of the
way and let a man get hold of that truck.”
That was a pretty hard thing to bear quietly from a man twenty pounds
his inferior in weight, but Scott thought he would soon be vindicated
because he did not believe that any man could budge that crate.
The caller drove his hook into the side of the car by way of hanging it
up, grasped the handles of the truck and with a few quick jerks moved
the crate out a foot or more from the wall. He then blocked the wheels
with a chip of wood, placed his foot carefully on the axle, and grasping
the handles tightly threw himself far forward over the crate. For one
second he poised there and then threw himself violently backward with
every ounce of impetus his muscles could summon to his aid. The handles
went down within two feet of the floor and there seemed to hang in the
balance. It was against the ethics of the shed to help him and all the
men watched him struggle slowly and laboriously up between the handles
at the same time keeping them down. With one final wriggle he gained the
ascendancy and forced the handles to the floor.
“Here, Ole,” he called, “run your truck under there and get her
balanced.”
Ole placed his truck, two men helped the caller let his handles slowly
up and the great crate balanced serenely on the other truck.
“Here’s your truck, kid.” Then seeing the chagrined look on Scott’s
face, “You’ll get on to it some day; it takes practice.”
Scott’s boxing training and endurance stood him in good stead. He was
able to put in three hours of extra work even the first night. Later on
as he learned the tricks of the trade the work became easier, and he
began to enjoy it. There were all classes of men and all nationalities
represented in the ten gangs at the shed, Swedes, Norwegians, Austrians,
Finns, Poles and one gang of real Southern negroes. It was a problem
worth while to study the characters of these different races; to compare
the slow sullen plod of the Scandinavian with the carefree cheerfulness
of the negroes, to see the contempt of the Irish foreman for all the
races of slower wit. It was a liberal education in itself.
He soon learned the workings of the shed and became interested in its
methods. The cars rolled in there from the Eastern cities loaded with
all kinds of merchandise for all the points of the northwest. The
waybills for these cars were sent to the office in the second story of
the warehouse where the clerks abstracted them, and wrote out on large
sheets of paper the names of consignor, and consignee, and descriptions
of the consignments. These abstract sheets were then taken by the
foreman as fast as the cars came in and placed on the clips on the
platform. Here the check clerks took them in charge.
A gang usually consisted of a check clerk, a caller and five truckmen.
The caller read the directions on the freight and loaded it on the
trucks, always selecting for any one load boxes which went into the same
car. The check clerk checked them off on his abstract and told the
truckman where to take it. It was the duty of the check clerk to know
every point in the territory and how to reach it.
Scott had started the work with the idea that any educated man had an
advantage over any other man not similarly educated, and could excel him
at his own work. One day’s experience on the truck handles had very
effectually shown him his mistake. He began to realize that a man who
had spent several years rolling a truck was quite as much of an expert
in his line as a doctor was in his, and that no man could tell him much
about it. It was depressing at first, but as he became more expert
himself he began to find that he could outdo these men in many ways on
account of his better head work. He soon began to enjoy the work in the
capacity of a master workman.
All this was extremely interesting to Scott and he felt that he was
acquiring invaluable experience. Christmas passed almost unnoticed save
that Scott’s box from home furnished them many a grateful lunch when
they returned to their rooms at night tired but happy in thrashing over
the day’s doings.
But that was not all. There was plenty of fun and humor at the shed as
well as elsewhere. One afternoon Scott thought he noticed some freight
in the Willmar car which did not belong there. It was the mistake of the
check clerk or the caller. No one liked the check clerk, but the caller
was popular, and Scott decided to tell him about it.
“Charlie,” he said when he returned to the car, “I think you called some
of that stuff wrong. I saw some of your stuff up there in the Willmar
that I did not think belonged there.”
Charlie was master of a rough-edged sarcasm and he spared no one. Work
was a little slack and he settled down to rub it into Scott.
“You _think_ I made a mistake. You _think_ it don’t belong there. What
right have you got to think? Don’t you know that there is a man upstairs
who is paid eighteen hundred dollars a year just to sit at his desk and
think? He does all the thinking for this place. You just flap your ears
like a little jack-ass and push that truck.”
The sally was met by howls of laughter and Scott was obliged to join in
them. All the rest of that day whenever he looked at all pensive Charlie
broke into his meditations with, “Say, boy, you been thinking any more
lately?”
Another source of amusement which originated with the darky crew, but
soon spread to the whole shed, was the popular method of settling all
disputes and rough houses. No sooner did two men start to tussle than
some enthusiast in the crowd, sometimes one of the combatants if he felt
sure of victory, would yell, “Get a board.” That was the invariable war
cry. There were always plenty of people to carry it out and as if by
magic a husky man would appear with a bed slat. The presence of that bed
slat reversed the ordinary methods of wrestling completely. It was no
longer the object to come out on top, for the top man got the full
benefit of the bed slat laid on with no gentle hand. The agonized
expression and bodily writhing of the victim who saw that descending bed
slat out of the corner of his eye were the delight of the crowd. The man
who could stay underneath with the seat of his trousers glued fast to
the platform was the successful combatant in the eyes of all concerned.
It was not a position easily maintained, for the exertions of the other
man under the stimulus of the bed slat became almost superhuman.
Scott had been anxious to try his strength at this game with some of
these strong laborers, but he had been slow to make their acquaintance.
The day before he left the shed he had his opportunity thrust upon him.
There was a big Swede there, the bully of the shed, who was acknowledged
to be the “best man” at the bed slat game. He was consequently always
looking for trouble and had gotten the better of nearly everyone there
at some time or other. Scott had often wondered what his skill could do
against this man’s strength.
The clash came unexpectedly. Scott shot out of a car door with his empty
truck just in time to crash into a truck loaded high with small boxes.
The impact dumped the top-heavy load, and fifty cobbler outfits were
scattered the width of the platform. Almost before he knew what had
happened he felt himself raised bodily from the ground and the big Swede
was bellowing the war cry in his very ear. He felt absolutely helpless
in that iron grasp. Hardly had the echo of the war cry died away when
there was a swish and the inevitable bed slat landed with a crack like a
rifle.
The tears sprang to Scott’s eyes, but all the feeling of helplessness
was gone. With one frantic wrench he freed himself from the big Swede’s
arms. He dodged the next blow of the menacing slat, grappled his
opponent around the knees and brought him to the ground with a crash. He
had downed his man, but with the wrestler’s instinct, and unmindful of
the rules of this new game, he had fallen on top of his opponent. Crack
came the relentless slat. There was no time to lose. He was free and
could have ended the scrap by leaving his opponent but that would have
been to acknowledge defeat, which he was not willing to do without a
fair trial. With one wild dive he secured a crotch and body hold on his
untrained opponent; but the man was too big—he could not turn him over.
Just then the bed slat descended again with a vicious spat. That gave
him the needed strength. One agonized heave toppled the big fellow heels
over head and Scott fell neatly under him. Flat on his back with the big
Swede pinned helplessly above him he listened to the cracks of the slat
mingling with the yells of the crowd and smiled as he foiled the
heavings of the mighty frame with his skill.
A half dozen cracks were enough. The big fellow howled for mercy, and
Scott arose the hero of the shed. The forty-five dollars he earned that
vacation was the pride of his life, but if he had been given his choice
he would have preferred to repeat that triumphant moment when he lay on
his back on the platform and listened to the tune of that slat.