About the Author J. D. Santucci (a.k.a. "Tuch") began his railroading career in 1978 as a trainman on the Missouri Pacific. After a round of lay-offs in 1985, Tuch embarked on a railroad odyssey, working in many different situations for different roads. This column tries to explain some of the nuts and bolts of the job and also demonstrates what we have to deal with on a regular basis within and without the industry. Tuch currently works through freights out of Chicago for Canadian National/Illinois Central. ©1999, 2003-2007 JD Santucci. Logo ©2002 The Railroad Network. By J.D. Santucci

October 13, 2003
As you have very likely surmised in my little commentaries here, railroading isn't just a job, it is a lifestyle. One must learn to wriggle in a little life around a career on the railroad. And with the railroad gods always in tune to what you are attempting to accomplish away from the property, this can be at best, extremely difficult. The prospect of having a life can itself can be a challenge, but trying to actually pull of such a feat can almost be undaunting. It never fails; you could be five times out that means there are four people ahead of you on the board) with nothing showing just before dinner time on Saturday night. As soon as you make plans and attempt to follow through with them, the phone rings or the pager goes off. You just can't beat the railroad gods; they are all powerful and pretty much all knowing. Oh sure, they throw you the occasional bone here and there, but you pay dearly for those bones down the road.

Being young, single and active, wanting to consume a drink or two or three or four here and there combined with trying to live life on the extra board generally does not blend together smoothly when trying to start or preserve a relationship.

"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son."

Way back in 1978 when I first embarked on this journey of railroading, I was young (turned 22 while making my student trips), single (I didn't follow the path that several close friends took in getting married before the ink was dry on their high school diplomas), active in that I played (or attempted to anyway) some ball and hockey and also tried to have the same kind of fun my single friends were having; all while being near the bottom on the seniority list. And being that I was single I was also in active pursuit of the lovely young dollies of the fairer sex. Today we will study my attempts at making a dating life work despite the efforts of the railroad gods.

One of the items I often touch upon with younger people who ask me about getting hired onto the railroad is the havoc the extra board can and will bring when you are single and trying to date. Some of them don't seem to believe me when I tell them that inevitably either as soon as you walk out the door to pick up your date or walk into the restaurant or cinema with her, your phone will ring or your pager will go off. That is the way of the railroad world. I'd like to have a crisp new $20 bill (tax free of course) for every time this event played out during the course of my career, even after getting married and trying to spend an evening out with the beautiful bride. With all those pages and calls to work, I could probably be enjoying the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

About four years ago, I worked with a new hire on a Friday night. He was upset that he was finally going to get the chance to go out with some dolly that he had been trying to woo for quite some time. The date was supposed to take place that very evening. Instead though, the railroad called him to work disrupting his plans. I smiled and told him, "Get used to it." I don't believe he was too pleased with my lack of sympathy for him. He has since left the employ of the rail industry.

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of today's topic I should remind you all that my experiences with life on call and dating took place way back in the dark ages. There were no cell phones back then and pagers were nowhere near as predominate as they are now, and those that were available certainly weren't as advanced as they are today. Back then you had pagers with one or two tones only, no messaging or anything available with them. And in those days it seemed like mostly doctors and high powered people had pagers. So when that pager went off in a restaurant or movie house, people likely surmised that I was somebody of importance. I played up to that after a time too, but more on that later.

There was no such thing as the cell phone either. While there were car phones, they were captive to your automobile and not the tiny little portable items much of the population carries with the today. I always had to make certain I was within a short distance of a pay phone and always had to carry change for it. This could make things really tricky when stepping out for the evening or even the day.

When I first began on the railroad, I was seeing some young dolly. We had been involved in what was working out to be an on and off again sort of romance, seemingly more off than on. Or perhaps maybe it was just that I was a little off. After the job on the railroad came along, the relationship actually got a little better. Maybe she thought there was more stability in railroading and perhaps a more secure financial future.

Stability? Security?

This young dolly didn't seem to mind my life on the extra board, at least at first anyway. Not once did she ever complain when the Caller summoned me to work by calling her house to reach me. One of the important issues explained to us as brand new Trainmen was "Be sure the Caller knows how to get a hold of you." So I would let them know I was going to be at her house and gave them her phone number. For a time, her phone number was listed next to my name as one of the regular numbers to be used in the attempt to reach me. Of course after we stopped seeing each other for the umpteenth time, it probably didn't play too well when one of the callers attempted to reach me there a couple of times.

Come to think of it, this dolly never once complained, at least to my face anyway, about my getting called to work. We had dates interrupted while in progress and others cancelled before they began as either the phone would ring before I walked out the door or the pager went off while I was en route to pick her up. Although I could hear just a trace of displeasure in her voice when I called to tell her I was not going to make it now as I had to work. I could also see it in her eyes if we were out and that pager began to cackle its single note chorus.

For all that she put up with during the times we dated; somehow she didn't become the beautiful bride. I had her pretty well conditioned as to how the railroad life worked. Ironically though, to this day we are still good friends.

There were many women I dated just once or twice owing to the railroad. Many of them could not accept the fact that I lived my life on call much of the time. One broken or interrupted date and I was quickly history. More than once I was accused to standing them up to go out with somebody else. Well I guess they were sort of right; I was going out with a Conductor and a couple of Brakemen but it was to move freight.

I had to break the date with one dolly on what was supposed to be our first date. I was out the door and heading her way when the pager went off. I was three times out with one vacancy showing for nights. I thought I was home free to at least the morning. Well, they decided to run an "out of bracket" extra job. This would be a yard job called outside of the designated call brackets. Nobody, including me was expecting this to occur. The first out guy missed a call. Then the second out guy missed as well. Like me, they were certainly not expecting that phone to ring for a job to go to work at 8:15 in the evening.

That pager went off when I was about half way to her house. ARGH!!!!! So I stopped at a pay phone and checked in. I got the news and asked what happened to everybody ahead of me and was told of the missed calls. I tried to mark off on call, but they wouldn't let. I was told "You will report."

"Tag; you're it!"

I then called the dolly and she took the news like a trooper. She proceeded to call me all sorts of names for breaking the date. She also accused me of standing her up for some other dolly. I didn't have a great deal of time to argue or defend myself over the issue as I had to head back home and get ready for work instead of having fun. When I called her the next day to try to explain life on the railroad, she called me more names, even worse than the ones from the night before and then told me to never call her again.

"I think she's warming up to me."

I wasn't always on the extra board though. There were times I would mark up to a regular assignment. This gave me a life as I had a scheduled time to report to work and also regular days off. Of course being on the low end of the seniority ladder, I was also subject to getting bumped. It almost seemed inevitable that when I had some big doings planned for one or both of my days off, I'd get bumped. Try to explain this to somebody outside of the industry.

Being a night owl by nature, I tended to mark to afternoon and evening jobs frequently. There were times when I could hold a day job but often took the post mortem portion of the day. I am not now, nor have I ever been a morning person. It is likely I never will be either.

I managed to hook up with one dolly that worked afternoons. She was a nurse at a hospital and was accustomed to strange hours and lousy days off. I was working a steady diet of afternoons and usually got off work before her. I also had Tuesday and Wednesdays off. Being that I like to cook, periodically I would make a big fancy meal and call her at work to invite her over for "supper" when she got off.

We had both rotated our lives around to coincide with the hours we worked. The late night was our evening. We could go out after she got home from work and cleaned up and often did. There were plenty of late night things to do and places to go. It was not unusual for us to be up and out until 3 or 4 in the morning. Being that neither one of us had to get up early in the morning, this was not a problem. I could sleep until noon and be up in time to do stuff around the apartment, run errands, go shopping and get to work.

"He will sleep 'til noon but before it's dark, he'll have every picnic basket that's in Jellystone Park."

This dolly was even able to deal with the extra board when the times came that I was back on it. However, issues came up that we (well, more so me) could not overcome and before you know it; I was back on the prowl again.

There was a situation that arose once and only once. I was out with some dolly at the cinema one Saturday night. It was our first date and I had clearly, or so I thought, explained the extra board thing to her and how there was the distinct possibility that I could be called to work while we were out. She claimed she understood and I thought that was that.

The evening went along quite nicely and the pager remained silent. Cool! Later in the evening we headed over to my place. When we walked in I noticed the light on my answering machine blinking furiously. The more it blinked, the more messages I had. So I played them back. There must've been 900 calls from the Caller trying to get me to answer the phone. This was back in the good old days before the phone lines at the Caller's offices were recorded. It's a good thing too; this guy was pretty steamed that I was not responding to the phone or the pager. The pager! Why didn't the pager go off? I looked down at it and noticed it was turned off. WHAT? I know I turned it on before I left the house. I always had to acknowledge the thing whenever I turned it on or it would just keep beeping.

So I asked the dolly if she knew anything about it. She admitted that she reached down and turned it off while she was getting a little amorous in the movie house. She explained that she was having so much fun that she didn't want to take the chance of me getting called to work and having the evening cut short. Her admission brought the evening and the relationship to a screeching halt.

Being that my missed calls were very far and few between, I was not in any trouble other than getting a lecture about my responsibility to protect the extra board. After this episode, I made certain that nobody ever turned off my pager again, except me.

During my barnstorming days, also frequently referred to as my shady and turbulent past, I even dated several railroaders' daughters. In one particular case the guy fixed me up with his daughter albeit in a very left handed sort of way. I was firing for this guy and he was telling me all about his family. Saw the pictures and everything. The one daughter was divorced, had a child and was living back at home.

Anyway, this guy invites me over to his house after work one evening for a drink to christen the new bar he had built in his family room. After going home and getting all cleaned up, I headed out to his place which was out in the country some eighteen or so miles south of me. When I got to his house and knocked on the door, the daughter that was formerly married answers the door. She was kind of dolled up and I complimented her on how nice she looked. I was welcomed in and went to see the bar and meet the rest of the family.

Her dad, my Engineer, decided that we kids needed to run into town to procure some beer as he had none in the house. So he gives me some cash and tells the daughter and I to run into town to pick up some for him. We do so and once in my car and heading for town immediately discuss the not too discreet plan her father has undertaken. She even commented that there were probably two or three cases of beer in the house right now. His little scheme worked though as we hit it off quite well and wound up dating for months.

This dolly had no issues with the railroad lifestyle as she had grown up with it. She was well versed in the idiosyncrasies of the extra board and life on call. My having to break a date to go to work or end a date early never seemed to upset her at all.

However, like so many other relationships prior, this one ran its course and I broke it off. She was not too pleased, but her dad was furious. You'd thought I had kidnapped the Lindbergh baby or something he was so upset with me. I guess I derailed his plans and hopes of getting the daughter remarried, out of his house and into mine and of course, taking the little tax dependent with us.

I once dated a railroad woman. This dolly worked for the railroad and I met her there. She was a Clerk. We started dating eventually becoming quite the item. We even almost got married; almost. And as you know, almost doesn't count except in tiddlywinks, horseshoes and grenade fights. Now in the past I dated lots of women I worked with during my days at Montgomery Ward. The store and the mall in which it was located was a gold mine of women and several buddies that worked there and I seemed to be trying to date every young and single dolly they hired. Hey, everybody's got to have a hobby, right?

Now while "Monkey" Ward's was a soap opera of sorts, the railroad could be a real "Peyton Place." For those of you unfamiliar with the old television show, it was based on the novel of the same name written by Grace Metalious. It was essentially a prime time soap loaded with romance, drama, murder, extramarital affairs, scheming, conniving, more romance, more extramarital affairs; you get the picture. The show was such a huge hit that it was aired with new episodes two and three nights a week during its run from 1964 to 69. My grandmother used to love it and being that I was over there so often, I had to watch it too.

Ya so the railroad was really a Peyton Place, although I don't recall anybody there getting murdered. At first we kept our little romance quiet from the rest of the railroad. What they didn't know about us meant we didn't get talked about. I've told you that old adage of "telegraph, telephone, telerail."

So there we were, sort of sneaking around dating. No, we didn't dash off to those "secluded little hideaways" like they talk about in the movies or on TV to carry on with our little romantic tryst. We just didn't have our little romance out in the open at work. And we certainly didn't double up with anybody from work and their spouse or significant others. Then we got caught so to speak.

We were out one evening and had stopped at this one lounge and club for a drink. While sipping our drinks and talking, I hear my name called out, and called out by a very familiar voice. It was a Conductor we worked with and his girlfriend. They joined us and we had a great evening with them.

The following day I worked an afternoon job. I wasn't at work five minutes when about half a dozen people asked me about my dating this Clerk. Gee, word spread around quickly of our little romance, sort of like a fire in a hayloft.

"When you need to get the word out fast, really fast to the largest number of people possible, there's no service quicker than Western Union's Telerail."

This dolly really understood the railroad life as not only was she a railroader, so was her father and several of her father's friends. She periodically worked as a Crew Caller and fully understood the uncertainties of the extra board as well as seniority and getting bumped. And being that she was on the inside so to speak, I was often able to get some inside information. Such information could and did assist me in making or not making seniority moves and when to and not to mark off. I guess this was a form of insider trading as I made money from some of the information I was given. But unlike those deeply routed in the stock market, there was no fraud involved here and I was not likely to be sitting in front of a Security and Exchange Commission panel investigating my activities.

A few people chided me for seeming to be in the right place at the right time and complained that having a Caller for a girlfriend was an unfair advantage. Maybe so, but I wasn't complaining. I told them they should find themselves a Caller of their own to take up with.

This dolly used to call me from work when she had some free time, which was no big deal, or at least I didn't think it was until later. She did get in trouble for it though as they were long distance calls to Indiana. She was required to reimburse the company for using their phones to make unnecessary long distance calls. She was upset and thought I should help her pay for them. I wasn't about to pay as I didn't make the calls and never asked or expected her too. And needless to say, I never did assist her in paying for any of them.

"You're just a big meany!"

At one point I guess we were the railroad's "cutest couple." We had a date set, the hall rented; the church arranged and planned on a pretty big wedding with lots of railroaders in attendance. Gee, that would have been a drunk fest. And of course, no good railroad party is complete until the first drunk is thrown out. The stock in the beer companies and alcohol distillers would have skyrocketed after that affair.

But before the big matrimonial soiree could take place, the relationship started to go south. I won't get into the sorted details of the entire situation as it doesn't really matter. Suffice it to say though; I was the one that brought this romance to an end. I did discover after we had split up that those phone calls were in part, her way to check up on me to see if I was really home or out and about tomcatting around. I also learned that I was being checked up on whenever I wasn't home as well. If she called my house and I wasn't home, she called the railroad to see if I was working.

I didn't work all the time and didn't spend every free minute with her. I still had a life and did stuff with my friends and a couple of my cousins. If she didn't know where I was, she was certainly trying to find out. I was told that she would call and see if and what I was working and when I went on duty. If I wasn't working, she would actually get snippy with whoever the Caller was demanding to know where I was if I wasn't there. Gee, the Callers didn't keep track of my every move so how would they know? Contrary to the ideas being put into her head by this girl's mother, I wasn't out on the prowl. I was a good boy and believed I had no reason to be.

In any event, the relationship came crashing down and ended with a thud. Or maybe it was a thump. Perhaps it was a wump. In any event we still had to work together though and I dealt with this situation in a professional manner. For the longest time I only spoke to her with regards to work. I was polite and courteous and nothing more. There was absolutely no conversation between us at all otherwise. I figured the less I said to her, the less likely there would be a confrontation or something really ugly taking place.

Even though it ended and ended rather badly, you know, crashing and burning and all that, I did take something good out of this relationship, although this keepsake of sorts did not actually appear until after the party was over. And I also learned a valuable lesson as well. A short period of time after the end came to pass; I was sitting in the Operator's office. There was one in particular that I was friends with and whenever I had some free time, I would stop in to seen him and we would shoot the bull. Anyway, one afternoon before my job went on duty, I was in talking to this Operator. The now ex-dolly walks into the office obviously wanting to converse with the Operator but observes me sitting in there with him. She just turns and walks out. She does the quick in and out thing several times over the course of about ten minutes, not saying a word each time but more than once giving me the eye. I cannot recall now of it was the crook, evil or stink eye, but there was an eye just the same.

Finally after making about four or five appearances like this, the last time she entered, just before she turned to exit the office she looks at the Operator and says "Patiently waiting!" in a rather sarcastic voice, then leaves. We both looked at each other in bewilderment and then the Operator makes a strange looking face and in a very mocking tone of voice says "Patiently waiting!" and we both enjoyed a good laugh.

From that point on, "Patiently waiting" has become a staple phrase in my vocabulary. Any time somebody informs me on the radio or telephone at work that we will have to sit and wait I always respond, "We'll be patiently waiting over." I use that phrase to this day. For those that have listened in on the scanner and heard me use it, now you know the rest of the story.

This Operator also jumped on this little bandwagon and whenever he would inform me on the radio that we would be sitting and waiting for a signal for a while, he too would state "You'll have to patiently wait, over."

And the lesson learned with the end of that relationship was to never again get involved with somebody I worked with. Instead, I hooked up with female passengers when I worked at the South Shore and as many of you know, that is where I met the beautiful bride. If you missed that story you can go to http://www.railroad.net/articles/columns/hottimes/hottimes_20020729.asp and read about it.

With the engagement and then marriage to the beautiful bride, the totally complicated and hassle filled life of commingling dating and railroading drew to a close.

I had mentioned the pager issue earlier. As I had stated, it seemed that it was usually doctors, some sort of higher level managers and the like that carried them around. Quite unlike today where we see ten year olds wearing and using them. Whenever somebody's pager would go off in a public place, everybody would look to see who it was and perhaps if they appeared to be a doctor or something.

One morning at work the crew I was working with and I were discussing being out and about while working the extra board and getting called to work. I had mentioned the fact that my pager had gone off the other night while my date and I were at the movies. I was working with "Uncle Daryl Guthrie that day and he laughed and commented that maybe the next time it goes off like that I should say blurt out something like "Dammit, I knew I should have been a gynecologist instead of surgeon." So I decided to run with that thought. The next time the pager went off in public I commented something to the effect of "Oh for crying out loud, can't those people do anything at that hospital without me?" I got quite a few looks as I'm sure people probably thought I looked awfully young to be a doctor.

Too young to be a doctor perhaps, but certainly not too young to play it.

And so it goes.

Tuch

There is a library of Hot Times on the High Iron columns dating back to July 2002 located on the railroad.net web site at http://www.railroad.net/articles/columns/hottimes/Default.asp If you missed some since then, stop in and catch up.