Nah Nick, not necessary. Jt and I have been friends for a while and I truly respect him and his abilities (although I would never publicly admit it).
The Kumbiya gag stems back to an incident from about a year ago. A rather new rear brakeman ("Daddy, what's a flagman") was working my train on the NJCL. This brakie was fascinated with the PA, and the sound of his own voice. He would spend the entire distance between stations giving tips to the entire train (how to politely use a cell phone, the joys of sharing your seat, why the person next to you smells like a sewer, etc.). This was acceptable for the first 300 trips, but after a while, it began to get on everyone's nerves. Other crew members began to drop subtle hints to him, "Yo, Yakko, shut up!" But he persisted.
On the afternoon in question, we paused at Woodbridge to load. The door closed lights came on followed by two on the buzzer. As I released the brake, the center door closed light went out. Now, I can't apply power. Of course, Yakko is in the middle of his "All doors will open from here on, except at Linden where only the first five cars will be on the platform if the engineer doesn't miss his mark" speech. This means I can't use the PA to say those two dreaded words, "Center doors."
I couldn't reach the conductor on the radio for some unkown reason (he had 'inadvertantly' shut it off). Finally, in desperation, I jumped down from the ALP-44 and ran back to the first car. I attracted the conductor's attention by beating on the door. My exact words to the conductor were, "When Yakko gets done leading the passengers in singing Kumbiya, will you have the crew check the %$#*&^%$ center doors?"
For the next few weeks, everytime Yakko would enter a room, somebody would begin humming Kumbiya. Incidentally, Yakko has reformed, and now does a fine job...but occasionally, the humming still starts.
