Eavesdroppings - Bob Green

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the station windows.

      Westbound trains were usually double-headed, and the smoke from the two engines often made the station disappear in a swirl of sulphurous gas and steam sweetly garnished with superheated valve oil. Little boys and their fathers gathered by the locomotives to bask in the heat and watch the engineer, a celebrity at every stop, oil the drive-rod knuckles and tap the pumps and shafts with a heavy steel mallet here and there like a doctor sounding a patient’s chest.

      The conductor hollered “All aboard” and tugged on a cord to sound a peanut whistle in the locomotive cab to tell the engineer to activate the bell and release the brakes. What a thrill to hear those great engines bark and blast their volcanic exhausts skyward, a sight that today would drive environmentalists crazy. Coach after coach slid by faster and faster as did the heads of passengers peering out until suddenly all was quiet and a ghost of steam and red markers faded off across the Grand River bridge.

      I remember, as a boy, lying in bed at night listening to freights rumble across the bridge and charge with staccato exhausts up the steep grade to Orr’s Lake. The whistle at Blenheim Road crossing let you know when the engines were about to pass the spring where the hobos camped as the trains battled the toughest stretch of the grade through Barrie’s Cut. The exhausts would slow and sometimes one of the engines would lose its grip and spin its wheels and exhaust like a machine gun until the engineer throttled back and fed more sand to the rails. Sometimes the grade won. The exhausts slowed until the next seemed as if it had to be the last. But there was always one more, and then another. When at last the train gave up, there would be two toots on the whistle and the growing rumble as the engines backed their load down the hill and into the Galt yards for another run.

      Frendy Graham, who handled baggage and express for years at the Galt station, said he remembered at least two occasions when engines took off up the grade without their trains, the engineers not realizing it until they reached Orr’s Lake siding. With two engines it was sometimes hard to know which one was doing all the pulling.

      It is difficult to realize that two generations of people have never seen a steam train. Those of us lucky enough to have witnessed them and ridden on them can never forget. With a little imagination, as I nod off at night, I can still hear them.

      Frendy Graham’s favourite train passengers were the Nova Scotia lobsters that passed through Galt en route to the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago. He didn’t have to check them through, but he ate quite a lot of them. An express handler on the train carrying the lobsters, Frank “Slippery” Morrison, always plucked a couple of live ones from their crushed ice crate and passed them to Frendy in a paper bag. Rod MacLeod, the station operator, plopped them into a pot of boiling water, and the two dined on them after the train pulled out.

      “Boy, were they ever good!” Frendy said. “Whenever I met people going to Chicago, I would tell them to be sure to get the lobster at the Palmer House. Slippery, or Slip as we called him, was a wiry little Irishman who loved people. He had a degree from the University of Dublin but preferred working on the trains. Sometimes he got off and did an Irish jig on the platform. He also sold light bulbs on the side.”

      One night after Slip handed Frendy his bag of lobsters, CPR London division superintendent Art Tees stepped down from the train for a chat. While the chat went on the lobsters were trying to claw their way out of the bag. To avoid the embarrassment of having a lobster grab Tees by the thumb, Frendy excused himself to move a couple of suitcases and tossed the bag into the flowerbed surrounding the illuminated Galt sign.

      After Tees departed on the train, all Frendy could find in the flowerbed was an empty bag. He searched frantically in the dark until he caught the lobsters crawling down the lawn in the general direction of the New Albion Hotel.

      Frendy suspected that he and MacLeod weren’t the only station crew Slip treated to lobster. He probably gave some to the guys at Guelph Junction, too. And Woodstock and London and Chatham and Windsor. Maybe he even took a couple to Rosie’s Bar, his favourite haunt in Detroit. And there was always a pot boiling in the baggage car. Who knows, maybe he even shared a few with Art Tees? Whatever, the kitchen staff at the Palmer House must have wondered why they kept getting crates of nothing but crushed ice from Nova Scotia.

      If, when you hopped from a passenger train in those steamy days of yesterday, you hailed a Deluxe Cab, your driver might have been Willis Toles who, if he had jazz on the radio, would sit in the driver’s seat, stomping his foot, and leave you to open the door yourself. “Heave your suitcase in the trunk,” he would holler, “and slam the lid because the lock sticks.”

      If you hailed a Galt cab, your driver might have been George Goshgarian, a slim, soft-spoken philosopher who, if it was a nice day and you weren’t burdened with suitcases, would try to talk you into walking home. He would turn in the driver’s seat, fix you with dark Armenian eyes, and say, “People should walk more,” as if he had just carried the message down from Mount Ararat. “Are you sure you want this ride?”

      If you insisted, he would start the engine, but it was a philosophy lesson all the way home. “I don’t mind driving farmers home,” he would say, “because I know they are going to be pitching hay. But city people are getting too fat. Look at that big slob standing on the corner. How many years do you think he has left?”

      As a young adult commuting to Toronto, I always looked for George when I got off the train. One beautiful Saturday morning I lugged a large suitcase over to his cab. He hopped out, opened the rear door, and put the suitcase on the seat. “Ride to 16 Lowrey, eh!” he said, giving the blue sky an appreciative glance. “That’s about two miles. When I was in the army, we’d consider it a treat to march only two miles on a sunny day.” He had been a corporal in the Royal Engineers in World War II. His brother, James, died as an air gunner with the Royal Canadian Air Force. “Why don’t I drop your suitcase off on your front porch while you walk it? I won’t charge the fare.”

      I told him I wanted to get home right away to walk a dog who was waiting for me. He smiled so that I knew he didn’t believe me and opened the other door.

      George always smoked when he was driving, but blew it out the draftless vent so that it didn’t bother you. “I’d offer you a cigarette,” he’d say, “but people smoke too much for their own good.”

      One morning I got off the 10:20 from Toronto and shared George’s cab with three dapper businessmen carrying briefcases and assorted luggage. It was customary to share cabs even when you were jammed in. Nowhere was far to go, and the fare was a straight 50 cents a head. The businessmen wanted to check into the Iroquois Hotel. I merely wanted a ride downtown. They asked George to wait outside the hotel while they checked in their luggage and then drive them to the Gore Insurance office on Dundas Street.

      “Shame you’ve got that luggage,” George said. “It’s such a nice day to walk.” And then he turned those hypnotic dark eyes on them. “But you could walk from the hotel to the Gore. If you did that, you could stop in at my sister’s restaurant on Shade Street for a bite to eat. It’s called Palvetzian’s. She might even whip you up an Armenian dish. And after that you could walk past our arena gardens, home of the Allan Cup champion Galt Terriers, and see Soper Park, which is full of children playing baseball. Lovely walk.”

      We piled out at the Iroquois. George winked at me to indicate that I didn’t have to pay, then helped the men carry in their bags. I waited to see what would happen when they came out. I couldn’t hear what was said as they conferred beside the cab, but apparently George won out. He pointed across the Canadian National Railways tracks towards Shade Street and waved the three goodbye as they set off, smiling, on foot.

      I always imagined that George, with his stress-free approach to life, would be with us promoting fitness into his nineties. But he was buried on his seventieth birthday. According to his niece, Nevi Palvetzian, his chain-smoking did him in. That and a lack

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