NEWYORK CENTRAL
2012 CALENDAR Color covers. Thirteen photos inside. Historical information. $11.00 each. Ohio residents include 75¢ sales tax.
New York Central System Historical Society, Inc.
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Bits & Pieces
EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE FED: Before there were trains, before there was track on which the trains could run, before even the graders made their way through the terrain preparing the base on which the track was to be laid, a survey crew had to work miles ahead of the construction teams to establish a route for the whole affair to follow. Joseph A. Noble, in his account of his life spent in railroading entitled From Cab to Caboose: Fifty Years of Railroading (University of Ok- lahoma Press, 1964) describes a little re- ported-on aspect of rail dining: Feeding the surveying crew in the early 1900s. He notes: “The cooks on these parties were general-
ly pretty good, and the food was plentiful. Necessarily, where refrigeration was im- practicable, fresh meat was not always on the menu, but there was plenty of ham, ba- con, and canned meat of various kinds. “For breakfast we usually had pancakes
with butter and syrup; ham, bacon, or sausage; eggs; stewed fruit (apricots, peach- es, or prunes); oatmeal; and, of course, cof- fee. The milk was canned. I used plenty of it on oatmeal and in my coffee but I never learned to like it. “Lunch we carried with us: boiled eggs,
ham sandwiches, maybe a pear or apple pie, the crust of which was usually soggy, some- times apples or oranges, and always canned tomatoes. We had coffee a few times, but we seldom stopped long enough to build a fire during the winter, and in hot weather, wa- ter tasted better. A good many times when we stopped for lunch on the prairies, I just ate a can of tomatoes and lay down with my head behind a clump of bear grass to get out of the wind. “Supper was always a good meal: ham or
fresh beef, pork, or lamb; boiled cabbage; boiled potatoes; cole slaw; stewed tomatoes, butter; jam or preserves; bread (baked by
the cook); canned apricots, plums, cherries, or peaches; all kinds of condiments; pie; and coffee. “And of course, there was often pinto
beans, the Mexican frijol, which is cultivat- ed extensively in the high country of the southwest. This bean, cooked with salt pork, and flavored with chilis, is a gastro- nomic delight. I never saw a man who did- n’t like it. Back in the days when I could eat what I liked, two or three plates full of fri- joles at supper would make up for all the day’s hardships. “Most of the camp cooks I knew could turn
out good meals, but it was exceptional to find one who didn’t have an irascible dispo- sition. Maybe it was the gang the had to cook for, or the lonely life they led — they were in camp all day by themselves — or perhaps they drank too much coffee or vanilla ex- tract. Whatever caused it, they were, as a class, hard to get along with. “One morning curing the cold winter of 1911-’12, when I was running a survey par- ty about 50 miles southwest of Dodge City, Kan., one of the chainmen burst into my tent and demanded, ‘Say, Noble, can you get along without a cook?’ “I stopped lacing my boots. ‘I guess I did- n’t understand you. What did you say?’ “He repeated the question. I said, ‘Of course not. What brought this up?’ “’Well,’ he said, ‘my feet were pretty cold
when I got up so I went in the cookshack, turned down the oven door on the cookstove, and was warming my feet and lacing my boots when Franklin began cursing me and yelling for me to get out of his kitchen. What he said to me I won’t take from anybody, and if it will not inconvenience you, I’ll just kill the bastard.’ “He was deadly serious, so I said, ‘It would inconvenience me considerably. We are 50
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