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28

I am quite sure that when I moved to TED in February, I was assigned the Lackawanna 3-power locomotive job for which I'd done the control before leaving Webb. At any rate I became very well acquainted with the DL&W representatives who visited Erie periodically as the job developed. There were three principal inviduals whom I shall never forget. The boss-man was Sam Riegel, the chief engineer, an aging, sporty, tweed-clothed, very swell guy who enjoyed a good time far more than participating in locomotive design, particularly one he knew next-to-nothing about because, like most of his kind at that time, he was an old steam man from way back when. Tom McDermott, a thin, cadaverous-looking guy of middle-age, was mechanical engineer and also partial to the bottle. The third man was maybe the greatest character of them all, Charlie Williams, whose title was "Foreman Electrician" at Scranton, where they all came from, but functioned as electrical engineer would--maybe they had no electrical engineer. Charlie was not only an ex-wrestler and gymnast, but also a drinker of great capacity. He was a small man but bulging with muscle beneath his coverings and definitely would be an undesirable guy to tangle with. Fortunately I got along well with him as well as the other two, in fact, developed a friendship with them all that was to last a number of years.

The men in our design engineering group seldom entertained customers and if such an item appeared on their expense account, they would be questioned closely as to the need for it. However, the TED men were supposed to see that the visiting customers were taken care of properly and they would wine and dine them when they came to Erie. However, although in 1930, it was simple to "dine" them, to "wine" them was something else again because of Prohibition. But they expected it, it was done for them wherever they went, and if you didn't do it for them too, you were non-competitive--and with some men, this could weigh fairly heavily in the judgment of a supplier's merit.  It was just the way of business life in the railway supply trade and you were expected by your management to take care of customers. During prohibition, we had to rely on bootleg whisky and sources had been developed. I recall vaguely getting it at some place which would have been where Sears Store is today on East Tenth only the house was on East Nineth and you went up an outside stairway at the rear. I don't believe I did much of this because I can't remember much about the procurement. I recall better about taking all such whisky down to the Works Lab where they checked it for fusel oil and other dangerous contaminents before we'd feed it to customers (or ourselves). After it was okayed by the lab, we'd take it to the hotel where we'd hole up in somebody's room, order up some glasses, ice and mixes, and have our drinking session. I recall that "Golden Wedding" was a favorite. I can taste it yet with ginger ale--in fact, a bourbon and ginger ale today, can bring back those Prohibition drinking affairs as if they'd happened yesterday.