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23

   Johnnie Walker, anticipating the end of Prohibition, says to Winfield D. Bearce, a native of Maine: How's the State of Maine? The old Stein Song ought to come into its own now.

   John Davis had a good line of anecdotes and along about 1933 he told me a few which I put into my idea file and they're still good. Of course they had to do with the Old Guard of that time and particularly people in the tiny Air Brake Department where John worked although there are a couple about Hermann Lemp that are excellent. They follow:

   The first one I've recorded before but not as a conversation. John had been working as an apprentice school instructor in Erie and had taken the eye of Charlie Ives, the boss of the Air Brake Dept. Charlie talked to John somewhat as follows:

   Charlie: John, I'm offering you an engineering job in the Air Brake Department. 
   John: I want to be perfectly honest about this. I'm not an engineer. I'm not even a college graduate. I had one year of engineering and then I had to go to work. I took a little night school. But I'm not an engineer.
   Charlie: That's okay. Do you know where I got my engineering education?
   John: No, sir. I never inquired into that.
   Charlie: Mostly on the front end of a Chicago trolley car.

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   John had been in the Air Brake office a few days when George Macloskie evidently decided to take a little advantage of him. George said, "John, get me the Westinghouse distributing valve folder out of the file, will you."
   John went to the file, located the folder, removed it from the file and walked over to George's desk. Holding it out to George, John said, "Here's the file you asked for."
   George said testily without even looking at John, "Can't you see I'm busy."
   John didn't reply but returned the folder to the file and went back to his own desk and sat down.
   George said, "What did you do that for?"
   John said, "I brought you the folder you asked for. You apparently didn't want it so I put it back in the file. When you do want it, you can get it."
   George said, "You mustn't say things like that. I'm very nervous. I'm under great pressure all the time. I just can't have things like this occuring."
   "That's all right," said John. "I'm just telling you that after this I'm not running any more errands for you."
   From then on, George treated John as an equal and all was well.

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