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we'd go on rare occasions as guests of someone like H.L.Andrews or Ed Waller or maybe Henry Guy.

These City Club-Den sessions were also enlivened by great story-telling activity.  These stories were of both the "dirty" and clean type, most of the latter being true anecdotes related usually by Ed Kelly, while Ken Cartwright had a huge fund of the former as I've realized.  A few samples of Kelly's follow:

In South Station, Boston, a brakeman was walking up and down the platform announcing that the train would be leaving shortly and giving all the stops en route to New York.  He made the announcement several times while walking back and forth past two middle-aged, well-dressed women.

Finally, one of the women stopped him as he went by and asked, "Does this train stop at New Haven?"

The brakeman gave her a withering look and said, "Stick around a few minutes, lady, and you'll find out."

The woman he spoke thusly to, proved to be the wife of a New Haven vice-president and the brakeman was hauled off the train at New Haven and given a 30-day layoff.  However, the Brotherhood put up a fight and the ultimate outcome was that the brakeman was given all his back pay for the 30-day period he was out, and had enjoyed a 30-day vacation to boot.

                                 *****

On the New Haven, old coaches were occasionally fumigated. One day a passenger got onto an old coach at Greenwich which had just been fumigated and presently the conductor came through for his ticket.

The passenger said, "Conductor, this car smells terrible."

"Well," said the conductor, "it smelled all right until we got to Greenwich."

                                    *****

A train was standing in the Bridgeport station and a train announcer stood on the platform bellowing information on the train's destination as well as all its intermediate stops. At this point, a woman stepped up to one of the train's brakemen who was standing on the platform.

"Does this train go to New York?" she asked.

"God dammit, lady," said the brakeman, "don't you hear that fella hollerin' his lungs out?"

                                 *****

In my opinion, the stories such as those above which Ed Kelly told, were really considerably funnier than those told by Ken Cartwright because Ed claimed they were true and you could believe they were true.