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16

misty work area involving a multiplicity of tracks winding in and out of cobblestone streets and terminating in great expanses of teamtracks and with the weather atrocious most of the time. In later years, I was to spend a good deal of time in Boston and keep a daily, detailed diary during the period, which will have to take the place of this woefully inadequate picture.

On my few visits to Boston prior to these tests, I believe I'd stayed at the Parker House. During the tests, however, we stayed at the Hotel Essex because it was handy to our scene of operations. Also we felt less conspiculous than we would have had we walked into the lobby of the swank Parker House attired in our steam-locomotive clothes--or our diesel clothes either. The Essex was strictly second-rate--in fact, I think it may well have qualified as third-rate. Also it had a very lurid reputation. I remember one incident there. I guess I'd been working all night covering one of the night shifts and returned to the hotel around 8 a.m. I cleaned up a little and then went downstairs for some breakfast before sacking out for a few hours. I returned to my room presently but before I retired, the chambermaid appeared to make up my room and, of course, discovered that I'd been out all night. She was a blowzy young woman, maybe in her 30s, and she gave me quite a come-on before leaving. Then I could hear her in the next room fixing it up--the walls were anything but soundproof. But before she'd completed her work in there, I heard the occupant of the room return. Then I could hear muffled conversation. Then I could hear the bed creaking. I decided that she'd probably found a patron. It was the first time I'd ever run into something like this in a hotel and being a bit naive along these lines anyhow, I could scarcely believe it. But to joke concerning the reputation of the Essex, it had a large electric sign on the roof saying HOTEL ESSEX in enormous letters and the sign was so located that it could be seen easily from the railroad. However, the sign had been allowed to deteriorate and while we were there, some of the letters failed to light up at night and the sign appeared as follows:

[[image: hand written HOTEL ESSEX with EL ES dotted lines]]

And now that I think about it, I seem to have a recollection of having seen this in some diary of mine so maybe the sign incident occurred at some other time. But the Essex was a fleabag at best and I'm sure we stayed there.

Having gathered a considerable supply of data by the time we wound up our tests in Boston, we withdrew once more to our respective offices and got back to work so to speak. As on the 1934 tests, I was the guy who analyzed the data and wrote the report, presumably having checked the draft over with the New Haven representatives on the test before winding it up. I'd now like to make a brief report on what we'd found.