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nearby lunch wagon for some food and hot coffee. Just as we were ready to leave, a gang of "gandy dancers" (section hands) were marched in by their boss; they had been out fighting washouts, etc. Charlie said they recruited them from the bowery, anywhere; they are men down and out, and many times he says, you find some well educated men in their ranks. He said there was a civil engineer in that crowd. They work a few days and quit. Some quit before they even get paid. The term "gandy dancer", originates from hoboes walking on the ties, "gandy" being a term for a hobo, according to Jim, named after a hobo leader, Gandy. (This is not too authentic.) When we get back to the engine, still further chilled and wet, we started the boiler to warm up, and matched dimes for diversion. Finally orders came to pull down to the yard, cut off, and take the engine to Van Nest. The test was called off on account of the unprecedented storm and havoc. Not long before this, a motor car something like a semi-open Toonerville trolley, shot by us going up the bridge, a lone man in it. Jim reported it was a section man dispatched to investigate the reported washouts in the cut near Bay Ridge. The lone man said he'd try it alone although there was danger of being blown off the track on Hell Gate. We pulled down to Oak Point, dropped our train and ran light to Hunt's Point station (abandoned), where we got off. It was dark and wet and we poked around with floodlights. I had no coat nor rubbers. We tried to get up to the street at Hunt's Point Station only to find the exit boarded up. So we walked along the cut looking for a place to climb the steep bank and finally scrambled up through mud and dripping bushes to come out on 149th St. next to a saloon. We must have been a motley crew, Charlie Hess, Clark Scovill, Jim Smith, Bob Walsh, Alf Bedauber, and I.
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