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us. Ernie must have felt on the defensive because he immediately adopted his most irksome, rambling manner. To every question we asked which could have been answered in two minutes by any normal person, Ernie rambled all over hell's half acre and finally came back to the point fifteen minutes later. Roy and I were getting more and more irked but the last straw with me was when he told me personally that he felt that the G.E. Co. is "laboring under a decided handicap" - we had no one in our organization who knew anything about designing a locomotive for the railroads! Roy stepped in soon after, while I was rather heatedly disagreeing with Ernie, and we adjourned to the lobby where we showed Ernie some prints on the GE733 motor. He felt self ventilation was another distinct handicap because of taking dirt from near the track. He was all for single reduction! And cast steel trucks were the thing! He got to rambling in his ultra-exasperating, facetious way and we finally broke up and went back to the office mad clean through! Then Roy told me the reason behind Ernie's initial attitude - he wants a job! Roy says he tried to get one with Electro-Motors and finally talked his way out of it - later tried to get one with Alco and was played for a sucker very beautifully. Now he wants to get a job with us! Roy, still excited, assured me he was going to play Ernie the same way - I doubt if he ever does actually. But this talk with Ernie was the last straw in making us feel we had been technically kicked