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Erie, Pa.,
Tuesday, June 18, 1940.

I was the "boss" today as Whitey and Henry were both away; nothing unusual came up. It was a quiet day as far as the boss function was concerned. The main event that upset my plans was the ingress unexpectedly of Messrs. Koester and Meyers of the Milwaukee Road, here to see Doc who is in the deep south, so I had to pinch hit. Koester is a rather pleasant non-belligerent little German from Milwaukee and Meyers a big, jovial, black moustached, dark complected gentleman also from Milwaukee, who was genuinely refreshing in this dark and depressing time. He is a "road man" with innumerable stories engagingly told and it is hard to feel blue with him around. Three of his best anecdotes are suggested in the following:

[[circled]]1.[[/circled]] The diesel-electric fireman who was quite upset because the auxiliary power on a new unit was 125 volts DC, thus depriving him of the opportunity of bringing his 115 v. AC radio set aboard and listening to the ball games.

[[circled]]2.[[/circled]] The old gas-car engineer in the sticks who transferred to parallel at some preselected and standardized spot when leaving each station. When questioned as to where he would transfer leaving this particular station, he replied, "I transfer at the [[blank]] house." And when asked what he would do if it blew away, he replied he had a pretty good idea where it was located. Asked why he had picked this particular spot to transfer, he replied, "Because that's where Kelly transferred - he had this job before me."

[[circled]]3.[[/circled]] The old engineer who wouldn't study his instruction book because he didn't have no trouble.