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on the New York Central's "Forest City" which the Colonel always referred to as the "Forest Limited."  It would get in around 9 a.m. and we'd meet him at the station and there was great excitement on the part of Bab and Rog particularly.  The Colonel loved to play poker and he was very popular with my friends so I'd always try to have a poker session or so while he was with us and often someone else would also have one.  The Colonel was a good poker player and he had a set of mannerisms while playing that were always exactly the same so you simply couldn't tell from his actions what kind of cards he had.  One of his favorite remarks during the action was: "Bet your head off and sleep in the street."  Also he was a great story teller and was famed among poker players for certain stories which they would demand he tell to certain initiates from time to time.  One of the most famous was the tale, including demonstration, of how to turn an orange into a peach and it never failed to bring down the house.  During these poker sessions, which we'd hold at night, there was some mild drinking which enlivened the parties even more and we did have some great times.  And we'd play penny-ante-nickel limit so nobody ever got badly burned.  For in those days, particularly in the 1930s, nobody could afford to get burned.  The Colonel was an ardent pipe smoker and the tobacco he used was Old Hillside which came in a cloth bag with a proper label glued to it; on the label was the tobacco's promotional pitch "All Quality and No Style."  Being in the custom-tailoring business, the Colonel wore beautiful clothes, perhaps the best to be had in Kentucky, and during the early part of our marriage before the roof fell in on everyone, he supplied me with several suits which were probably the best worn in the Erie Works and certainly did nothing to slow down my career.  He was a great guy and his visits always a lot of fun.
  I guess it was 1937 that we bought our 4-door Ford convertible brand new from Bobby Burns for $900 and it was the top-priced car of the Ford line; and with great pride and pleasure, we'd driven it for the past four years.  In fact, I honestly believed that it was the best-looking car in Erie regardless of size, make or price.  But now it was beginning to run down a little and with the war evidently so imminent, we decided we'd be well advised to replace it while we could.  We looked around and became enamored of a 2-door 5-passenger Dodge convertible with windows in the back seat and an automatic top; the latter was a new development where you simply unlocked the front of the top where it was fastened to the top of the windshield, pressed a button, and the top went down, and went up with the reverse procedure.  This feature captivated us completely because of Ford's only drawback had been the inconvenience of working the top by hand.  So we bought one of these Dodges, a pale blue body with a soft-tan top and brown leather upholstery which was a dreamboat.  If