Foreman Day - Foreman Knight

Late in the year of 1971, I received a call from the Santa Fe Railroad and was instructed to report to an engineering gang working in Dallas, Texas. I had been an employee of the railroad for only a few months and had been promoted to the position of Machine Operator but I didn't have enough seniority to hold that position at that time. I was therefore assigned as a trackman to this particular gang. This gang was made up of a Foreman, a Machine Operator and four Trackmen. The gang was called a Surfacing Gang. It's sole purpose was to raise, tamp and realign track and provide trains with a smoother, faster riding surface.

          

This gang was headquartered at Santa Fe's East Dallas Freight Yard near Fair Park and was working on an old branch line called the Hale Cement Line. There were several large industries serviced by this line of which most were cement plants as the name would suggest. Despite being only a few miles from downtown Dallas, this old branch line was pretty much in the wilderness.

          

On the morning I was to report to duty, I spent several hours just trying to find the freight yard. Then after finding the yard, it took me another hour to locate the on duty point of my gang. Being from Brownwood, Texas, I had never really considered myself a "country boy", but after three stress filled hours of trying to figure out where the heck I was going in Dallas, I felt pretty "country".

          

I was elated to see the gang in the distance - four yellow hats and one white hat (everyone wore yellow hard hats except the foreman who wore white). I approached the White Hat prepared to take whatever I had coming for being three hours late. He was an older fellow with silver hair, large dark framed glasses and smoking a pipe which gave him an air of sophistication. As I approached, a big smile came to his face and he extended his hand and as we shook hands he said that he was glad that I had found them so easily. He proceeded to introduce me to each of my fellow gang members. As he introduced each man he would give their complete name, where he was from and a tidbit of their personal history.

          

We spent a little more time gathering some material for the job site then stopped for lunch. We sat under a bridge near a small creek and opened our lunch boxes. The old foreman was a very personable person. He asked where I was from, about my family, my education and what, if any, ambitions I might have. He then told me a little about my coworkers and then some about himself. He said that he had worked for the Santa Fe Railroad of over forty years and that he was going to retire in a few months. He spoke of how he would miss the railroad but that mostly he would miss the many friends with whom he had shared his railroad career. He spoke slow and deliberate. His conversations were articulate and sincere.

          

The work was hard and different from anything I had ever done before. The foreman seemed to take me under his wing for a few hours each day for the rest of that first week. Not only would he tell me what to do, but he would explain the reasons for doing certain things. He wouldn't let anyone stay on one task for an extended time. He would rotate us from one activity to another. He explained to me that his reasoning was to prevent boredom from doing the same task all day, to teach each man every aspect of the job and to eventually make his job as foreman easier.

          Each day at quitting time we would return to the rail yard. The foreman had a large camper trailer parked on the railroad property. On the first day he had made a point to introduce me to his wife who was staying with him that week. She was also very personable and would send homemade cookies with the foreman each morning with instructions to see that we all received all that we wanted.

          

The second week began much as the first week except there were no homemade cookies. I later found out that his wife would come down with him from Oklahoma every other week. We began that day where we had stopped the Friday before. Things seemed a little different for some reason. Shortly after we began work the old foreman picked up his lunch bucket and without saying a work began to walk down the track in front of us until he finally went out of sight. My fellow workers never missed a lick. Work went on as if the boss was standing there with us. I was really impressed with how much everybody knew about the work and the pride they seemed to take in what they were doing. After an hour or so, with the foreman still gone, I finally asked where he went. I was told that he was walking ahead to see what work was ahead of us.

          

About an hour before quitting time we came to a large clump of Johnson Grass that had been pulled up and placed on the rail. We worked to that point, loaded all the tools on the machine and the machine operator sounded the air horn on the machine. In a few minutes the foreman came walking back toward us. As he walked between the rails he seemed to be zigzagging a little. Nobody said a word. He climbed onto the machine with the rest of us and we headed back to the truck. When we arrived back at the truck, the old foreman walked over and got in on the passenger side rather than the driver's seat as he had the week before. There wasn't much said as the machine operator drove us back to the yard.

          

That's the way it went all week. The foreman would walk off down the track, we would work our way down the track until we came to a clump of Johnson Grass on the rail. The foreman had even taught everyone on the gang how to do all his paperwork, timekeeping forms and daily work reports. He would sign any forms requiring a signature before work each morning and we would fill out the forms and send them off at the Yard Office each afternoon.

          

The next week the foreman's wife was back and so was our foreman. It was just like the first week. He amazed me with his knowledge. At lunch we would all sit and listen to his many railroad stories and everyday he would ask how my folks back in Brownwood were doing or how some of the other guy's family members were doing. He would talk about all of the good things that the railroad could provide if we would just stick with it.

          

That's the way it continued, the weeks his wife was there, he never took a drink. The weeks she wasn't there, even though we never saw him take a drink, he was a different man. I have never learned as much as I did in the two months that I worked with that foreman. He shared more than just knowledge with me. He shared his philosophies and seemed to sincerely want to help me better myself.

          

Although he never said anything himself, I later found out that he had been a Roadmaster and was destined to move on up in higher management positions. I asked if his drinking was his reason for getting out of management and was told that he didn't have a drinking problem back then, that he had come back to spend more time with his wife and son. I asked when his drinking started. I was told that he started drinking shortly after his twenty-one year old son died......his son Terry.