Shoving Cars
I just discovered a good post by donstrack, posted earlier today, and entitled Shoving Cars that I would encourage all of you to read! I’ve included a few extracts in the hope of piquing your interest!
The standard “big hole it” signal was to take off our hard hat and wave it above the top of the car. We were in a bit of a hurry and two cars got through the switch before we stopped. One was on the ground and the second was half-off and half-on. We were all greenhorns except for the hogger, Holly Nielsen. He was an old Bingham & Garfield guy from the late 1940s who liked graveyard shift. We were standing around scratching our heads at 2:30 am, when Holly walks up and simply says to back up and hope for the best. It worked and no one found out.
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It was production work, dumping cars as fast as possible. An accident waiting to happen. One night I was busy getting a stubborn knuckle to stay open on a cut as they rolled away, and did not notice that the cars on the dumper had rolled out about two feet. The guy at the other end gave the dump operator a green light and up the cars went.
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He had hired me, and was willing to overlook the on-the-job hard lessons. When I quit a month later, he actually tried to talk me out of it, saying I was a natural railroader, and not at all like the yucks they were getting off the street. Kennecott was not an ICC or OSHA railroad. It was a mining railroad and under MSHA rules, which were a lot less safety oriented than ICC/FRA/AAR. Loose grab irons, in-op coupler pins and handbrakes, leaking air brakes.
Reading donstrack’s post got me thinking so I did a quick search for some other articles on the subject and uncovered some more greatposts! For example, this post posted earlier today, by admin, on Your Celeb Questions:
A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm GLOCK 17, the clerk with a 50 DESERT EAGLE, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons.
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And The Winner Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn , Germany) fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged up pachyderm finally let it fly, and burried the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant’s unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern. With no one there to help him, he lay under all that dung for at least an hour before a watchman came along, and during that time he suffocated.
Yet another fine article came from Tim W over on The Old Rock House, St. Louis posted back in June and entitled Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses | The Old Rock House, St. Louis which is also certainly worth a look!
88.1 KDHX Presents: Sunday, October 24 • Doors 9pm • Show 10pm • $20 Flat • Over 21 Only • Buy Tickets w/ The Rustlanders Share Ryan Bingham knows a thing or two about pain. He learned the emotional aspect early in life, when shuttling between small towns and family members in the hardscrabble ranching communities of West Texas and New Mexico — and became well-acquainted with the physical facets during his years on the Southwestern rodeo circuit. That ache is palpable in the grooves of Mescalito, Ryan Bingham’s Lost Highway debut, but what’s even more plain is the steely strength needed to overcome it — a tenor that’s evident in both the singer-songwriter’s preternaturally wizened voice and his remarkably poignant songs, which resonate with roadhouse wisdom and rough-and-ready border-town piquancy. “I first started playing music when I was about 17 years old and living down on the border of Mexico,” he recalls. “There was this guy who lived next door and played mariachi music.
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I haven’t put it down since.” Bingham has been living largely on his own since his mid-teens, an existence he facilitated by — as he puts it — “driving all night to ride a bull who’ll knock your teeth out on every jump, then sleeping in back of your truck in a dusty arena.” It was while on these cross-state treks that Bingham, who’d often take out his acoustic guitar to entertain friends, got his first taste of performing for strangers. He remembers “[going] into a bar in Stephenville, Texas, where a bunch of friends asked me to play a couple songs for them.
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’ So I did — I started playing every Wednesday night and people started showing up to hear me play — it was pretty much an accident, I guess.” That success led Bingham to put some of his growing backlog of compositions on tape — which led to the release of such self-released, no-budget CDs as 2005’s Wishbone Saloon. The tunes contained on those fueled many a barroom jukebox and earned the attention of folks like Texas legend Terry Allen (who dubbed him “the legitimate heir to the hard traveling deep knowing likes of Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams”) and Joe Ely (who marveled that “his stories plant an uppercut to the gut and give a hint that truth is on the run.”). Bingham shrugs off such praise, assessing his own work in the matter-of-fact fashion one might expect from a guy who cut his teeth hanging with, and sometimes brawling with blue-collar folks for whom cowboy hats are no mere affectation. He’s full of stories — both knee-slapping and white-knuckled — and he’s undeniably full of soulfulness.
I enjoyed reading more about Ryan Bingham. Thank you!