Working on the Railroad - My Story

It's taken awhile, but I have finally gotten to the last chapter of my series of Working on the Railroad - My Story.

These series of Working on the Railroad scanned a period of 28 years from Sept 25, 1970 through July 26, 1998, when I had my second heart attack and no longer could work. The following story covers the last 10 years from 1988 through 1998, the time spent in Jacksonville and Tampa, Fla.

I assumed when I hired out with the railroad that it would be temporary - I was wrong. I assumed I would probably retire from Hamlet - I was wrong again. And, I assumed I would retire at 65, like normal people did - I was wrong for the third time. I guess you could apply that old addage "three strikes, you're out" here. However you look at it, like I have said before, the best laid plans that we think are out there, are not the way things work out.

When the word came down that the clerical part of the railroad was being transferred to Jacksonville, Fl., it meant a major change for me and my family. We were born and raised in Rockingham and figured we would end up staying there probably for the rest of our lives. At the time I also had a fence company in addition to working on the railroad. This meant that I would not only have to sell my house in Richmond Park but also sell my fence company. I had no idea how all this was going to work out. I remember my wife worrying herself silly that there was no way this could work. But I assured her that everything would come together and eventually work to our advantage. (at least that's what I kept saying to myself, even if I did have my doubts).

While we lived in Richmond Park, we had many friends we were going to miss. Henry Roberts, manager of the Savings and Loan, and his wife, the former Elvira Covington, both now deceased, were our neighbors. Henry took pride in his garden and always brought us more food from there than we could eat. Jerry Turner and his family, whom we became best friends with, lived down the street from us. As fate would have it, Jerry is the guy that bought my fence company and his relative bought my house. And, it all worked out in a timely manner with our move. There again, there was a plan put in place that we had no control over - with the man upstairs in charge.

When the transfer finally happened, I was working the second shift crew dispatcher at Hamlet and luckily I got the first shift crew dispatcher in Jacksonville. At the time of the move, everything to do with crew dispatching was going computerized. At Hamlet, most of the work was done by long-hand but with the move, the computer was really taking control and we all had a lot more to learn. But it was exciting. I mean this was different than Hamlet - modernized, plenty of new railroad people, new jobs, new way of working and for a while, first shift with weekends off. This was really nice, since that was a rarety at Hamlet.

But as time went on, I got bumped off the crew job. Russell Lancaster and I both worked the crew jobs but after a bit, they were creating some new Guarantee jobs. These were jobs that handled bi-weekly guarantee boards plus monthly guarantee boards. Trainmen and engineers at different locations had the option of going to these boards after they got displaced off their regular jobs and didn't stand for another regular assigned job. The guarantee boards were just that - they guaranteed so many days in a two week period as long as the employee stayed marked up. But the main ingredient on these new jobs they were creating for the clerks is that they would be Monday thru Friday, first shift with week-ends off. Plus they would be located in the Sun Bank building - right beside the CSX main building in downtown Jacksonville...right beside Jax Landing - practically.

I never thought I would stand to bid this job in but I did. And, Russell, whom was older than I in seniority, also bid one in. So, the two Hamlet transferees, bid in these two new jobs atop the Sun Bank Bldg. I really enjoyed working these jobs. They were so new, when we arrived for work, there were no phones installed yet but we did have computers. And, we really didn't know alot of what we were supposed to do. But we had a great boss, Maureen Kelly, whom I believe was from Pittsburgh, that made us feel right at home. As time went on, we moved from the Sun Bank to where all the rest of the employees were located, Druid St. Maureen guided us through the process and we became pretty darn good at these jobs. But she didn't last long after she transferred down. She became ill, was in a coma for a good while and we and a lot of the clerks and supervisors would visit her in the hospital hoping she would come out of the coma but sadly, she did not. She died later after she had been moved back to her home.

As is normal for railroad life, I eventually got rolled, pulled, displaced (any number of terms used when another clerk got your job by seniority) off of this job and had to make a move over to Customer Service. This is not what I wanted. Customer Service was not really the kind of job I wanted but there was no choice at the time. These jobs did what basically we did at Hamlet if you didn't work the crew dispatcher jobs......checking cars, lining up trains inbound and outbound, billing cars, etc. Plus, I had to take a training course that I wasn't thrilled about.

Well, it just so happened about the time I landed a job in Customer Service and was trained for it, another job came open in Payroll. And, of course, it was first shift with the week-ends off. This really made a difference when you worked at the railroad because most of your railroad life was working jobs that kept you from being home on the week-ends like "normal people".

Both these locations were nice, new buildings in Jacksonville, in the Southpoint area. A lot different than what I left behind in Hamlet. But the crew dispatchers buildings I had worked in previously were in the part of town that wasn't quite as nice. So, to be able to work at Customer Service or Payroll was a big improvement, as far as location and atmosphere were concerned.

Probably working in Payroll was the best job I ever had in my career with CSX. I probably had the best supervisors - Ann Helfrich and Pam Overbay. They treated us all with respect and let us help realign our departments to make them more efficient. Some great people worked with me there - Al Coleman, Frank Ivey, Dave Overbay, Audrey Edwards, Harry Daub, to name a few I remember. Me, Dave, Frank and Al used to walk around the buildings in the morning for our exercise for the day. Dave had health problems and I heard he died shortly after I left.

We enjoyed living in Jacksonville (well, actually, we lived in Orange Park and worked in Jacksonville) but it was hard to make friends there as a lot of military people lived there also and they were always moving in and out. I guess what we enjoyed the most was Jax Landing and Riverwalk in downtown Jax. They were located right on the St Johns River and there was always a lot going on there. Plus, the Jax Jaguars were started when we lived there. In fact, my friend Russell Lancaster's wife, Helga, got connected and did all the uniforms for the Jaguars. But the only thing I really didn't like too much was the weather. It pretty much had seasons, just like the Carolinas. Living in Florida, you kind of think it should be warm all year. But that wasn't the case. I remember one year around Christmas, we actually had snow falling and the roads were icing over as we started our holiday trip back to Rockingham.

Just as fate would have it, after I had been in payroll for about a year, we found they were going to do away with our department and merge it with another. This was bad news as I would not stand for another good job in payroll when they did this. I was dreading having to go back to Customer Service and take a job with bad hours and off days.

Well, about this same time my wife found that her boss was going to relocate from Orange Park, where she worked, to Tampa/Clearwater. This couldn't have happened at a better time. I put in for a transfer to Tampa and lucked out and got it....much to our surprise. Another case of trying to figure if it all was going to work and it did. So, we made one more move from Jax to St. Pete/Clearwater, Fl.

We lived in Pinellas Park, St. Petersburg and Clearwater.....all at one time. The way the city limits, etc were laid out, you would ride down the road from our neighborhood and the sign said Pinellas Park...right up the street from there was St. Petersburg but our address was Clearwater! Go figure. But, living in Clearwater, as our address stated, was classic Florida living. We had a beautiful house, peach trim with all the rooms in those Florida colors plus a screened in pool. I loved living there because you could literally wear shorts all year long. The weather in the winter was mild to say the least. My wife would rather see the seasons change but not me. Give me the warm weather all year - I learned to love it there. Celebrating Christmas every year with temps in the 80s was my kind of living.

BUT - and this is a big But - I worked in Tampa and was not happy with working there at all. When I transferred, I had to go to the extra board. Had to learn all kinds of new jobs plus some that I really didn't like. Most of the people there were ok but the biggest disappointment I guess was that they treated you like an outsider. Not like Jacksonville, where just about everyone had come from all up and down the east coast as the railroad transferred all it's clerical operations there. Everyone was from somewhere else. But, as fate would have it, this was about to change.

I worked in Tampa for about two years I guess when my life took a different turn. On July 26 of 1998, I had my second heart attack. Thank the Lord, I made it through this one also just like the first one I had on March 26 of 1989. I thought I would be able to go back to work but soon found out that I could not handle the jobs I had worked in the past. So, going back to work was out of the question. It took a lawyer and my union reps to help me get on disability but I did get it in Jan of 1999. I had been out on sick leave since the day of the heart attack. Even tho no one wants to have a heart attack, it happened at the time to be part of the big plan that we knew nothing about.

When I received word of my disability being approved, my wife's job played out at the same time. So, we figured if we were to ever get back to Carolina, now was the time. Although, I would have preferred to stay in Clearwater, being back close to our family was the deciding factor in making the move back. My mom, brothers, and my wife's parents still lived in Rockingham and my daughter lived in Raleigh/Cary, NC. My son lived in Jacksonville but he was ready to move shortly after we did. So, instead of moving back to Rockingham, we moved to Cary since our daughter lived there plus Duke Hospital was close by. So, here we are.

The above is the last installment of Working on the Railroad - My Story. I am sure I have left out a lot that could have been said or written about and hope I have not offended anyone in my accounts of how it was Working on the Railroad. I just wish I could have remembered a lot more individual names during my days there. For I am sure there are many that I have left out. But maybe this will give you just a little capsule of what it was like for me during the 28 years I spent on the railroad. And, maybe, just maybe, it will inspire someone else to write about their careers...no matter where they worked.

So, another account of My Memories of growing up in Rockingham, North Carolina - a small textile town in the South in the '50s, '60s,'70s and '80s.