[PRCo] Re: Pgh Railways Street Car Operators Wanted Ad

[Schneider Fred]

1.   I didn't look all that closely at the date, Tom.   I admit to  
being in the middle of an obsessive compulsive project at the time.

Pearl Harbor was bombed December 7, 1941.   War was declared against  
Japan on December 8 and against Germany and Italy on December 11,  
1941.  A further declaration of war against Bulgaria, Hungary and  
Rumania was made June 5, 1942.

2.   Now that I think about it, the height of 5'-8" in Pittsburgh  
might have something to do with the fact that the trolley catcher on  
PCC cars was above the rear window.  You had to be able to use a  
switch iron and reach up with it and grab the rope with the loop at  
the upper end of the switch iron if the pole dewired.   A very short  
person without high arm and wrist strength might not have been able  
to do it.   The catchers on a yellow car were half-way up the window  
posts so that even without a hook of some kind, you had to reach up  
about seven feet to get to the rope.

The interurban cars had a retriever instead of a catcher and it  
probably made sense to put it down lower where you could muscle the  
rope out of it.

3.   Interesting but sad to see the jobs specifying "white."    
However, one needs to judge things like that in accordance with the  
prevail standards of 1941 and not the standards of 2009.   It was  
acceptable behavior then.    I have probably always been more liberal  
than most people both because I had a liberal father and because we  
vacationed in the south in the 1950s and I felt a great sorrow for  
someone who couldn't spend his money where I could or couldn't go to  
the bathroom or drink water where I was permitted.    As things  
happen, Don, my sister's third husband  (and the good one ... the  
keeper) is of African descent.   And my granddaughter was sitting out  
in the cold one night when her mother wouldn't let her in the  
house .... mom was screwing some doofus she met and that was more  
important than her teenage daughter's welfare.   Some guy coming down  
the street felt sorry for my granddaughter.   They will married next  
spring.   He is also black.   At this point they have already given  
us two great grandchildren and they've been together for about five  
years.   Although it wears me out just looking at dynamic one and two  
year old kids, its great having kids in the house again when we have  
to babysit.

There was an article published about 1952 or early 1953 in Railroad  
magazine about Los Angeles Transit Lines.   It was essentially a very  
nice photo study by Donald Sims.    One picture shows two black men  
working on a B-1 truck at South Park shops.   Don Duke told me  
something about that picture which Sims didn't tell me when he loaned  
me the negative.  The picture was posed because black men were not  
allowed to be mechanics for LATL at that time ... only gophers and  
helpers.

I first visited New Orleans as an impressionable 18-year-old.   That  
spring (1958) the streetcars and buses in New Orleans had been  
integrated and so had the car shop.   I was the Yankee in their  
midst.  One of the mechanics was telling me about a certain black man  
who was a excellent mechanic ... "every bit as good as I am," he  
said.   His foreman intoned, "That's alright but if he fails to call  
me Mister, he will find himself on the floor looking up at me."   Of  
course the white was permitted to address the foreman by his first name.

Today we have laws but laws do not change how we think.   Irrational  
behavior is still there.   I was driving through Selma, Alabama with  
an old high school classmate last spring.   I asked  Al what was  
behind a high wall.   He said it was the Methodist childrens home.    
Then he added ... "and they are the only white children in town that  
go to the public school.   The rest all go to private schools now."    
It is still separate and unequal in the deepest south.

4.   At the end of the war, the federal government passed a law  
requiring that servicemen who had been drafted be given their old  
jobs back.  Therefore the lowest seniority people had to go.   In  
many cases, women were simply told they had to go and men were hired  
to replace them regardless of whether or not those hired had worked  
there before.  It became a man's world again. The Pennsylvania  
Railroad, to the best of my knowledge, got rid of all female shop  
personnel at the end of the war.   They did, however, retain any high  
seniority interlocking tower operators.  Examples: Irma Resch and  
Dotty Pontz remained at CORK tower in Lancaster into the 1960s.   A  
lady named Jean was working 2nd trick at PARK (Parkesburg) at least  
into the late 1950s.


On Oct 24, 2009, at 5:40 PM, TEP wrote:

>
> 1: Is this wartime -- the US didn't get into it until after Pearl  
> Harbor,
> late 1941.
> 2: The height and weight restrictions for operators in Vancouver  
> partly
> relate to pulling poles on trolley coaches which each have an  
> upward spring
> of 70 lbs.
> 3: Interesting to see other job ads on that page specifying "white".
>
>
>
> Tom Parkinson P.Eng, Vancouver BC Canada 604-733-5430, fax -5437
>