[PRCo] Re: vacated roads on the Southern Cambria Ry right of way

[Fred Schneider]

OK ... here's the David explanation....
For those who never knew him ... and John Swindler and Ed Lybarger did know him.   The late David Roach and one time owner of the Roach Ranch in South Fork was somewhat of a class act except we're not sure which class.   David was prone to exaggerate but he was fun to work with.   He knew how to deal with the politicians and idiots in government and perhaps with pompous idiots around him.   He had a million stories.   He was always willing to be a friend in his own way.

I remember a day when we were auditing an office in New Castle.  It was gorgeous fall day.   At lunch I remarked that it would be a beautiful day to go photograph the Shaker Rapid in the evening rush hour.   At 3:00 Dave looked at me and said, "Why don't you have our worked packed up?  You'll never get to Cleveland if you don't move."   We made it.   He rode Shaker Heights cars and Toronto cars and Harold Geissenheimer's multi-hued PCCs with me.   He wasn't a railfan but that didn't matter.   

When we were working in Bradford, the favorite restaurant was in Niagara Falls, Ontario.   You could make that in time for a late dinner.   Dave did have cardiac problems and he was on Lasix.   He was taking his pills after dinner that night when the waitress asked what they were for.   Dave said, it's make you loose weight.   So she grabbed two or three and swallowed them before he could stop the lady.   If you look it up on line, it is described as a "potent diuretic."  When we walked out of there, Dave remarked that the the lady would be pissing all night.   She would loose a few pounds of water.   (One would be bad enough let alone three.)   

And then there was the time he told the people at work how I had kidnapped him and driven him through three states for dinner.   He embellished it as only Dave could.   He saw the signs change from Pennsylvania to West Virginia and then to Ohio and we kept driving and he was a prisoner.   He figured that as long as they thought we didn't like our jobs, they would be happy.   They were not supposed to know we enjoyed it.   Truth was that we were auditing the state employment office in Washington PA that week and I had suggested to him that I had not eaten in the Hotel Lafayette in Marietta, Ohio for years.   Dave, as he was prone to do, said, "Let's go."  

Dave was also cheap.   So cheap he could stand on a nickel wearing a brand new pair of shoes and tell if the buffalo was up or down.   I once got tired of Dave's cheapness and after three days of putting up with it in Philadelphia, I lead him into the Pickett Post for dinner.   Now this was an upscale place near the Conshohocken Road P&W station ... very upscale ... Dave's was so stunned that he could only chirp, "Where did you learn to eat in places like this?"   (I knew about it because Norm Vutz told me about it.   I'm sure Rich Allman knows of its old reputation.)   Some of the places Dave knew were in another world.   There was a place in Ebensburg that still had 1930 prices on the menu.   I remember the time he was out all night in McKeesport because he got hungry.   The hotel let him out but told him they wouldn't let him back in after he left ... he found an all night hot dog stand and stayed there for a buck.   He always carried a $100 bill in his wallet so he could say he had money to burn.   One day he was forced to spend it .... on a lousy cup of coffee at the Summit Dinner in Somerset and then the owner was so scared it might be counterfeit that he came around the back and I saw him writing down my license plate number.    

And as Ed knows very well, he was always willing to follow some abandoned right of way in the evening.   It beat sitting in a hotel room looking at television.  

But perhaps my favorite story from Dave was about a kid he grew up with in high school.   Dave claimed that Charles Bronson (or Charles Dennis Buchinski in the days before Hollywood), who grew up in Ehrenfeld while Dave was in adjacent Summerhill, was not really playing the tough guy roll in the movies.  Dave said he really was the high school bully.  Dave said he once managed to get even with Charles by hiding on the roof with large rock and dropping in on Buchinski's head when he came out the door.   We'll never know if it's true.   Both "actors" are dead today. 

I suspect Dave also had another medical condition called Diverticulosis which allowed him to pass some rather wicked gas on command.   There were several very good stories.   The shortest story was probably the day they had just painted the elevators in the Labor and Industry Building.   At the end of the day we got on to go home.   Dave release a volley as soon as the doors closed at the 12th floor.  At the 11th floor a poor delicate, gentile older lady got on and you could see her noise twitching in Dave's purple cloud.  The woman was in absolute anguish.   I couldn't resist.   I looked at Dave and quipped, "Strange isn't it, Dave, how the smell of fresh paint just hangs in the air."  It it blew his cover when he erupted in laughter.    

But he was our Dave and I still miss him.     


On Jul 13, 2010, at 12:54 PM, Edward H. Lybarger wrote:

> Dave. fo
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
> [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org] On Behalf Of Derrick
> Brashear
> Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2010 12:36 PM
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: vacated roads on the Southern Cambria Ry right of way
> 
> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:28 PM, Edward H. Lybarger <trams2 at comcast.net>
> wrote:
>> No, not that good.  Nothing nefarious.  Or infamous.  You had to have 
>> known Fred's boss at the time to understand.  John Swindler knows.
> 
> Dave?
> 
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>