"Takin' Twenty" with the Virginian Brethren by Skip Salmon

[NW Mailing List]

Last night I had the pleasure of "Takin' Twenty" with seven of the Brethren
and Friends of the Virginian Railway.  We signed a Happy Birthday card for
former VGN brakeman Bill Turner who just turned 82.



For Show and Tell I took several items from former Virginian Railway
Special Agent Joe Byrum, loaned to me by members of his family, who are
friends of my youngest son Josh.  Included for showing was his "VGN. RY.
POLICE OFFICER" badge, ID, switch key #3301 and two newspaper articles
about him.  The first article was about qualifying on the pistol firing
range with the Suffolk, VA police department where Joe shot a score of 363,
with officer J. A. Zawada firing a 403 (out of 500) to get the best score
of the 24 officers who qualified.  Also shown was an article about a lady
getting hit by a VGN coal train near Cradock at the intersection of the VGN
and US Route 17.  Joe investigated this incident for the VGN.  A photo in
this article showed two Norfolk County deputies at the scene.  Norfolk
County, VA is now part of Cheasapeake.  The Brethren remembered Joe fondly
and Wis Sowder corrected one of them by saying " he was Mr. Strickland's
personal body guard and was nothing like that 'cinder dick' from Altavista
who 'couldn't track an elephant in the snow'".  These artifacts of Officer
Byrum will be on display at the VGN Station in Roanoke.



Attending for the first time was former N&W and NS Clerk Harry Harmon.
Harry worked as a telegrapher in the Navy and was hired in the dispatch
center by N&W.  He and retired Virginia Division Chief Dispatcher Landon
Gregory talked for about two hours about dispatching trains on both the VGN
and N&W.  Harry told the Brethren that his opinion of the VGN was "it was
better than working for your brother".  One of them told about some of the
operators being ground hog hunters since back then the County paid a bounty
on ground hogs of $1.50.  They required the hog's tail as proof of a kill.
Landon and Harry both remembered one rookie who was set up by the others by
having him shoot a ground hog that they had previously removed his tail....



Passed around was a list of current discounts given seniors by various
national restaurant and other chains, sent to us by one of our Brethren
from Norfolk, Bob "Little Abner" Glass.  The Brethren especially enjoyed
reading that.



The Jewel from the Past is from October 18, 2004:  "The DVD shown was a new
'Trains' Magazine Ultimate Railroading series 'Big Power'.  It is an
excellent hour long color presentaton of modern high horsepower locomotives
including the 6,000 horsepower story.  Unfortunately, none of the first
'Big Power' VGN electrics were mentioned."



Then there's this from Gordon Hamilton:  "About Growing Older" lists
sayings that the Brethren discussed like:"The older we get, the fewer
things seem worth waiting in line for"; "You know you are getting old when
everything either dries up or leaks"; and the favorite "Long ago, when men
cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft...today.
it's called golf."



Time to pull the pin on this one!



Departing Now from V248.



Skip Salmon



DVII
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20140227/39d57708/attachment-0001.html>