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

[NW Mailing List]

Yesterday afternoon, schools in our area were let out two hours early,
because of a predicted extremely windy thunderstorm.  When I arrived at the
Country Cookin' for Takin' Twenty, the restaurant was almost empty.  Only
one of the Brethren, VGN hogger Raymond East, and I were the only two who
made it to the session.  We discussed the days news, weather, and some VGN
stuff.  Raymond, even though he is 92, still drives his old Ford pickup
every day, even during thunderstorms.


 For Show and Tell I took the latest "Classic Trains" magazine.  We
couldn't find anything in it about the N&W or Virginian but we enjoyed the
photos and stories about old railroaders.


 The Jewel from the Past is from August 6, 2009.:  " Rufus Wingfield told
the Brethren about always using a #3 VGN pencil (with no eraser) for car
reports.  These report forms required five copies, so there were four
carbon papers used and a very hard lead pencil.  Ruf said "VGN Clerk
Wallace Brinkley would use the carbon papers over and over until you could
read a newspaper through them".  Ruf also shared some his 'ugly' home grown
tomatoes with us.  My wife, Judi says Rufus produces the 'ugliest' but best
tomatoes that she has ever tasted."


 The ebay report this time has the following VGN RWY items sold:  Photo at
Princeton of ballast in coal hoppers for $9.50; Soft photo post card of VGN
RWY Conductor in  his uniform for $9.55;  System Public Timetable for
$15.50; VGN RWY diagrams for passenger cars for $68.99; and the deal of the
year: a soft copy of H. Reid's "The Virginian Railway" for $8.00.


 From last week, thanks for the tremendous response (the best of anything I
have posted yet) to the Fairbanks-Morse "Conservador" refrigerator.  I got
answers from New York, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Illinois and
Georgia.  The print of the VGN Heritage unit 1069 has been sent to Roland
Steorts in Rochester, NY who  sent in the first correct answer:  The
Conservador had an inner door that you saw immediately when you opened the
outer door, that contained shelves for such items as milk, butter, eggs,
water etc.  This allowed you to access the most frequently used items
WITHOUT opening the inner door, thus keeping a lot of cold air in place.
F-M advertised "lower operating costs" because of this feature.


 Then there's this:  Last year a lady replaced all of the windows in her
house with those expensive double pane energy efficient kind.  But this
week she got a call from the contractor complaining that his work had been
completed a whole year and he had yet to receive payment.  "Boy, oh boy,
did we go around" she explained.  "Just because I'm blond doesn't mean that
I am automatically stupid. So, I proceeded to tell him just what his
fast-talking  sales guy had told me last year.  He said that in one year,
the windows would pay for themselves".


 Time to pull the pin on this one!


 Departing Now from V248,


 Skip Salmon


 DCXLII




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