My Former Life
My Railroad Retirement Speech.
A week or two ago I overheard fellow retired railroader Yves Leroux ask my wife Mary if we were going to the retirement do. Mar said ” yes” and Yves said “good I’m looking forward to George’s speech”. Mar said “well I don’t know if he’s giving one, he’s pretty nervous about giving a speeches”, Yves said ” no way , not George” and Mar said “oh yeah, he’s actually a pretty shy guy”. Yves couldn’t believe this. George shy. No way.
One on one I can talk your ear off on almost any subject…..loudly, as many of you know, but in a group setting I’m a mess so please bear with me.
It’s interesting what we know and don’t know about people even after spending a lifetime working together.
I come from a family of railroaders. At one time 4 out of 5 in my immediate family worked for CN. My grandfather lived in Montreal for a decade and was a carpenter for the Grand Trunk Railroad and you can bet he worked on the Victoria Street bridge. I thought of him every time I went across that bridge….how a guy from a little outport on a couple of little islands off the extreme east coast of NFLD, with no electricity or indoor plumbing, moved to Montreal, the largest city in Canada, worked for the railroad and then quit and moved back to those little islands…. to the house I now own and go to every summer. I guess he knew something. Pretty crazy continuity. But I digress.
Back to that talking, one on one business, in a small 8×8 room, on an engine or in a caboose, for hours and hours, was like primal therapy or hell, or bits of both. And sometimes it was amazing.
I look at life as a constant education, always learning, that’s how I get through things. It’s a bottom line. You’re always going to learn something and that’s a good thing, most of the time. Being thrown together like that makes for interesting situations. We don’t get to choose, who, when or where, so you deal with it and in the best scenario you develop a sense of camaraderie with all sorts of different people and whether you like it or not, you invariably get educated by them.
So, “I learned all my bad habits from you people”, and lots of good ones too and that camaraderie that developed because of the way we worked, was one of the good things.
I have a bit of a philosophy about my railroad career and I guess it applies to life in general.
You may choose a path but soon as you take a step on that path anarchy prevails.
So I chose a path, “I hired on the railroad” and immediately realized I really had no idea.
There is no knowing the future even with signs, and that choosing, although seemingly huge, may still be minor in the grand scheme of things. When I took that first call, little did I know I was never going to really sleep again for 35 years. Man railroading kills the idea of circadian rhythms …..dead.
But you deal with it.
I started hearing that phrase, “some weekends and nights were involved”. I realized this was not a 9 to 5, 5 day a week, 40 hr work week job.. Scheduling, what scheduling. That first step produced all these new parameters that you could either whine about or find the good stuff and make something happen. It had a way of defining people. I chose to find the good stuff. I had to. The next 15 years were the crazy spare board years. If you can handle that, while trying to raise a family and live a life, you can handle anything. It taught me a big lesson: you have to have a flexible interface or it’s just gonna be trouble.
Those early years were rough. I thought I was going to get an ulcer. You want to do a good job, but you’re clueless because it’s soooo different. Nothing can prepare you. You have to learn it on the job. I remember thinking I had to settle down or quit. I did finally settle down and got a bit of a handle on it. I started the very uphill battle of making it work for me……at least a little.
I spent 15 years on a slow spareboard, but even that was not consistent. You’d make money in short frantic bursts, then spend it all waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for your call. 20 times out all week waiting for that call, and then it would come, the midnight west end yard and invariably the guy behind you would go to Montreal.
But you dealt with it.
Those years on a slow spareboard gave me the time and incentive to be creative, gave me the insane idea I could do other things. I spent quality time with Mary and we raised 2 fine kids. My young family and I traveled across Canada to either coast at least 10 times. We were broke but we took the train and had a lot of fun. We found a way to make it work for us.
Then came those middle years. I acquired the illusion of a little seniority, the dream of a regular job. A regular job on the railroad. Yeah right!!! Ha Ha Fat chance.
There is nothing regular about the railroad.
But it did change the parameters again.
I started to work more, to be away from home more and make more money. So it was good…..and bad. Being away drastically cut into my creativity, but I really enjoyed my time in Toronto and Montreal. I had friends and relatives in both cities and took advantage of it. I had roller blades stashed in both cities and did a lot of exploring. I capitalized on the dichotomy of living in the bush in extreme privacy and then immersing myself in the hustle bustle urban landscape of those two large cities. It was wild and invigorating.
Making more money …..well that was good because we had so many things we wanted to do….like build a big log house in the bush. But we all know “the more you make the more you spend”. The middle years were good and busy.
But again….things change.
The railroad itself was going through massive change. The path and parameters were in a constant state of flux, constantly shifting. Too much change. It could very well be, that as we get older we get more susceptible to the stress caused by change. We don’t handle the disruptions as well. We don’t have such a flexible interface. My good years were probably the middle ones, the ones I had the most stamina for. These last few years seemed to be more of a struggle. The seniority got me a better job, I liked my mates and capitalized on the friendships that developed but the act of railroading was becoming oppressive. I needed more rest to work less. It started cutting into MY time and my sense of well being. It was getting harder to deal with. I was getting tired of the struggle to maintain the good things. I guess I was ready to retire.
You know, I never thought of myself as a stressful person. For years I got woken up at ungodly hours, removed from my family and home for days at a time and sent to crazy places with strange people. It’s like that Robert Johnson blues song about the guy who “sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads” or in the 60’s you would have said “sold your soul to the man for money” and I did, we did. I had things I wanted to do and that was the path I chose to travel.
My records and files will tell you I did it safely and successfully, and as you all know, that is no mean feat. I thought I went up and down the road pretty easy, taking it all in stride, but in the last few months of being retired and not working, I can’t believe the weight that has been lifted off my shoulders. The railroad, that world of heavy metal at 60 per, the lack of sleep, the rules and regs, the mismanagement, the bullshit and abuse…..that stress is HUGE.
All of you people, all of us are worth every penny we’ve been paid and more. We have earned it. The responsibility is enormous. It’s a life and death job. I know that even more now that I am not doing it. All I have to do is hang around with a working railroader and I know. That immense all encompassing stressful weight of responsibility is gone.
It’s amazing how light and happy I can feel. I hope I can carry the light feeling around as long as I carried the weight, of chasing that elusive dollar. “Money makes the world go round”, but you know, it’s not hard to realize what a tired overused cliché that is. Sure, money is our working system, but make no mistake……TIME is the real currency. Time trumps money. Money is nothing if we don’t have time to spend it.
So now I feel like I just may have a little time to do a few more of the things I want. It’s my retirement. It’s what I have earned…. a little time. Time to travel to NFLD, kayak with the grandkids, play more music, write more, play way more hockey, hike with Giffy, time for so many things, I may even finish my house. I know that would make Mary happy and that is important because this isn’t just my retirement it’s ours. I couldn’t have done this without Mars constant support and her very flexible interface.
A couple of months ago, Jim Dwyer our railroad brother and my fellow retiree saw a poem I had posted on the internet about railroading. He told me how much he liked it and how it described our shared lives. I wrote a lot of stories and poems at work. It was something I did. It was something I found on the path. I would have written this speech at work but I found a little time else where.
I’d like to read that poem.
This Time in a Room of Thunder
These coloured lights flashing,
these steel wheels turning,
these endless silver ribbons,
so substantial, yet so unreal,
All these things I see,
all this continuous movement,
all this time in a room of thunder,
so much passing through,
at least that’s how I feel.
That lonesome whistle wail,
that passing place,
that time I’ve spent,
so much come and go,
All this weight,
all this push and pull,
all this heavy rolling,
so much momentum waste,
as least that’s how I feel.
This place full of people,
this country that’s empty,
this give and take away,
so bereft of meaning,
These sounds that mean,
these signs that say,
these people that talk,
so much a momentary state,
at least that’s how I feel.
The stars that fill the dark,
the sky that swallows the ribbons,
the dark that turns to day,
so fleeting this dreaming thought,
The repetition of transience,
the rhyme of day to day,
the song of leaving,
so much a rhythmic chant,
at least that’s how I feel,
about my former life of playing trains.
My family and I would like to thankyou all very much for all the camaraderie, and all the help, getting through the wild and crazy railroad years.
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