My great uncle used to work on the railroad. It was his job to prowl up and down the train calling “Tickets please!” in his blue uniform and little cap. He would announce the next stop or throw you out at said stop if you caused a ruckus in the club car.
He worked on the line every week for fifteen years, and he was a surly bastard. The “Tickets please!” might be “Tickets! Tickets now!” Questions would get a sarcastic answer half, well, most, of the time. He was lazy and God help you if you lost your ticket. He was once suspended for two weeks for assaulting a confused young man who had gotten on the wrong train.
As a kid I only ever saw him at the odd family gathering where he’d get drunk and complain about how the railroad was going all to shit, his supervisor was an idiot and passengers were a pack of imbeciles who no longer respected the uniform, God help them.
He was often drunk, even on the job. They say he was drunk on his last day on the line. The day when the electrics failed while the train was careening downhill and there was no compressed air for the brakes. Perhaps it’s because he was drunk that he scrambled out the window and up onto the roof of the carriage, then staggered along the tops of the cars to the engine.
He gripped the collapsed pantograph with both hands. Witnesses say he gave an almighty heave, although I don’t understand how anybody could see from inside the train, to push it back into contact with the overhead line, although such a thing would surely result in his own fatal electrocution. But that’s what he did and that’s the day he proved himself a very brave man and a fine conductor.
