Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1887 — A BRAKEMAN'S DINNER. [ARTICLE]

A BRAKEMAN'S DINNER.

JMIUm by Rum Tbat Floored Even tbe Üblqiitou Reporter. [From tbe Bail way Register. | “Kind er side track that there sand box, will yer. Thanks, party. Say, Oscar John, where’s the Jersey? No Jersey, eh; got to use watered cow I Throw me a couple of them twisters and back up the salve, will yon? Pull that teat onoe more and give she forty drops! Gimme some clean silver.” “Say, Jimmy, ain’t yon fresh fur a duck that’s got a case and half on yer tab?” “Never mind, party; the golden chariot’s coming along next week! Just put some dope on this here piece of half sole!” Perhaps you do not understand this ? Neither did the reporter when he first heard it, perched up beside the brakeman of a passenger train at the eatingstand of a station on the Little Miami Railroad. The respondent was the white-aproned, lantern-jawed waiter, who, in a semi-hysterical way, tried to wait on twenty people at once, and .failed ingloriously in the attempt. The brakeman, during this technical discourse, was feeding himself with one hand, and reaching with the other for everything in sight and reach. After finishing an enormous meal, he sauntered down, and asked for a crowbar and cabbage. The reporter looked to see the clerk at the counter reach down and strain himself lifting a heavy bar of iron, and afterward dive into a barrel and hand over a specimen of toothsome blossom of the cabbage plant. But he did not. He merely opened the cigar-case and shoved forward the toothpick-case, with the remark: “Help yourself!” When the ding-dong of the engine bell sounded the end of the fifteen minutes for lunch, the reporter followed the brakeman, and when the train had got under way sat down beside him and proceeded to unfathom the mystery of his discourse. “Didn’t catoh on, hey? Why, that’s 'as plain as day. Where do you live, anyhow?” inquired the brake-twister, as he jerked the “cabbage” out of his mouth and expectorated vigorously. . “What’s the sandbox?” innocently asked the reporter. “Well!” gasped the brakeman; “why, 'it’s the sugar ” A blinding light shot athwart the reporter’s intellect. Was there not a clear ' connection between the two—sand and sugar ? “And the Jersey? What may that be?”

“Cream, you gillie! Don’t Jerseys give cream?” Another chunk of information imbedded itself in the reporter’s brain. “But you said ' cow,’ too. What is that?” eagerly asked the reporter, who thought he had tripped the man of the rail. “Plain, everyday milk; no cream!” A silence of nineteen seconds intervened, and the reporter asked: “Maybe you could tell me what ‘twisters’ are ?” With a look of pain in his eyes the harassed man answered: “Doughnuts, mister; ain’t doughnuts the twistiest things you ever saw ?” A joint state of facts was immediately agreed up, and the seeker after knowledge continued: “Then salve is ” “Butter, oleomargarine, butterine, and cetera. At least it looks more like salve than anything I know,” was the quick rejoinder. “I believe I heard you ask the waiter to pull the teat. Did he have a cow?” “Partner, I think you are the greenest jay that ever rode this line. That means to turn the handle on the coffeeurn and ” “Forfcv drops are of .bourse ” “Coffee!” “But tell me. What in the name of senseis ‘dope’?” / “Gravy, mister, gravy! I guess you want to know what half-sole is, too ?” “What is it?” “Restaurant beefsteak!” “What did the waiter mean when he said that you had a case and a half on your tab, and what did you mean when you said the golden chariot was coming?” inquired the reporter, as he offered up a good cigar on the shrine of knowledge. “Oh! I owe $1.50 for meals, and I told him the pay-car was coming down. Say, why don’t you learn English, my friend?” The reporter pleaded adverse circumstances in early youth and a fondness for yielding to the temptation of angling during business hours, and leaving the car went into his own in time to hear an old gentlemen say: “When I asked that blamed skunk for doughnuts and milk he yelled, * Twisters and cow for one!’ ” The railroad man has a complete vocabulary, in which every article in general use is written under a technical name. For instant the succulent bean, the food of the demigods who people Boston, is known as “dynamite.” When pickled pork is desired the combination is known as “brass band, with a leader.” Whisky, the universal panacea, so admirably disguised under an avafanche of suggestive names, is known to the fraternity of the rail as “coffee under the counter.” Boiled milk is said to have been “sunstruck. ” To the uniniated the demand for “bowlders” at a lunch counter would create a surprise, yet the railroad waiter quietly hands oat hard-boiled eggs for one. The railroad waiter himself becomes so accustomed to the technical nomenclature that he is frequently at a loss to understand an order given in plain English. There is a legend among railroad men that far back in the shadowy past a passenger who got off

at a station where none but railroad men ate, died of starvation because the waiter could not comprehend his perfectly intelligible (to other people) order.