Laughs Across The Years. Published 20 August 1954 Remember the time? Reminiscences of Canada Atlantic Old Boys So began a thousand conversations down at the Chateau Laurier yesterday, where the Canada Atlantic (Railway) Old Boys were concluding their annual two-day convention. The "boys" could still get a faugh across half a century, when they recalled how they wrecked the "Red Onion" hotel in Depot Harbor by playing pool on the fourth floor with the cuspidors. Or the time Water Boy Peg (J. H. P.) MacLeod carried the booze that caused the wreck at Clarence Creek. Guy In Cream Suit Then there was the time the fellow in the ice cream suit strayed Into the roundhouse and the new brakeman learned about railroading when they nailed his shoes to the caboose floor. Peg MacLeod and others were recalling how the train was wrecked at Leveille's Crossing near Clarence Creek on the long abandoned South Indian-Rockland line. "I was the water boy," mused Peg, "and we were building the line. .Everything had to be just so, because President Booth was coming in to see how things were going. Only that day the boys gave me whiskey to carry instead of water. The fellow in charge got drunk and so did the boys. Over The Hump " "For some reason or other a two foot hump developed in the middle of the track. The train crew may have had some of the "water" too, for they ran over the hump and into the ditch." "Those were the days," said the honorary vice-president of the Old Boys. He said that J. R. Booth kept a hand car with a sort of fenced balcony on it and he would travel this way with a rifle. Anytime he saw any game he'd shoot. "Sometimes," said Peg, "we would be the dogs and go into the bush, to scare out the partridges. Then the bosses would go shooting. "While they were shooting, we'd go and eat their lunches arid drink their whiskey." "How was it you did not get fired?" he was asked.. "It was that kind of railway," said a veteran observer. |