21 Years On The Erie Railroad

When the United States entered World War II, I was in the seventh grade of a township school. The school had eight classrooms, one for each grade, plus eight regular teachers, one for each grade, grades one through eight. There was also a gymnasium which held a large stage.
Grades one through three faced a large pasture, bordered by the Kremis-to-Osgood short line of the Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad. Grades four through six were on the opposite side of the building, and faced nothing particularly interesting. Grades seven and eight were in the front of the building, and faced a township highway, bordered by a large forest. The rear of the school faced a large play ground, where recess was held twice a day, weather permitting.

The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Jamison, our seventh grade teacher, brought a small radio to school, and the whole class listened to President Roosevelt's appeal to Congress to declare war on Japan. It was a historic moment, whether we knew it or not.

My fond memories of this school include being in the first three grades, watching the long Bessemer trains going south, loaded with iron ore. At that time, the Bessemer had some of the largest Texas-type steam locomotives in service on any railroad. It was the habit of the Bessemer to have one of these locomotives on the head-end of the southbound train, with another Texas-type pushing against the loaded train, with a caboose behind the pusher. The Bessemer at that time used the Kremis-Osgood short line for most of its ore trains, because to use the main line of the Bessemer, the trains would have to go through Greenville, PA, with the result that the town would be tied up for quite sometime, since there were three crossings in the town, and the ore trains were quite long, and quite slow.

In May of 1944 I hired out on the Erie Railroad as a freight and baggage handler at the Greenville passenger station and freight house. It was an exciting time. In 1942 the U. S. government bought up some of the farm lands south of Greenville, and turned it into, first, Camp Shenango, later re-named Camp Reynolds.

The camp was not a training camp as such, but on a good day, and with the wind in the right direction, we could hear rifle fire from the ranges at the camp four miles away. I can remember by father taking me to the over-pass near the camp on a Sunday afternoon, and watching the troop trains on the Pennsylvania Railroad, which entered the camp, loading and unloading soldiers.

Something that most people don't remember now is that during World War II, many Mexican nationals came to the states to work. At Greenville, there was a track gang of at least twenty men of various ages headquartered. I was taking Spanish in high school, and became friends with a few of them. They helped perfect my dubious Spanish, and I, in turn, would buy things for them from the stores, such as writing paper, pens, candy, etc., whatever they didn't have time to buy for themselves. I learned much later that, after the war was ended, and they were headed back home, many of them were attacked on the border by Mexican bandits, and never arrived home safely. I've always wandered whether or not some of my friends were included in that bunch.

After Camp Reynolds was in business for about two years, German prisoners-of-war began to be brought in. The camp received some of its small freight at the Erie freight house. I can remember five or six German prisoners, guarded by a non-com from the camp, usually armed with a M-1 carbine, plus a non-com driver, also armed, arriving to pick up some freight. I would get the papers ready to sign; the guard would tell me to point out what was to be taken, and then to step out of the way. He would say something to one of the Germans, they would go to work, the non-com would sign the papers, and they were off back to the camp. It was quite interesting, and I felt no fear at the time. I didn't get a chance to speak to any of the prisoners, since the non-com was strictly business, but I would have liked to.

Of course, when men or boys work closely together, there is usually some horse-play and practical jokes. There was a clerk in the track supervisor's office at that time who liked to play tricks, but didn't much care to have the tricks returned. I was the object of some of those tricks at one time; instead of being harmless, some bordered on being malicious. I once found my new pair of work gloves tacked to the warehouse door, one tack for each finger.

The clerk was in the habit of using Copenhagen snuff, kept the snuff box in his desk drawer instead of carrying it around with him. Somehow, mysteriously, the snuff box took on a charge of cayenne pepper. There was some red-faced cursing, threatening, etc., but the tricks stopped, at least against me.

More later.