Foreword:
First, a special thank you to my friend, who wished to remain nameless, for all of his help in explaining the inter-workings of railroads. Many phone calls and several visits to the pub were involved to help me understand enough, and describe to my readers in a way that the story could make sense to somebody who knew even less about railroading than I do. Any technical mistakes, because I didn't thoroughly understand this unique job are mine alone.
I ask that the readers appreciate how difficult this story was to put together. Even with personal guidance from someone who freely lent their expertise, and a shit load of research, deciding how much explanation was necessary to make the uniqueness of this setting understood by a reader without being over the top was not easy.
I hope that I've succeeded.
Though I use MS Word's "read aloud" and "Grammarly," but some errors still seem to slip by. Miss use of grammar, incorrect spelling, and wrong word usage is entirely on me.
I do try to deliver a good product, but I make mistakes - if that bothers you, move on.
** If you are offended by stories of cheating wives, with the same old tired cliches, the same old overused phrases then move on to another, more worthy tale. I try to add a little spice to an old recipe, but I'm not really plowing any new fields here. So, if it's Hemingway you seek, look elsewhere. You've been warned.
Dinah, Won't You Blow?
I met my wife in a somewhat different circumstance than most of the couples you read about here on Lit. We were first introduced to each other at work. "That's not different you say," and I would counter that since we both worked on the railroad in train service, that qualifies as being a bit uncommon.
She worked as a conductor and I'm an engineer at a Midwest terminal. The railroad that we worked for handled delivering various commodities on "long-haul" runs or possibly "locals" which serviced industries in our area.
Now here's a short, incomplete, basic description of this segment of railroading. My wife and I both worked in what is known as train service, which in general refers to the team of personnel, referred to as the train crew, who actually do the work of moving a train from point A to B and provide industries with the cars they need or remove the ones that they are done with. The typical crew these days consists of one conductor and one engineer. There are many other people involved in making this happen, but I want to keep this tutorial short and simple.
Railroads typically hire folks who have been screened by knowledgeable people to weed out those who cannot perform the medium-difficult physical and mental aspects of being able to do the job. What is truer though, the pre-employment screening is to get rid of drug users, lazy people, or those that don't want to work weekends, which is where new hires are needed - it is not a 9 to 5 Monday to Friday life. Being called to duty late at night, or on weekends, with short notice given to report to work is typical of a railroader's life. Oh, and did I mention that most likely, you have no idea of when you'll be back home. So, when the significant other asks, "When will you be home?" a good answer often is a lousy guess at best.
So, why does anyone do it? Good question. The money, benefits, and the pension package are pretty good, so there's that. Also, some of us are just fucking idiots that have it in our blood and can't come to grips with working a "normal" job.
In general, for the larger railroads, the crews are union employees. Unlike many other industries, where one union represents all of the workers, railroads have many different crafts that are represented by their own specific union. This is complex, and I could write a book here getting into this - but I won't.
My wife was hired out on this particular railroad several years after me and was working at a different terminal, so we hadn't met until five years ago when she transferred in. Being a very sexy-looking 27 year-old divorcee, Dinah got the attention of every railroader in the terminal, train crews, office personnel, and bosses all paid attention. Hell, even the other women were well aware. I'm not saying they wanted to date her, well maybe some did, but everyone took notice, me included.
Anyway, with a little arm-twisting of a supervisor who owed me a favor, she got assigned to my crew to learn our territory. After enough time (unpaid) spent with my conductor, she would go before the trainmaster for testing to demonstrate that she was worthy of being "qualified" on that segment of railroad and could begin working as a conductor on her own.
She was motivated to leap over that hurdle in faster than normal time, as being a divorcee with no mom and dad to foot her bills, she needed an income. I should also mention that she was very intelligent and able to absorb all of the important info Andy Taylor, my regular conductor, and I, Bill Mathews, needed to impart to her so she could operate efficiently and safely. Here again, a discussion on qualifying could get very lengthy, but you now know all you need to for my tale.
The other thing that happened during Dinah's qualification process was that she and I seemed to have chemistry. To Andy's great delight, he noticed before I acknowledged its existence, and tortured me daily, telling me that she would own me before the year's end and that her magnificent ass would be my downfall. He of course, couldn't get enough of watching her butt (it was awesome) as she climbed ladders. Some of them on railroad cars, hell, just to get on an engine you had to climb up a ladder, and didn't he
always
let her go up first? Truth be told, I got in a position to take in the view as often as possible myself.
As I was fully aware that my time hogging Dinah's attention was short and she'd soon qualify and be out on her own, with other engineers. I felt lucky Andy was not competition for me, he is a bit younger, very fit and very good-looking, but he was also very married and loyal to a fault. If you saw his wife, you'd understand; Heather was awesome and took a back seat to no woman. I needed to make a move.
Being on long pull runs, it is common at the end of a haul for the crew to go out together for a bite to eat, and, depending on the time of day, perhaps a drink or two. Andy and I typically followed this practice when we reached an away-from-home destination, which meant checking into the hotel, showering, getting something to eat, maybe some TV, phone home (for Andy), and hitting the bed to get well-rested for the run back to the home terminal. The call to man a return train might happen in as little as eight hours, for us the sooner it came, the better. When we returned to our home terminal, it was hoped by many of us for a little "off" time to share with family or friends. Andy loved his family, and his premium seniority would allow him to hold jobs that didn't keep him away from them as much, but they needed money to step into a nicer house. We made money, lots of it.
Since being assigned to our crew, Dinah was immediately invited to join us for our post-trip activity, which she agreed to right away and seemed to appreciate the gesture by us to include her.
After the first couple of trips to a distant terminal with Dinah joining us for dinner, Andy decided that I needed help and began to beg off, claiming this or that leaving the breakfast, lunch, or dinner date to just Dinah and me. I was smitten; Andy knew it, I knew it, hell, I think the whole terminal knew it. Andy's ribbing aside, I decided that I wanted to see if there was a possibility of a future with this mesmerizing creature.
I couldn't believe my good luck when she did not object to it being just me, Dinah even giggled and made a joke that Andy might be trying to play cupid. Looking back, I suppose that was done to test my reaction, and very quickly we both started treating the end-of-trip ritual less like two coworkers catching a bite to eat and more like a date.
