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Oral History |
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By Pappy Clay - January 31st 1969 "Look at that funny little dohickey on that table." "Yes- What is it?" "Darned if I know." "What's it good for?" "Darned if I know." "It seems to be trying to say something. It keeps saying Clickety-Click, Clickety-Click." "That's a strange language, but here comes old Dad Clay, maybe he can explain." "What does Clickety-Click mean, Mr. Clay?" "That's Morse Code. Only telegraphers get the message." "Are you getting it?" "Yes quite well. It is telling about a Golden Spike being driven and some Rails that have met." "We don't see any Rails of Spike." "Of course not. It is telling of a place in far away Utah called Promontory Summit. That's more than a thousand miles from here." "Well I'll be Darned. What will the crackpots come up with next?" The above is just part of a dream I had last night. Again I was a little boy at old Blue Creek Water Tank Station back in the year 1890. My father C.M. Clay, had been a cowpuncher in Wyoming in 1881. His older brother, Colby Clay, had taught him telegraphy at Medicine Bow in Wyoming in 1882. He married Molly Middlemiss then became night-operator at Promontory Summit in 1883. Yours truly was born March 11th, 1884 approximately 300 feet north-east from where the Golden Spike was driven on May 10th, 1869. By 1890 my father was day-operator at Blue Creek Station which was 7 miles east of Promontory Summit by wagon-road but 12 miles east down the winding railroad track down east Promontory hill, and little "Wa-Lee" as the chinaman section-hands called me, knew more about railroading than any rooky brakeman on the Salt Lake Division. My father, at different times between 1883 to 1897, was telegraph operator or station agent, first at Promontory, then at Blue Creek, then at Kelton, Utah, and lastly at Tecoma, Nevada, with short stays at several other C.P. stations in between.
The Morse Code was used with its alphabet composed of dots, dashes and spaces in such combinations that the telegraph operator could interpret them as different figures and letters of the alphabet. Each station had its own "call letters" and an expert night operator got so used to the code that he could go to sleep at his desk and when the Ogden Dispatcher clicked his particular call letters he would wake up quick as if somebody were shouting "Wake up Clay". If the operator was away from his desk for some distance or very sound asleep then there was the "night bell" which the Dispatcher could activate by telegraphing out a certain code for that particular bell in a somewhat similar manner as a safe is opened by a code of turns to the right and left of the bolt-dial on the safe door, and that night-bell would begin clanging so shrill that the sleeping operator would pretty nearly jump out of his skin. The life of a telegraph operator or agent out at some lonely, hot, dry way-station was very monotonous. Sooner or later all train crews would stop to get orders or take on water or unload freight or get onto the sidetrack to let some other train pass by etc., so among all the train crews and all the way-stations personnel there was most congenial acquaintance and comradeship and eventually every old timer knew every other old timer from one end of the Division to the other end. A Division was as far as a freight crew went before resting and turning back, as for instance, from Ogden to Terrace. Once a week the local, with the "weigh-car" near the front end of the train, would be opened by the front brakeman and he would unload any drop-freight consigned to any railroad employee at that particular station. This was a FREE freight service to all employees all along the line. They could mail or telegraph a grocery order to some grocer in Ogden who catered to railroad employees, such as Old Danny Ragan or Carver and Wilcox, and get the goods they ordered delivered free that same week. In the real hot weather there was an "ice-car" next to the weigh-car and the brakeman would kick out a 100 pound cake of ice, from the Ogden ice-house, wrapped in a very heavy burlap sack, for each railroad family at that hot desert station as an additional incentive to help keep that family happy amid otherwise monotonous circumstances. The hours per day worked by each telegrapher was called a "trick" and when there was, for instance, a day operator and a night operator at the station, then each trick would be 12 hours long, but where there was no night operator (at about half the stations along the line) then a trick was usually longer than 12 hours. However, even when a telegraph operator was off duty, if he was within hearing hearing distance, he was on duty bound to answer his station call. The wages paid were low but sure and once a month the lonely "pay-car" drawn by a light-engine, with armed guards both on the locomotive and in the armored pay-car, would stop at every way-station and section-house along the main-line and pay off each employee in $20 gold-pieces and silver dollars. For amusement at such lonely stations, two telegraph operators, maybe 75 miles apart, would both plug into the same "spare telegraph wire circuit" and play games by wire such as chess or checkers or certain playing-card games, or maybe just to "chew the rag" or listen in on Western Union and get the latest news even before it came out in the city newspapers. At old Blue Creek the writer was a kid of seven who knew Morse Code enough to recognize the station call, so when Ogden commercial "G-two dashes and a dot" called Blue Creek "B-dash plus three dots" "K-dash-dot-dash" and my father was not in the office, then I would run and find him and say "Papa, you are wanted on the wire".
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