The Atlantic & Southern Saturday Report

Started by Judge, January 05, 2019, 03:59:09 PM

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GPdemayo

Harrumph......I thought I was well behaved today, but do I get credit for doing 10 street running in Tahope or keeping it at 15 around the roundhouse and thru the backside of town, No.....I get nailed for a short speed burst past that darn ole' farm. I didn't even go for a  record run up the Ovlix..... :'( :'( :'( ::) ::) :o :( :( :( .....pass the single malt.....none of that Irish stuff. ::)
Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

ACL1504

Hmm, I must have not been paying attention as I thought Greg only got the throttle up to 35 around PERKINS FARM!

As far as the O'Toole guy, I may have to reconsider his employment status.

The A&S did acquire three new ACL hoppers this fine day.

Tom ;D
"If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."
Thomas Jefferson

Tom Langford
telsr1@aol.com

PRR Modeler

Now that's funny. Another great story Bill.
Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

jimmillho

Outstanding story Bill.  I hope Taphope never runs out of characters.

Jim

Judge

#184
Disclaimer - I set the photos for thumbnail this week by mistake.  Seems like I have a new problem with photos every week.  Sorrry.  Just click on them and they will grow in size - I hope.

The weekly train session of the Atlantic & Southern Railroad was a day early.  Saturday is the Babe's day for her monthly trip to Mt. Dora.  The session was productive.  The CEO's son-in-law visited and entertained us with his stories of youth and model airplanes.  Then we ran trains.  The WOW Sound Sharks made a tour of the railroad and were eventually spotted in the Bottoms.  The ACL P5A 1559 powered an eight car passenger train with Pullman heavy weights behind it.  This train, named the Florida Special, is diverted from its usual route through Tahope County due to yesterday's bad weather.  Your reporter decided to "fiddle" with the roundhouse turntable and determined that the AB&C 0-8-0, number 71, was acting sluggish.  The crew repaired to lunch at Smokey Bones and decided to investigate 71's problem upon return.  The loco was spotted on the program track where it was pronounced "dead."  Not to be defeated, we spotted it on the loop that goes around the roundhouse and it came alive.  Must be those Saturday gremlins or, more likely, it just takes time to get a cold engine up to steam.   

This week's story focuses on Perkins Farm.  The story introduces the reader to farm life in Central Florida in the early 1950's and provides a little opportunity for introduction to Florida Cracker cuisine.  All of the Perkins kin have names that start with "P."

                                                                                                             PERKINS FARM

  Perkins Farm is located South of Piney Woods and across the Tahope River on the East side of the Atlantic & Southern Railroad.


This is a photo of the sleepy Tahope River.  Watch out for the gators!  They lurk under water.

  Farmer Patrick Perkins acquired the farm from his father, Percy Perkins, who bought the farm in 1905 when the Atlantic & Southern was just a short line.  Grandpa Percy still lives on the farm with the family.  The 300-acre farm has extensive orange groves and about 100 acres set aside for raising cattle.


Looks like the oranges are ready for picking.  Local labor pitches in at pickin' time.



This view shows the proximity of the A&S mainline to the Perkins farm. 


  Farmer Perkins is married to Paula Dean Perkins, who is famous for her contributions to the cooking contest each year at the Tahope County Fair. She likes to serve "Good Old Florida Cracker Food," such as grits, swamp cabbage, fried soft shell crabs, turtle stew, and gator tail. Local wild duck, venison, and quail are also popular on her menu.  Stewed okra and tomatoes and corn on the cob are the preferred vegetables. That's good eatin'!
  Paula has a stand of cabbage palms growing behind the farmhouse.  The Florida Sable Palm has an edible "heart" that can be harvested, chopped, and fried (or stewed) with bacon, onions, and almost any other vegetable.  In fine restaurants "up Nawth" they call it "hearts of palm" and put it uncooked in salad.  But to Florida Crackers, it is plain old swamp cabbage and it is best served, like Paula serves it, fried or stewed.  The heart of a Florida Palmetto can be substituted for the heart of a Sabal Palm.  (More about swamp cabbage later.)
  The Perkins have three children:  Peter Perkins, age 16, Perry Perkins, age 14, and Patricia Perkins, age 12.  Patricia is called "Fatty Patty" by all who know her.
Pete and Perry "help out" their father with the chores on the farm.  They arise before sunup every day and put in three hours before breakfast, which their mother serves promptly at 7:30 a.m. during the week and 8:00 a.m. on the weekends.  Breakfast consists of orange juice, eggs, bacon, pork sausage, grits, and biscuits with orange blossom honey.  Sometimes fried catfish is substituted for the pork sausage.  Pete picks the oranges from the nearby orange grove and Perry squeezes the juice into a quart size jug.
  Fatty Patty is of the age when most young girls start to become a discipline problem.  She is supposed to help her mother with the cooking and cleaning but she has become extremely lazy and has to be "spoken to."  She whines a lot.  (The photograph shows Fatty Pattie sitting on her lazy patootie at the edge of the front porch, while being scolded by her grandfather, Percy Perkins, for not bringing in the laundry before the ACL afternoon freight stormed by, spewing boiler water and coal soot all over creation.)
 

Grandpa is giving Fatty Patty a piece of his mind.  Farmer Perkins is sitting on the porch and Paula Deen Perkins is assisting Grandpa.  "If'n you won't even sweep the porch, there'll be no strawberry cream pie for desert."

  The children board the school bus promptly at 8:00 a.m. each day and travel the short distance to their schools in the City of Tahope.
There are more chores in store when the children get home each evening.  Fatty Patty has to help Paula fix "suppa" shelling peas, shucking corn, or going to the garden to pick okra and tomatoes.  She does these chores under great protest.  "Aw, Ma, do I have to?"  Usually, she loses her privilege to play her Victrola after "suppa" when she misbehaves. 
  Farmer Perkins has a couple of helpers who live on the farm, whose names are Tom and Vida.  Vida helps Paula with the cooking and cleaning.  Tom runs the tractor in the orange grove and helps Farmer Perkins tend to the fences and the cow pasture.  They live in a shack located back in the woods on the east edge of the farm.
On the surface, all appears to be tranquil on Perkins Farm.  But farming is a constant struggle getting crops and cattle to market and making ends meet.  A drop in the price of beef or a sudden hard freeze can put Farmer Perkins on hard times.
  Saturdays are the highlight of the week.  On Saturday mornings, Farmer Perkins loads the whole family in the pick-up and heads for downtown Tahope.  The family stops by the local department store (a new addition to Tahope) and the hardware store.  Lunch is served in the local diner and the kids go to a movie after lunch.  This week's selection at the movie theater is Walt Disney's Song of the South. The grown-ups stop by the public library and check out the latest publications to read during the hour of down time they spend each evening before going to bed.  (Television, is a new invention and no one in Tahope County has a television set.  The closest TV station is in Jacksonville and its range is far short of Central Florida.)

                                                                                             Paula Dean Perkins' Swamp Cabbage


Sabal Palm


Florida Palmetto

   From a palm and pine thicket at the back of Perkins Farm in Tahope County comes the sound of a machete. Farmer Perkins is there amidst the smoke and the mosquitoes--with sweat dripping off the end of his nose.
He has just chopped down a 5-foot Sabal palm tree, which lies at his feet, and his machete is now ripping through a segment near the top of the tree just below the leaves.
  He tears back the remaining stiff outer segments until a shimmering core is exposed. He now holds its ivory white heart in his hand.  That's the tender part and it's sweet and edible.
  The next step is cooking the swamp cabbage. Local recipes tend to be of the ''add a little of this, enough of that and cook it until it`s done'' variety.
Paula Dean Perkins doesn't mind sharing her basic recipe for swamp cabbage, but she didn`t want to take credit for it.
   ''It belongs to the people of Florida,'' she said.
The tree selected for eating shouldn`t be too big, nor should it grow too near the water or the heart will be bitter.
  "Clean it right away and keep it in cold water until you`re ready to cook it or the dish will turn green instead of being white as it should be," Paula warned.
Fry some hickory smoked bacon or fatback in a pot, then brown chopped onions in the fat. Put in the swamp cabbage, broken into bite-sized pieces, and stir it awhile until it is just soft. Add water until it`s level in the pot with the swamp cabbage. Bring the water to a boil and cook the swamp cabbage until it`s tender. 
  Cook it too long and it will be a mess.   
  When serving, some people add a little Worcestershire sauce and a dash of Tabasco.
Raw swamp cabbage is appreciated by some of Florida's more uppity citizens.  It goes great with lettuce and tomato salads. Onions and green olives add flavor and pimento strips add color.  Your choice of salad dressing.


Here is Paula Dean Perkins' recipe for swamp cabbage (Hearts of Palm to y'all Yankees.)
SWAMP CABBAGE
Six servings
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 3 to 4 hours
6 slices smoked bacon or fatback (fatback preferred)
Onions
1 cup water
Small head swamp cabbage (cut out tender part inside the palm) or 2 cans hearts of palm
Salt and pepper to taste. 

1. Fry bacon until crisp in frying pan; drain and retain grease.
2.  Add swamp cabbage and fry until just soft.
3. Crumble the fried bacon and add to a saucepan along with bacon grease.   Simmer, covered, until tender. (Cooking time will be less if using canned hearts of palm.) Add water as needed -- Salt and pepper to taste.
Another authentic Florida recipe for Swamp Cabbage Stew is found at:
https://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Swamp-Cabbage-Stew

GPdemayo

Neat background on the Perkin's clan Bill.....it's a good thing dinners only a couple of hours off.....all those great dishes makes a body hungry.  ;)
Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

deemery

That Patty is a sturdy girl, lots of "sturd".

(Yinzers of a certain age know from whom I stole that quote!)

dave
Modeling the Northeast in the 1890s - because the little voices told me to

PRR Modeler

Great story Bill. You have a great imagination.
Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

ReadingBob

Another great story.  I hope those Perkin's folks know that bacon is bad for 'em.  So's eggs.  Heck, nothing's good for ya' these days.  :o
Bob Butts
robertbutts1@att.net

There's a fine line between Hobby and Mental Illness.

jrmueller

I look forward to your stories each week. Jim
Jim Mueller
Superintendent(Retired)
Westchester and Boston Railroad

S&S RR

John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

jimmillho

Quote from: ReadingBob on April 21, 2019, 09:32:44 AM
Another great story.  I hope those Perkin's folks know that bacon is bad for 'em.  So's eggs.  Heck, nothing's good for ya' these days.  :o

What Bob said.

Jim

Judge

I want to thank all of you who took the time to make comments about my Saturday Report.  I also want to thank the folks who took the time to view it.  There were over 200 of you this week.

I received my copy of RMC this month and was surprised to see the monthly Dremel award go to kit bashing an old Athern side window caboose to more closely resemble an NC&StL caboose.  Then I read the copy that accompanied the article.  It referred to the NC&StL as the North Carolina and St. Louis.  Now that slip really got to me.  For those who don't know the fantastic history of the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis RR, I should tell you it went from Atlanta through Chattanooga and Nashville to Memphis.  It never came close to North Carolina, or St. Louis for that matter.  I emailed the editor of RMC and pointed out the error.  Do you believe it, he emailed me back and said it was the biggest goof the magazine has ever made.  I replied that if that was his biggest goof he should thank his lucky stars.  I wish my biggest goof was something like that.  I just hope the guy who kitbashed the caboose didn't think he got the name right.  North Carolina indeed!

Judge

#193
ATLANTIC & SOUTHERN SATURDAY REPORT 4-27-19

The board of Directors of the A&S met promptly at 8:30 a.m.  All board members were present, including Tom, the CEO and your reporter, who is the ticket agent.

Much progress was reported for the week.  The Summit is now a separate power district.  The ACL Champion, with a lash-up of A-B-A E7's and eleven cars was summoned from the Bottoms to traverse the track on the Summit and it arrived without a hitch.  The SAL freight spotted on the Summit did a turn or two.  Bob "Reading Bob" Butts arrive around 10:00.  Greg DeMayo arrived soon thereafter.  Meanwhile, #7 was fired up for a turn around the Midlands pulling a pulpwood train. Then the crew went to lunch at Smokey Bones.  After lunch, there was a general discussion and Greg ran the SAL freight.  He was stopped for speeding but was let off with a stern warning.  The group broke up about 1:45 p.m. without incident.

This week's story is about one of the most important members of a passenger train crew, at least from the 1870's until the 1950's  - The Pullman Porter

                                                                                                PULLMAN PORTERS IN THE 1950'S.

   The Pullman Company had stringent requirements for its employees.  In the segregated South (and even in the Nawth) of the 1950's it was difficult for black folks to get a job that paid  above minimum wage and did not involve manual labor.  Pullman offered a path to at least modest success and hired black men as porters, chefs, and waiters on the trains.  Competition for these jobs was fierce and only the applicants that met Pullman's high standards were hired.  Pullman claimed porters were trained to be "the perfect servants" They certainly had ability to get along with difficult guests and possessed the patience of Job.  Some of the porters went on to work for luxury hotels and one porter, J. W. Mayes, served President William McKinley in his sleeping car and then accompanied him to the White House where he served eight presidents over four decades.
   Porters had a variety of duties including welcoming their passengers, stowing their luggage, seeing to their whims, preparing their beds in the evening, and even shining their shoes.

                                                                   


   This photo, taken about 1915, could be representative of this scene for the next 50 years.  As Lucius Bebee pointed out, the photograph shows the little tot in the white hat "patently doesn't want to go.  The porter already hates his passengers, and the woman on the steps is getting ready to file complaints before the train moves out of the depot."  Later, after Madison Avenue gets involved, "Mad delight will suffuse the faces of all concerned and Junior, from Central Casting, will be all Buster Brown smiles."

                                                                     

   Trains, like the Florida Special, arrived at their destination in several identical sections during "the season" and rivaled the finest passenger transportation, even surpassing the Twentieth Centrury Limited.  Here, one of ACL's dual service Pacifics, a P5B, number 1740, does the honors prior to the power switch to FEC north of Jacksonville.

                                                                       

   Naturally, there was a kind of fraternity of Pullman car porters.  Along with the comradery, there came the lore.  There is just something about travel by train that calls for adventure.  Here is Porter A. B. Jackson.  A fine example of the kind of man passengers expected to provide Pullman's best service.

   There were still some 14-section heavy weight passenger cars on the rails in the early 1950's and the porters called them "battleships."  Those attentive souls who have read the tale involving the cost of the uppers as compared to the lowers on p. 2 have some understanding of what it was like to spend the night in a section.  The accommodations were comfortable enough once the passenger learned to dress in confined space and accepted a green curtain as a privacy wall.  The only place for carry-on luggage was under the seats of the lower berth.  Personal belongings could be stored in a net that was stretched across the window of the section. The porter fixed a sheet of fabric over the window in pre-air-conditioning days to keep out the dust, soot, and coal dust.  Ladies and Gents bathrooms were located at the opposite ends of the car and could be crowded in the mornings.  Toilets flushed directly onto the tracks and a sign prohibiting flushing while the train was in the station were prominently displayed.

                                                               

    But it was the porter who was assigned to a "battleship" that had the time of it.  Thirteen of the fourteen sections were assigned to passengers which gave the car porter twenty-six berths to make up and tear down each evening while his passengers were having dinner. (The fourteenth section was reserved for the porter and one of the men assigned to the dining room staff.)  Pullman's standards on how the berths were to be made were exacting and inspections were frequent.
   The most famous porter on the Atlantic Coast Line was a man named Daddy Joe.  Daddy Joe was one of the only porters from the Orlando area and, in fact, he grew up in Tahope County.  He was nearly seven feet tall and as black as night.  His arms were so long he could stand in the center aisle and open uppers on either side at the same time.  Then he could make up the berths simultaneously.  He was so fast when he walked down the aisle of a battleship that the sound of the uppers being lowered sounded like a kid raking a picket fence with a stick of pine wood.  He would repeat the feat on his way back and accomplish the whole task in less than five minutes. 
    Daddy Joe was always the master of his situation.  Once, in the 1930's a band of robbers tried to board Daddy Joe's train during a water stop.  Daddy Joe got onto the roof of his sleeper and held them off with his oratory until he could placate them with Pullman blankets and a quart of bourbon.  For that he received an extra week's pay and a plaque commemorating his heroic resistance to armed intruders. 
    No one interviewed here had actually met Daddy Joe, but many claimed to have known of him.  He is said to have died in 1943 in an ACL train wreck in North Carolina, in ACL service for over 40 years.
                                                            

PRR Modeler

Another great story Bill. I wish I could of made it today.
Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

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