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Show SALT FLAT NEWS, FEBRUARY, 1972 0 0 by Wallace A. Clay Bom at Promotory Summit fifteen yean after the driving of the golden spike (see story), Wallace A. Clay was an eyewitness to the golden age of railroading along the old Central Pacific line. From an indelible memory of things past, Mr. Clay has written a series of articles describing life 1880's and the maon the west Utah desert in keeps saying clickety-dick- , the vast salty wastelands of clickety click. That's a strange chines and men who bridged language, but here comes old Dad the American West. "Look at that funny little on that table. "Yes, what is it? "Darned if I know. It seems to be trying to say something. It do-hick- ey the-lat- e -- Clay. Maybe he can explain. What does clickety-dic- k mean, Mr. Clay? "Thats Morse Code. Only telegraphers get the message. "Are you getting it? "Yes, quite well. It's telling about a golden spike being driven and some rails that have met. "We dont see any rails or spike. Of course not. Its telling of a place in faraway Utah called Promontory Summit. Thats more than a thousand miles from here. "Well, Ill be darned. What will the crackpots come up with next? The foregoing 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, where his older brother, Colby Clay, had taught him telegraphy at Medicine Bow. He married Molly and then became night operator at Promontory Summit in 1883. Yours truly was bom Mid-dlemi- ss World's first drive-imovie was constructed in miniature in Clay's workshop. Inventor points to model cars, cardboard screen now covered with the dust of three decades. March 11th, 1884, approxi- mately three hundred feet northeast of the spot where the golden spike was driven on May 10th, 1869. By 1890, my father was day operator at Blue Creek Station, which was seven miles east of Promontory Summit by wagon road, but twelve miles east by the winding railroad track down Promontory hill, and little as the Chinaman section hands called me, knew more "Wa-Le- e about railroading than any rooky brakeman on the Salt Lake Division. My father, at different times between 1883 and 1897, was telegraph operator or station agent, first at Promontory, then at Blue Creek, then at Kelton, and lastly at Tecoma, Nevada, with short stays at several other Central Pacific stations in between. Each telegraph office was a very small residence built dose to the railroad track, with a plank platform between the front of the office and the railroad track. In those early days, there was the flag pole almost against the main line, so that different colored flags could be stuck into the top of the pole in such a manner that the train crews would be sure to see them. A green flag meant that the train could go by without stopping. A red flag meant that the train had to stop for telegraphed orders, and both the engineer and the conductor had to have a copy of the same. A white flag meant that there was another train either dose in front or dose behind, so the train crew had to use extra precaution. Much later, a semaphore system was adopted, which did away with the old low flag pole where the flags almost touched tiie passing trains. The telegraph office in the front of the residence was diyided, . Computerized Accounting, Taxes and Managment Records Specialized Service for the Man with a small but growing business. P.O.Box 11717 272-051- 9 SALT LAKE CITY Phone 272-051- 9 P.O.Box 11717 NOW IN UTAH COUNTY . Phone 756-356- 5 P.O, Box 334 Am. Fork 84003 GOOD RECORDS INSURE HIGHER PROFITS by a high counter separating the waiting room in front from the telegraphers cage in the rear. On the instrument desk were two sets of sending keys, receiving relays and sounders, while on the wall behind the desk was the switchboard. Most of the many telegraph wires, strung on the telegraph poles alongside the railroad track, had leads into the switchboard, so that the operator could plug in any of the different circuits carried by the different wires, and so connect a circuit such as the "dispatchers wire or the Western Union wire with either set of his desk instruments. There was a ground wire on the switchboard that could be plugged into any circuit, and there were proper spark gaps for all the circuits. If there was a thunder storm anywhere up or down, the line for about fifteen miles in either direction, then electric sparks could be sen jumping across the spark gaps, and we kids were warned to keep away from the switchboard lest we be electrocuted. 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 use to the code that he could go to sleep at his desk, and when the Ogden dis-- . patcher 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, 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 opera-- . tor 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 station personnel there was a most congenial acquaintance and comradeship j and eventually every old timer knew every other old timer from one end of the division to the other. A division was as far as a freight crew went before resting and turning back, as for example, 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, who would unload any. drop-freigConsigned to. any. railroad .emi ht ployee at that particular station. This was a free freight service to 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 & Wilcox, and get the goods they ordered delivered free that same week. In really hot weather there was an ice car next to the weigh car, and the brake-ma- n would kick out a hundred pound cake of ice from the Ogden ice house, wrapped in a heavy burlap sack, for each railroad family at that hot desert station. It was an additional incentive to help keep that family amid otherwise unpleasant 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 tridr would be twelve hours long. But when there was no night operator (at about half the stations along the line) then a trick was usually longer than twelve hours. However, even when a telegraph operator was off duty, if he was within hearing distance, he was 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' twenty dollar gold pieces and silver dollars. For amusement at such remote stations, two telegraph operators, maybe seventy-fiv- e miles apart, would both plug into the same spare telegraph wire circuit and play games by wire, such as chess or checkers or certain card games, or maybe they would just chew the rag, or listen in on Western Union and get the latest news even before it came out in the dty newspapers. At old Blue Creek the writer was a kid of seven who knew Morse Code well enough to recognize the station call, so when Ogden commercial, "G-tw- o dashes and a dot called Blue Creek, plus three dots, and my father was not in the office, and I would run and find him and say, Papa, you are wanted on the wire. : B-da- sh i ADVERTISE IN THE SALT FLAT NEWS CALL 485-210- 1 DON W. OHMS Advertising Director 4 I ' 4 la. . |