Page 5 - Demo

hook on the station platform, then quickly kick out the outgoing mailbag. This %u201cmail-on-the-fly%u201d could be tricky because there might be less than a minute between some exchanges, and a clerk received 5 demerits if he missed a pickup. Furthermore, if he didn%u2019t kick the outgoing mailbag hard enough, itcould fall beneath the wheels of the train, and would burst open in what clerks called %u201csnowstorms%u201d as letters scattered everywhere. A really good clerk could make a blind pickup at night using only the sound and feel of the train%u2019s speed and the curve in the tracks, to gauge how far they were from a mail crane.The clerks who worked in RPOs were elite employees, and it took a score of 97% to pass the entrance exam. But the jobs were exhausting because they often sorted 600 pieces of mail an hour%u2014while standing on a rocking train, speeding through the countryside. Nobody sat down until everyone was finished.Small fortunes could sometimes be found in registered mail and other pouches, so thieves were a threat to RPOs. In 1923, Hugh, Ray and Roy DeAutremont ambushed a Southern Pacific train, shot and killed the brakeman, engineer, and fireman, then used dynamite to blow open the mail car. But they used too much, and the explosion killed the mail clerk and sparked a fire that burned up almost everything, leaving nothing for the bandits. In 1924, the four Newton brothers, Dock, Jess, Joe, and Willis, were more successful when they netted $3 million in booty from a Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul mail train. And there was another danger. Mail cars were placed just behind the locomotive, where they would be crushed in a wreck, acting as shock absorbers to protect the passenger cars further back in the train. Between 1890 and 1900, there were over 6,000 accidents involving trains equipped with mail cars, resulting in 2,072 injuries and 80 dead mail clerks. Also, a jolting accident or sudden stop could result in scalding water sloshing from a steam engine%u2014or overturned oil-burning lamps and wood-burning stoves, which were extremely hazardous in the early wooden mail cars.Fortunately, there was a traveling good luck charm that could prevent wrecks%u2014a dog named Owney. In the late 1800s, the mutt became attracted to the smell of mail sacks and began to follow them Railway Post Office interior