The Old-Timers

When the new-hires walked into the office, we met a fascinating group of people who had worked in the Southern Pacific reservation bureau across the street in the Southern Pacific building. The Wheel was obviously moved from there to its new location in the Ferry Building. The SP employees were "on loan" to Amtrak, and were able to return to the SP at some point.
The office was managed, very admirably, by Evelyn Thomas. She was quite a remarkable woman. She had an accent that sounded very eastern - a bit New York, a bit New Jersey, but neither, really. I recognized it - my great aunt sounded just like that, and her sister, my grandmother, had a touch of it, too. As it turned out all three had what was well-known in San Francisco as a South of Market accent. My grandmother and her sister were born and raised in Noe Valley, Evelyn just over the hill in the Castro. This area had a conglomeration of ethnic groups over the years, all lending bits and pieces of their own accents to create a very unique accent for the child of the neighborhoods. Thanks to TV, its likely gone now, wiped out by the homogenization of the American language.
Be that as it may, Evelyn was amazing. Tough as nails and gentle as a lamb - often in the same minute! She brooked no sass, but had a sense of humor. And talk about multi-tasking - she used to run the office AND keep track of the Reno Fun Train all on her own. Around the time the Fun Train was operating, Evelyn would run around with this huge notebook in her pocket. When anyone got a call about the Fun Train, she would take it book their reservation - train and hotel. All by herself - amazing!
Another old-timer was Evelyn's right-hand man, Al Schnurmann, pictured above. He was a post-war emigrant from Germany, with a heavy accent, hence known as "Herr" Schnurmann. Having taken German in high school, I had to try it out with him. He was kind - he said my accent was superb, but I had no vocabulary to speak of. So we stuck to English!
More old-timers in the next post...