Believe me, I get so many emails on even a slow day that I never go around looking for new sources of bedevilment. Still, I never regret the day I got that first note from Bill Baird.
Bill is a BNSF Railway train dispatcher assigned to its San Bernardino office, which directs trains in California. Still, that’s not enough to absorb all the energy radiating from this man. So every day he sends a select group of people an email he calls “The Tortoise Tattler.” What does that mean? You’ll have to ask Bill. Maybe it means news travels slowly, or that he tells you stuff you may never find elsewhere.
Certainly the latter is true. Each day’s Tortoise comes with a “this day in history” beginning. Here is yesterday’s lesson:
JULY 10 1862 - Construction begins on the Central Pacific Railroad.
JULY 10 1894 - Eugene Debs is indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for failing to comply with the government's injunction against the American Railway Union strike.
JULY 10, 1885 – Canadian Government votes financial aid to Canadian Pacific Railway.
How in heck does Bill know this stuff, all 365 days of the year? I’ve been afraid to ask him, for fear of ruining the effect.
It’s the second half of the Tattler that I really enjoy. It’s Bill’s collection of news items he has come across. Many and maybe even most are things you’ve read elsewhere, often having to do with deaths, collisions, and such. But this man casts a wide net. Almost every day he surprises me with something out of left field that makes me say, wow. On July 10 it was the tale of the Indian engineer who blissfully took his passenger train three miles between station stops unaware that he’d left most of his train behind at the last station. That tale constituted the first half of my previous blog. Thank you, Bill.
Some of you may wonder how to get on Bill’s elite list of recipients. He says to send him an email asking to be included. Write him at TheTortoiseTattler@yahoo.com. You’ll thank me for this tip someday. — Fred W. Frailey
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