I took the liberty of retyping the following prose because I thought it was just a piece of history that needed to be shared. My husband Rob and I came across these words typed from a very old typewriter, on very old, yellowed aged paper, so light from exposure, you could hardly read it. It was in a display case at the railroad museum in Griffith Park near Los Angeles. I retyped it exactly as the writer had written it. What war she is talking about at the end, I don't know. Most likely World War II. At the time, women took men's jobs as they headed off to war and this young lass apparently worked in the tool crib at a rail yard. There was no name on it or date but we thought it was very entertaining. She seems slightly ahead of her time. And I give you,
“T R O U B L E S”
My job is full of troubles and now I will tell you a few of the unpleasant things that I’m forced to do.
Now if I wasn’t naturally a virtuous young miss, I wouldn’t hold my job down long enough to tell you this. A dozen times a day my modesty is shocked and I’m a very thankful girl the tool room door is locked.
Now I don’t mind such decent tools as wrenches, drills and shears but some of the tools they ask for make me red behind the ears.
A man fixing a bearing comes and asked to see my balls and before recovering from the shock, another fellow calls. He asked for cocks to put on pipes; for counterbores and tits. But when they ask me for a screw it scares me into fits.
They want reamers to enlarge their holes. At least that’s what they say. And then they ask if I have a nut, a dozen times a day.
They ask me for a ratchet drill and for a bastard file.
One day a fellow come to me as I had returned from lunch, and asked me through the window if I’d seen his big prick punch. Such things as that annoy me but what I won’t forget, is when the cashier asked me if I’d had my monthly yet.
The foreman looked one day for some tools to gut a slot – said to me “open up my drawers, and show him what I got.”
They ask me for a bitch dog, which makes my temper wild. One asked me for a female gauge, which almost made me wail, because I had to ask the difference between a female and male.
One man complained, “My tool’s too short” Another “It’s too long” Another says – his tool’s too weak, another – it’s too strong.
One asked me if I could put him wise as to where he could find some tailstock. Another wants a bunch of waste to wipe off a plumber’s cock.
Another old machinist who had one half a jag, asked me at the window for a handful of my rag.
Now this all goes to show you that on all working days, a tool room girl must take it in a dozen different ways. But when this war is over and we all start life anew, I guess I’ll miss that window and the boys who need a screw.
The trouble of a Tool Room girl.
7 comments:
I'll bet the boys hated to see her leave when the war was over.
R
Surely there must be other copies of this somewhere else in the world. I returned to Travel Town to locate this document after several years because the art struck me so, and I tried, unsuccessfully, to express it to others.
The only reference I can find is the faded ink on the manually typed document (small characters such as periods and comas have punched holes through the paper) in the museum case there.
What leads me to believe that it can't be the only copy is - it's incompleteness. Similar to the FAXed joke, this must have made the rounds of several manufacturers via the secretarial pools. Everything rhymes in metered couplets, except two verses:
They ask me for a ratchet drill
and for a bastard file.
as well as:
They asked me for a bitch dog,
which makes my temper wild,
Only these two stanzas are missing their second half, which either were mistyped or intentionally left incomplete due to their overt sexual suggestiveness.
Find out more at:
http://disneywizard.angelfire.com/RailRoad.html
So intrigued was I, that I duplicated each line from the original, verbatim, spaces, punctuation and even line breaks.
Then I noticed that the meter was off. So, in attempting to fix it I put it to a tune, and arranged an entirely new piece.
The result outgrew the railroad page, and rated a page of it's own. The new page shows a photo snapped of the document. Come see my work at:
http://disneywizard.angelfire.com/cribjig.html#^
while going throug a box of letters and pics from my great grandma 1920s and 1930s most of it, I came across a handwritten version of this. Of course not dated or named. It had my mom and I crying we laughed so hard!
I live in Lethbridge, Alberta and I have a copy of this poem which is hand written in a notebook that I have from 1944 which belonged to either a Leo Klinkhammer or BJ Klinkhammer. The rest of the booklet is notes regarding Vocational training at the Prince of Wales Armories in Edmonton. The poem is signed, but it's very difficult to read.
It appears to be Annie Staspantakit?
I just took the time to read and compare and we have two different versions of the same poem...U.S.A. servicemens version and Canadian servicemens version perhaps. There is a second poem with it as well which I will try to read. These are both dated 1944. I will post them for your as soon as I can decode the writing.
Thanks Sierra! It's all very interesting. I appreciate your posts. We'll get to the bottom of this eventually! :o)
Post a Comment