Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Quiet Please, Quiet Please.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
The Mutual Broadcasting System presents Quiet Please, which is written
and directed by Willis Cooper.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
And which features Ernest Chappel.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Quiet Please for tonight is called green Light.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
You wouldn't be a railroad, would you?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
You know?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Uh, I was pretty sure you wasn't. I can usually
tell a rail a mile away. But well, you look
kind as if you might have been one one time
or something. Oh, it's a compliment. Gotta be a mighty
good man to be a railroad here. Not as good
as you used to have to be, of course, but
it's still a man's side job. Be I'm sure once
(01:23):
there was now at my time, he could pretty near
always tell a railroader, know how well, sir, if he
had a thumb or a couple of fingers miss, and
you could tell he was a brakeman one h more
time coupling things, you know, four three fingered brakeman. And
(01:44):
if you've seen a fellow with one leg, he was
pretty certain he's a.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
Railroad here, yeah, cause there.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Wasn't so many wars.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
And automobile was something like that. To cut a fella's
leg off.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Then pretty near always he left it on a railroad track.
Summer's sure that's how I lost mine. Yeah, louse, as
long as time ago, A long time ago, that was
See Phil Commers my name, pleased to meet you. I'm
getting on the chief at twelve oh one. First time
(02:18):
I ever been on one N streamliners. First time I
ever rode behind the diesel engine too. They're going to
California and meet my girl. I ain't seen her in
forty two years. She married another party and then he
passed away last May, and she got right into me.
(02:41):
So I'm gonna go see her. Got rid of a
lot of my pride in forty two years. Yeah, sure
have pride. Oh well, I wasn't gonna let him marry
a fella with one leg. See she bought bled and
bullholed about it. But yeah, I was a young fool,
(03:04):
and I went away and left her. Ah looked at
all amy years wasted. Now I got some good years left,
don't you fool yourself? Even if I have got only
one leg. I guess you might say I lost it
in a railroad accident, And again you might not. Uh,
that was probably the reason why I ran away and left.
(03:26):
Add He you see that when I lost my leg,
people thought I had bats in my belfry. Yeah, I
I don't suppose you to choose the back of the year.
I'm trying to rake myself in a habit before I
see Addy. She she was always to set against it,
you see. But I got a couple of days before
(03:48):
I get to California, and I guess one more or
less she won't hurt me.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Uh uh.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
You don't have cusp for daughters and deepos anymore, it
seems to me. Oh, well, no time, shark, don't spend
much any hope, alright. And I wasn't right with a railroader,
you see, well, I mean I pounded brass mm the
(04:14):
telegrapher brass pounder mm. I was working on this little
branch line down south, see, working the.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Night trick at this little bitty town.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
What is his lumber mill?
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Forty fifty people, practically all.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Of 'em in the mill, and I.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
When the mill shut, dominated nobody much in the town.
The day operator he was at his brother ham Dorsey,
as his name was. They had a little house in town,
and I my room there, so I got to know
Addie Dorsey. Y. I tell you he's here, the deserted
(04:52):
little town. You ever been one good gosh.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
At night, all there is is hooty owls.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
And squirrels jumping up and down on the roof and
hooting raising a racket.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
So do you think nobody could sleep?
Speaker 5 (05:09):
That?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
You can sleep all right?
Speaker 1 (05:12):
This night trick was a peach only had one train
through after eleven o'clock. A wave freight to come through
any time. Train eleven thirty and one thirty depend on
how many cars they had to set off down the line.
Heads are own switching on this here line. When they
had five locomotives, old fashioned two four rows looked like
to come out of the arc.
Speaker 6 (05:34):
Well.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
After I got used to the hoodie owls and the
other animals, I found I could give me quite a
bit of shut eye after this wave freight comes through.
Never was much traffic on the wire. Sometimes to sit
and talk with some of the other operators a while.
We never had much talk about, so they sit three
a while and drove it off to sleep. Put my
(05:58):
head right down alongside the sound or the men a
digam a call, I'd be wide awake.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yeah, A lot of old brass pounders can do that.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
You can set off a giant fire cracker alongside their
ear and they won't turn a hair but leave their
own call come through and they're on the ball like that. Well,
then after i'd been on a job a couple of months,
Addie Dorsey, she got into the habit to come and
pass and bring me a bucket of coffee along about
nine o'clock, and we'd sit and talk.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Oh there is a custard.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Door me and that eight We were sitting there this.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
One night in the summertime.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Was kind of hot and sultry, and the hoodie owls
and the squirrels that got discouraged and going to bed
or something.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
You couldn't hear a sound in any place.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
We were just sitting there at the edge of the
light that come from the drop light over the table, talking.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Kind of quiet.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Feels like a storm coming up.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Huh, you could stand some rain, I guess is that so?
Speaker 7 (07:10):
Oh? Excuse me? Id it?
Speaker 6 (07:13):
Hope it isn't the company.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Ooh, didn't get much sleep today, catch me a little
after the way freight post ro.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Hope he's halfway on time tonight.
Speaker 6 (07:23):
He never is he?
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Sure right?
Speaker 5 (07:27):
Don't you ever get tired of this kind of job?
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Phil?
Speaker 1 (07:30):
I sure do.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
I should think you would.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
It's all from morotness.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
Isn't good for you.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
What I'd like to get idea I'd like to do
is get me a job at one of the telegraph companies.
I know a fella don Orleans, Frank GIBBNS. His name
is the sign as JB. He's only been working for
postal eight months and he gets ninety six dollars?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Is the money good?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Where's a stiff collar? Every day? He lives on the
fat of the land. Three years ago he was just
a common brass founder like me.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
I think it make you ashamed of yourself. Oh I
got plenty of time.
Speaker 6 (08:13):
Nobody's got plenty of time.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Uh huh Wait a minute.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Oh it's just your nor down the girl's side and.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Talking to this spatty.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
What was you saying about time? Said, nobody's got plenty
of time. How's that?
Speaker 6 (08:31):
Well, you can't ever tell what's gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
You know, the best life plans are mice and men.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Yeah, I suppose so, I suppose so hate to see
you're wasting.
Speaker 6 (08:43):
Your time and a place like this do certainly do
bad enough for my brother hand.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
But he's forty four years old and he's always gonna
be an old batch.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
But you I'm not gonna be any old batch.
Speaker 6 (08:57):
You're not gonna find many girls that'll marry.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
You up unless you're making a decent salary.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Would you marry me if I was making money at me?
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Why?
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Of course you would.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
If he was making ninety six dollars a month, I'd
marry in a minute field country.
Speaker 6 (09:14):
It's just to asking why i'd be die?
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Well, you see, you know I might do just that aty.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Would you like living in New Orleans, or por or
some place like that.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I've seen pictures of New Orleans. I a fella in
Peoria dispatch it for the Big Four.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
That's a nice time.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
I'd like to go out west.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Well here, maybe I could find a job out there.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
They say it's a coming country. Uh, how it is
for raising my family, though?
Speaker 6 (09:51):
What heavens that thunder?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Nice? Fat to see lightning?
Speaker 6 (09:55):
Oh I gotta get home before the store.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Oh I ain't hear.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
Yeah, Well, I better.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Wanna wait a little. Why why you good keep the
company talk? Oh I don't wanna get caught in the
storm or maybe it'll blow over.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Well I'll wait a year minute, Sure, sit down, I
have another cup of Corton.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Oh did you see that lightning?
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Pretty?
Speaker 6 (10:19):
Wasn't it is?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
What will set?
Speaker 1 (10:20):
So as you can't see out the window over here?
Speaker 6 (10:23):
I better go?
Speaker 4 (10:24):
No, I stay.
Speaker 7 (10:26):
Real comfortable here, ain't it?
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Turn your chair around there.
Speaker 5 (10:32):
Like that?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
You see? Now you can't see the lightnings?
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Is the best ways?
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Fine?
Speaker 7 (10:41):
Real?
Speaker 6 (10:41):
Ain't gotta go before the storm, is sure?
Speaker 4 (10:44):
Eddie? You were saying something about raising the family.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
Now we're not married yet, I ain't. No, like as not,
we won't do. You probably got another girl somewhere nowhere.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
You sure you ain't.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Well, you're the first girl I ever seen that I
want to marry. Addie.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Are you popping the question?
Speaker 6 (11:04):
Phil?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
I popped in a while ago.
Speaker 6 (11:07):
You said, yes, see it you got a good job.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
You get a good.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Job at it?
Speaker 6 (11:16):
Well, then.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
What did you do?
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Bowers dash shit for a kid that don't give it
to you?
Speaker 6 (11:26):
Seeing we're engaged?
Speaker 3 (11:34):
H Phil will be so happy? Sure will happy? Oh,
Silia de w because what's marry?
Speaker 6 (11:40):
It's raining?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
For sure?
Speaker 1 (11:41):
It's been raining for five minutes.
Speaker 6 (11:43):
Oh you did that a purpose?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Why I didn't make it rain?
Speaker 7 (11:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
But you made me turn away from the window so
as I couldn't see it rain.
Speaker 6 (11:50):
I wanted you to stay here? Why I gotta know
you go right home and rain anyhow? Oh no, oh,
my grace, it's just pouring.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
But you'll have to stay here a while now I
could kill you. All commodity ain't so unpleasant as all
that is?
Speaker 7 (12:03):
It?
Speaker 6 (12:04):
Well could be worse, I suppose.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Yeah, this will probably.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
Less all night?
Speaker 6 (12:13):
Well hardly ever, does oh hand me some coffee? Might
as well make the best of SI.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Sure coffee's cold.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
I'm afraid I don't mind.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
I put sugar in it.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
Mm Uh. How big a family was you figuring out?
Speaker 3 (12:41):
I having Ooh, not a very big one.
Speaker 6 (12:45):
Big families are also expensive to raise. Two boys maybe
and three girls.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
M I wouldn't mind that.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Who is that?
Speaker 4 (13:02):
What's it's only ten o'clock?
Speaker 6 (13:05):
Can't be the way plade candy.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
I never heard of him being that early. Wait, I'll
go look.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
He got a green light for practice?
Speaker 1 (13:11):
You always got a green light?
Speaker 7 (13:12):
He den?
Speaker 1 (13:13):
What's green?
Speaker 5 (13:14):
Awful?
Speaker 7 (13:14):
Hard?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Yeah, there's his headline.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
What if it's that's fright and they're gonna stop here,
I'm gonna run it?
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Or what's that crude?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Hain't him and he ain't gonna stop whoever he is,
why he's really high balling.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
He's an extra. I can see a green marker who
could have been if?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I don't know, But I'm gonna find out.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
That's cloth size. Well hurry up, hey, look at that engine.
What that's a six age wheeler?
Speaker 5 (13:44):
What about it? Well, he's gonna need them on this line,
he stool.
Speaker 6 (13:47):
You could have got lost this summer.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
I don't know what. He's sure got the Johnson barrow
over in the corner holes. He better reads up time
he gets to that curve of green on hill.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
That's the funniest thing I ever heard of.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
Me too. Look at that a roll.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
He must be making fifty mile an hour if he ain't. Cassolic,
I noted, run and get your brother quick out.
Speaker 5 (14:12):
He's let the iron.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
So I quick run inside and got the dispatcher and
told him about this year train and the way he
piled up. And all he said was what train appears?
He didn't know no more about it than I did.
So I ran outside and set the board read against
the wait fraight so.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
He wouldn't file up on top of this here wild train.
I got me a lantern and I run down the
track like a bat.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Out of the bath place, and Addie she was waking
up her brother and the rest of the people in town,
and the rain was coming down fifty kill. Well, sir,
you know what, I run pretty near a mile down
the track. That train wasn't five hundred feet away from
the depot when he left the irons. But I looked
(15:08):
high and low and there wasn't a sign of nothing
not hiding her hair of that train. Yeah, what do
you think of that? Well, Addie and her brother sure
roused up the town and a couple of fellas got
(15:28):
out a hand car and they prompted it all the
way down to the next flag stop. They couldn't find
hiding her hair of it neither, and the wires was
jumping everybody from the mask of mechanic down to the
section bosses of that in question. And if you think
I didn't have a great time answering the man, well,
you see, I couldn't call.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
In Addie for a witness.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
How would that look? You know? Oh, she wanted to
get me out of the sandy I got myself into,
and her brother Ham said she should too, But yeah,
I wouldn't leave her do it?
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Well?
Speaker 1 (16:04):
I got off with a warning. I had a good
reputation for sober in this, you see. So everybody finally
agreed they had a nightmare or something, and they jumped
up and down on me for falling asleep. Then I
took a lot of kidding from the other operators along
the line, got pretty dog un tired of it too. Well.
(16:27):
Ham and me, we had a lot of discussion about it,
and Ham he said it probably was a ghost train,
said he'd heard about ghost trains before, like President Lincoln's
funeral train.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
If they see every once in a.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
While running along slow in the night, all draped in
black and a bell trolling like a church bell.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Never heard of that.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
And he would ask a whole time railroader sometimes.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Well, once I was daddy, never come around to the
depot nights anymore. But we drugged a lot.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Don't you see?
Speaker 6 (17:08):
Still, this is the best time for you to get
out of here.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Now and go somewhere else and get a job. I
don't see it, Addie.
Speaker 5 (17:14):
Well, everybody's making jokes now about you.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Are they?
Speaker 6 (17:17):
No joke to me at each I I know Phil
didn't I see it with my own.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Eyes, sure, But but what.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Well, I ain't gonna leave here till I find out
what this thing was all Phil, listen at I think
like this can follow me in all his life. I'd
go ask him for a job with Postal or Western
Union or somebody very thing. They'd look me up and
people would tell 'em about this, and before it might
be Oh, sir, I'm gonna stay here and find out
(17:47):
about this here ghost trainer or whatever it was.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
But how you gonna find out?
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Phil? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
They keep looking, Phil.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
Don't you love me?
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Huh?
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Sure?
Speaker 5 (18:01):
But then won't you please?
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Money?
Speaker 3 (18:03):
I gotta figure this out my own way. I'll never
have a.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Good enough job to marry you if I have this ghost.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Training thing hanging over me all my life. No, what
are you gonna do?
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (18:15):
I got it?
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Kind of doped out. I figure this here was some
kind of unlawful thing what I don't know, but there's
something queer about it.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
It don't believe it was a ghost.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Ain't no such thing.
Speaker 6 (18:30):
Well, we heard a crash, did we?
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Huh? Might not have been a extra loud thunder crash, My.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Goodness, fill I never thought of that.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
You see still, I bet you you see? But what well?
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I got it in my mind that somebody's ink hoots
for somebody else on the street or rust here, and
whoever it is, i'd be glad to see me get.
Speaker 6 (18:56):
Out of here.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Goodness feel So I'm not gonna go see they'll pull
this trick again, and I'm gonna be ready for him.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
I'm gonna set a red board against him, you know,
hodheading the world cooker. No crooker runs through a red
signal and dead. What Then I got me a thirty
eight revolver, and I'm gonna see what's going on. Then
maybe I'll give me a reward.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
So that's how I got my red cut off.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
That's how I happened forty two years afterwards. If you're
going to California or the meeting my girl Addie. And
about a week later, I was drowsing in the depot
about ten thirty I hear the whistle. Well, I never
waited a second. I reached out to the lever and
(19:51):
I swung it around. I could see the reflection outside
change from green to red. Man, I could hear them
breaks going on from right there. So I turned out
the light over my table and I reached the drawer
and I took out the thirty eight, and then I
went outside and.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
That big six stade waiter he eased right.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Up alongside of me, and the only light there was
was from his head light of ad the little green
market lights of the end and read from the center far.
So I just stood there waiting, and nothing happened. Nobody
(20:32):
said nothing for the longest time. And then a great,
big fella was standing right there by my side. He
surprised me. Saw I drop a revolver?
Speaker 6 (20:42):
He just laughed, Where is your stopper's boy? I sure did?
Speaker 7 (20:48):
Where the hell?
Speaker 6 (20:48):
That's fine? Who are you? Why? We gotta get going?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
And I was taking around the cinders from my revolver,
but I couldn't find it.
Speaker 6 (20:57):
He said again, Li's boy, where do you got to
get gone?
Speaker 1 (21:01):
What do you mean we you and me?
Speaker 6 (21:04):
No you don't, mister, sure boy. I gotta get me
a farm.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
What you're talking about?
Speaker 6 (21:09):
Give me a green life boy, and climb aboard. I
won't do it, Oh sure you will.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Been sure enough I did.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
I don't know how or why I've done it, but
I turned around. I set the board clear, and the
light was green again, and I felt myself taken hold
of the grab irons and I clumb.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Up into the cab. I hit the deck.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
The engineer he says.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
We're gonna, lord, you didn't work.
Speaker 6 (21:37):
We're gonna rove.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
And I felt something like a kind of song going
through my head.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
And he leans over.
Speaker 6 (21:44):
And he says, what's your name? Boy?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And I told him Bill Conners, And I said what yours, mister?
Speaker 3 (21:54):
And he laughed and he said, why, I'm.
Speaker 6 (22:00):
My name's Joel boy Hazy Joan. He said to the
fire and boy, you bet and jump cause there's two
big look a motive that a gone, that you bump.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Sure they bumped, all right, And I didn't jump the
time and Addie found me there on the right of
way with my leg cut off. There wasn't hiding her
hair or any train wrecker or anything, just nothing. Hand men, crutches?
Speaker 7 (22:35):
Were you?
Speaker 2 (22:40):
M You have listened to Quiet Please, which is written
and directed by Willis Cooper. The man who spoke to
you was Ernest Chappell, and Addie was a Seymore.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
The engineer was Gus Roden, and the singer was Bill Huggins.
Original music for Quiet Please is composed and played by
Albert Berman. Now for a word about.
Speaker 7 (23:11):
Next week's Quiet Please.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Here is our writer, Director Willis Cooper. Next week's Quiet
Please is called pathetic fallacy, in which actually attempt to
dramatize the figures speak.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
I shall prob it be as lot as much surprised
as you are.
Speaker 5 (23:25):
Next Monday night, Quiet Please will be heard at a
new time.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Over most of these mutual stations.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
Consult your local papers for.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Time and station, and so until next week, I am
quietly yours, Ernest Chappel.
Speaker 5 (23:41):
Quiet Please comes to you from New York and will
be heard next week at half past nine. This is
a mutual broadcasting system.