Railroad Magazine, August, 1945
Memories of the “Hojack”
Memories of the winter of 1908 are recalled by John F. Roden, c/o Mrs. Lena Hilton, Fair Haven, N.Y. He was then working on the old Ho-Jack Line (the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg, now in the New York Central system). One morning they were starting out from Rome, N.Y., snow mantled the ground; the weather was crisp and cold.
“We backed our train into a freight yard at Oswego,” he writes, “near where an Adirondack Mountains guide named Gill lived with his family. Mr. Gill’s dog, Spot, liked to ride the engine cab with us. He’d sit on the little drop seat ahead of the seatbox of Fireman Pat Rogan. Pat taught the animal to hold a corncob pipe in his mouth. It was comical to see the two of them, man and dog, sitting there, each with a corncob pipe.
“On this particular morning we took Spot with us, as usual, while we picked up cars from various manufacturing concerns. The weather continued sunshiny until about 2 p.m. Then a few snow flurries drifted down. As soon as the snowfall started, our four-legged railroader disappeared, much to our surprise, but we kept on with the job of making up our train.
“Without any warning, a fierce northwestern wind blew in from Lake Ontario. I t was almost impossible for us to see signals in the swirling snowstorm. This slowed up our work. Not until about 5:30 did we get the train ready. Then we set out to the junction three miles away, where the Gill family lived and where stood a telegraph station at which we received orders before entering the main track. By this time the drifts had piled up so high that we had to do a regular snow-bucking job to get our train through.
“When we arrived at the junction we decided we could go no further without a helper engine, so our conductor, David Knight, barged into the operator’s shanty to explain the problem to the yardmaster on the west side. He was told, in reply, there would be no helper engines available until 8:30 p.m. It was then about seven. The op went home immediately after our arrival. This left us alone. There was nothing else for us to do, so we climbed into the engine, pulled the storm curtain tight, and sat around telling yarns.
“That morning, we learned later, Mrs. Gill had been fooled by the nice weather into taking a shopping trip with her small daughter. Of course, she had not expected a blizzard. The two of them had walked three-quarters of a mile to the trolley car and boarded it for the ride to the city.
“But getting back to our party in the engine cab: While we were entertaining each other and keeping as warm as we could, we suddenly heard loud and persistent barking. We thought Spot wanted us to take him into the cab. I got down to lift him up, but he would not let me do it. He ran away a few feet, still barking vociferously.
“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you don’t care to come here where it’s warm, you can stay there and bark your head off.’
“With that I climbed back into the engine and made myself comfortable again. The dog returned, barking louder than ever, a sharp persistent bark. it was still snowing and blowing; you could not see more than 10 or 15 feet ahead. Spot really howled. At length Conductor Knight said:
“ ‘Boys, there’s something wrong. That dog wouldn’t stay out there barking for fun on a terrible night like this. I’m going to find out what it is. Our helper won’t get here before ten o’clock anyway.’
“So Dave started out and I followed. Yelping excitedly, Spot ran ahead of us, occasionally running back to see if we were trailing along. He led us up the road a half-mile. There we found Mrs. Gill and her daughter. The lady had fallen down from exhaustion and the child was too small to help her.
Dave and I carried them to their home. We phoned for a doctor and stayed till he came. Mrs. Gill gave birth to a boy.
“That boy is now 36. He mother is still living. Both owe their lives to Spot. The dog died long ago. I hope he has gone to some railway beyond the sunset. Only two of my old crew are left. I often visualize that gang in the engine cab, with Spot on his accustomed seat, and he and the fireman grinning happily, each with a corncob pipe in his mouth.”