Ten90 Solutions LLC

Thinking back, not to be confused with thinking backwards, it seems to me there was a little something off, not quite right, out-of-step, unsynched with all of us. 

And for some of us, there was more than a little off, a little unsynched. 

For one or two of us, everything was off, out-of-step, unsynched.  I'll let you decide where I land on that spectrum.

And... thinking back, it seems to me that the railroad, at least the New Jersey Division of the Consolidated Rail Corporation, counted on that, made use of that, and profited thereby.

I exaggerate? Do I?

Consider what we encountered on that division in New Jersey.  Consider the legacy of four bankrupt railroads with very little resembling any service plan by any of the four, much less a service plan for the consolidation of the four.

Consider the obsolete physical plant, the overbuilt, irrationalized, physical plant, redundancy upon redundancy piled up over the years by the self-deluding nature of competition, of remaining competitive. 

Marx, explaining something else entirely, wrote in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte:  "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."  And Marx barely lasted a single day as a railroad employee. Welcome to New Jersey, Karl.

You had to be a little bit off to not succumb to repeated waves of nausea brought on by railroading, railroadings untouched by human progress for years...  to confront the yard after yard designed, and used, to waste time and money; where nothing got done on straight time.

Simple fact: We didn't dispatch enough cars to warrant all those yards, all those yard crews, drill crews, flat-switching crews, and even if we did, we still wouldn't have made money with all those yards and yard crews hung around the neck of the division like a noose.  

"Normal" people,  meeting somebody's idea of a functioning, productive, managers had waddled through this swamp of oil-soaked wood and dirt, this mass of corroded steel and "deals," of early quits, of overtime. of early quits plus overtime,  and succumbed, surrendered, went with the flow, even if the flow hadn't moved in 40 years.   Poor bastards.  Heavy drinkers to the man, and they were all men.

It took a lot of effort to see even the possibility of  an integrated operating and financial program in this crumbling estate of the bankrupts.

Thinking back on it, I think it took those who felt most at home in never feeling at home; those who took a bit of comfort in always being  uncomfortable.

I think it, the apparent intractability of the situation, the apparent odds-in-favor of immediate and ultimate  if spectacular failure, attracted those who had been bequeathed that special trait so intimately attached to the Y chromosome; who had inherited that  high-peforming/self-hating gene, passed down (usually) from father to son. 

 
I know it attracted me, and I've had that confirmed by professionals, multiple times.

Projecting? Of course I am.  But that doesn't make me wrong.  It's the simplest, almost peer-reviewed explanation that accounts for the hours spent; the energy applied; the focus maintained; the obsession we had with making the unworkable work; with mastering the conflicts--we were trainmasters, after all, and we took it seriously. 

At least, it's the way I account for my own obsessions. 

Somehow, sometime, we were able to perceive the outline of just a bit of order, and get just a whiff of reason, a scent rationality, in the disorder, the unreason. Maybe we saw it"just like the desert shows a thirsty man a green oasis where there's only sand." Close enough for government work, Smokey!

We were perceiving, of course, ourselves, or rather the convergence, the congruence of ourselves with the external reality.

We saw something we wanted to be and thought we could make it happen. 

Destiny? Delusion?  Both?  Point taken. But that's what destiny and delusion are made of, the coincidence of, or lack of coincidence of personal need with  difficult  problems.  Besides,  what better solution for a railroad confronting an existential crisis daily, than entrusting itself to those who confronted an existential crisis every shift?

Nobody demostrated more dedication, more energy, more commitment, greater obsession withmeeting an operating plan than the assistant superintendent at that time, Thaddeus (Tad) J. Mahoney.  Tad passed away in April of this year at the age of 73. 

He was 5'8," with a face that was so Irish he was exempt from ever wearing green. I liked to think he was named after the greatest representative in the history of the US Congress, Thaddeus Stevens, but I don't know.

 He came to the division as division road foreman of engines, and was promoted to assistant superintendent soon after. 

The division with Gerry Bressler as superintendent and Bill Hurd as assistant superintendent had actually started to function like a division.  I was the 2nd trick supervisor of train operations then, and I remember Bill showing me with pride the first report that yard cars dispatched per crew hour had broken the 5.0 mark (5.36 was the actual number, I think). 

Bill, always equipped with a lit cigaret (Luckies were his brand) let a small smile escape the corners of his mouth, which from him was the equivalent to most others jumping up and screaming "Hallelujah!" 

Bill was rewarded for that effort; promoted to division superintendent, and moved west.  Mahoney moved up.

I don't know Tad's responsibility, if any, for the development of the division operating  plan.  As assistant superintendent, though he was responsible for every detail in its execution. And execute he did.  With skill.

He was of "our generation" and nurtured, I think, a bit of the iconoclasm we all felt confronting what we confronted.  He also, I suspect, felt a little overwhelmed, as we all did, at the challenges ahead.  He was also determined, as we were, to not fail, no matter what, no matter what it cost him or us. It wasn't "do or die."  It was just "do."

Those who exhibited that same determination became, if not exactly his friends, his cadre, his "go-tos." 

Friends?  That was problematic.  Mahoney liked to drink (Budweiser, no accounting for taste), or at least spend time in bars accompanied by bottles, and I then, and to this day, cannot get past one beer without thinking "that's enough." And I worked 2nd trick.  And he was a "hard man," prickly, demanding, with a voice that rang like a shotgun going off in an echo chamber.  But......

But I thought the "demanding" part was Tad's expression of friendship.  He demanded what he wanted you to deliver  which was the refusal to fail.  He demanded that in part  because it meant the difference between what others thought about you, had said about you, what others wanted you to believe, and what you could accomplish.  Meeting and exceeding those demands was, I think, the basis for more than friendship--for  respect, acceptance, and even affection.

I know "we"--some more than others, one or two more than most, accepted him, felt affection for him

All of which, all of these aspects, made me think Tad was much more like ourselves than we cared to admit about ourselves-- a "troubled soul." 

I don't know much about his background.  I know he came off the Mohawk division. 

I know that if I knew then what I know now, I would have tried to have been a better friend.  Of course, that's impossible, and that's the real poignancy in the human condition. 

DM Schanoes

June 10, 2022

Name That Tune

Go-go music really makes us dance

Do the pony puts us in a trance

Do Watusi just give us a chance