I recent­ly came across a pro­mo­tion­al video for “The Cana­di­an”, a show­piece pas­sen­ger train run­ning between Toron­to and Van­cou­ver with “per­son­al­ized ser­vice from a ded­i­cat­ed Pres­tige Concierge”. That begged the ques­tion: “What’s in a name?”. The answer is: “What you make of it.”

In 1967, I worked four months as what was then called a “Pull­man Porter”. The title is now con­sid­ered (by some) as slight­ly deroga­to­ry, so it’s been super­seded by “sleep­ing car atten­dant”. The orig­i­nal name stems from Chica­go busi­ness­man George Pull­man, who in 1867 hired African Amer­i­can men to serve white pas­sen­gers in his company’s lux­u­ry sleep­ing cars.
To join their sto­ried ranks to earn my third-year uni­ver­si­ty tuition, I spent two weeks in the Mon­tre­al rail yard learn­ing every­thing about each of the four or five styles of sleep­ing car I would work on. Then I did a two-nights each way trip to Win­nipeg under the tute­lage of a real porter, after which, if I was deemed good enough, I would be des­ig­nat­ed as one.

                         IT’S NOT THE NAME THAT COUNTS

Unless it’s “CEO”, which lets the hold­er com­mand often obscene remu­ner­a­tion, titles are gen­er­al­ly what com­pa­nies hand out in place of mon­ey. The ear­ly Pull­man porters were gross­ly over­worked and often sub­ject to racial abuse. They had to rely on tips as much as salary.
The lessons of the ear­ly days were passed on through gen­er­a­tions. The porter who tutored me had been doing the job for sev­er­al decades, as had his father before him. “I’m not going to teach you how to make beds,” he cheer­ful­ly told me when we board­ed our assigned sleep­ing car. “Hell, even a white (N‑word) like you can do that.”
“So what are you going to teach me?”, I asked.
He grinned and said: “The impor­tant thing. How to take the mon­ey from the man.” By that he meant, make tips.
The key was…wait for it… per­son­alised ser­vice. Be atten­tive, not obtru­sive, but get to know some­thing per­son­al about every passenger.
Engag­ing pas­sen­gers in con­ver­sa­tion was easy in 1967. It was Canada’s cen­ten­ni­al. Cana­di­ans were infused with pride and the urge to trav­el both to vis­it Expo ’67 (the world’s fair) and to exult in our vast and var­ied landscapes.
As the train, then called the “Super Con­ti­nen­tal”, wound through the forests of north­ern Ontario for an entire day and a bit, I’d invari­ably be asked the names of pass­ing lakes. The province has more than 250,000 of them, gouged by Ice Age glac­i­ers, so I wasn’t very help­ful on that score.

                               EASY WHEN YOU KNOW HOW

The “mon­ey from the man” moment was a cou­ple of sub­tle tricks when pas­sen­gers dis­em­bark. First, pile the lug­gage in front of the exit, biggest suit­case last, so no one can get off until all the bags are on the plat­form, and you’re stand­ing at the bot­tom of the steps next to them. (Cana­di­an trains are high, plat­forms low). Extend the left hand to offer assis­tance, leav­ing the right free to take the tip — in those days most­ly coins — and slip it into your uni­form jacket’s only pock­et. If some­one hands over “fold­ing mon­ey”, hold it up, snap it and say “Thank you Sir/Madam” loud­ly so the next pas­sen­ger gets the mes­sage. If said pas­sen­ger looks like they don’t have a tip ready, the “per­son­alised ser­vice” knowl­edge comes into play. A per­son­alised com­ment or ques­tion holds the dis­em­bark­ing process up until the next pas­sen­ger has a tip ready.
Not get­ting a tip is being “stiffed”. My tutor described non-tip­pers as “kiss-my-assers”. He claimed he could spot them when they board­ed, but nev­er stiffed them on ser­vice. That’s not what porters do.

                                 MAGIC CARPET

 The lines in Steve Good­man’s train anthem “City of New Orleans”  (I like Arlo Guthrie’s ver­sion best) that res­onate most with me are:
“And the sons of Pull­man porters/
And the sons of engineers/
Ride their father’s mag­ic car­pets made of steel…”
I’m the son of a rail­way man who start­ed his career as a tele­graph oper­a­tor in north­ern Ontario. When I was three, we lived in a clus­ter of half a dozen lit­tle hous­es with no run­ning water, elec­tric­i­ty, phones or indoor plumb­ing. That must have been a treat in the win­ter when tem­per­a­tures rou­tine­ly dropped below ‑30F (-35C). The only con­nec­tion to any­where else was the sin­gle line “mag­ic car­pet” of the Cana­di­an Nation­al transcon­ti­nen­tal railway.
Ear­ly one 1967 morn­ing, I stood in the open door of the sleep­ing car as we rum­bled past the old rail­way sta­tion of La For­est. It looked pret­ty much as it had in my mind’s eye for sev­en­teen years, except every­thing was much clos­er togeth­er. I’d remem­bered the dis­tances as mea­sured with a child’s steps.
In ret­ro­spect, see­ing it was a tip as good as “tak­ing the mon­ey from the man” as a Pull­man porter, a des­ig­na­tion I take inor­di­nate pride in hav­ing worn.

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