Word: motormen
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Keno loved trains. When he was 12, his family left their native Trinidad to live in New York City -- and Keno became enthralled with the subway system. "He'd never seen anything like it before," says his sister Melissa, 13. He collected transit uniform shirts and equipment, read motormen's training manuals, drew pictures of the different trains and rode the subway for hours ; at a time. At home Keno would sit at a desk and, using a stapler as a make- believe throttle, pretend to drive through routes, calling out stops and taking on passengers. "For hours he would...
Keno learned all about the system by hanging out in the subway dispatcher's office in Brooklyn, where he picked up the transit jargon and befriended motormen. Keno, stocky and stout, convinced one of them, Regoberto Sabio, that he was a 25-year-old motorman, and would ride Sabio's route with him. "He didn't show me an ID card or anything like that," Sabio later told a reporter, "but there was nothing in his mannerisms that made me think he was anything but another motorman." By riding with Sabio, Keno learned firsthand how to drive the trains, what...
...exposed high-voltage lines. For a full 30 minutes he sat panicked as the conductor and Transit Authority supervisors, still not knowing his identity, coached and chided him. Finally a rail inspector arrived and repowered the train. At the terminal, Keno was sent for the mandatory drug test that motormen take in the event of a serious gaffe. However, he fled before reaching the Transit Authority offices...
...good old word-work" was President Hoover's first prescription for meeting the Depression which crashed down upon the country in the fall of 1929. On his orders a potent army of industrialists, railmen, motormen, bankers, manufacturers, public utilitarians and labor leaders marched to the White House where they pledged "business-as-usual." More public works were planned to absorb unemployment. Private companies were urged to go in heavily for new construction. Income taxes were cut 1% to spur economic recovery...
...motormen on Red Line trains were telling passengers over the loud speaker system that service would be virtually halted by 10:30 p.m., "thanks to your Advisory Board...