Medford mail tribune., January 25, 1959, Image 32

For a piddling $1.70 an hour he dies
with his boots on 6 times a day!
by Chuck Graham, with Paul Ditiel
r"n he train was only a few minutes from the
Infl epot wnen my accomplice and I slipped
II from our hiding place and pulled our red
1 1 bandannas up over our faces. I snapped off
f I two shots from my six-gun, and kicked
open the door to the crowded coach.
"This is a holdup!" I announced. A lady screamed
and tried to shove her purse down between the
seats. "We don't want your money," I said. "We're
here to rob the mail."
By the time the train reached town, we had run
through the coaches and escaped. My 22,000th
train robbery was a success. That's right: I said
my 22,000th train robbery!
As head train robber at Knott's Berry Farm &
Ghost Town on State Highway 39 in Buena Park,
Calif., a 30-minute drive from Los Angeles, I have
stuck up more trains than the James brothers,
the Dal tons, and Rube Burrow combined. I pull
a stickup every 10 minutes, rain or shine.
I've robbed movie actresses and Hollywood gun
slingers. I've shoved a six-gun under Gov. Orval
Faubus' nose.
Jesse James died only once, but I "die" with my
boots on six times a day when Ghost Town bag
gage agents "surprise" my accomplice and me and
drop us with shotgun blasts. An undertaker carts
our "corpses" away in a wheelbarrow after an
appropriate funeral oration.
But I have more job security than Jesse had.
I work 43 hours a week, punch a time clock, and
get a two-week paid vacation every year.
Money-wise, Jesse might have done better. Good
train robbers these days make only $1.70 an hour,
although Jesse didn't have to worry, as I do, about
the revenue agent who looks skeptically at my
income-tax return which lists my occupation as
"professional train robber."
Burrow, the Prince of Train Robbers, never had
to worry about some of my occupational hazards.
When I burst into the coach, I always pause for
an instant and size up my victims. I swallow hard
when I see Boy Scouts. One of them invariably
performs his good deed for the day by triggering
a full charge into my face. Loaded water pistols
are deadly at point-blank range!
I manage to grin and stagger, half-blind, to the
end of the train. That . is, if I'm not tripped,
elbowed, gouged, or punched on the way by a
teen-ager or dowager.
They say women are the gentler sex. I'll argue
that point without mentioning the names many
of them let fly at me. My bruises testify that I'm
fair game for whatever pops into the paying pas
senger's mind.
I've been whacked on the head so many times
by handbags that I've lost count And I've been
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kicked until my shin bones have ridges on them
from knees to ankles.
One afternoon a prim young lady cut my legs
pretty badly. The taps on her shoes slashed as
viciously as knives on a fighting cock. "That's
what you get for being a dirty old train robber!"
she yelled at me as I limped down the aisle.
Sometimes the sheriff has to come to my rescue.
A policeman from a small California city, riding
the train with his wife and two children, thought
the holdup was real and yanked out his gun..'
Mine was but a .22 filled with blanks; his was a
.45 and loaded. Deputy sheriffs intervened and
corroborated my explanation that the holdup was
included in the price of the train ticket.
While surprise is part of my act, nothing will
compare with the shock I got not long ago when
I kicked open the coach door. A passenger clutched
his chest and slumped over into the aisle. I thought
he was dead from a heart attack brought on by
my shots. But when we arrived at the depot he
got up, brushed himself off, laughed in my face,
and strode off the train.
My heart wasn't in my work the rest of the day.
Family Weekly, January IS, Its