He was quite a character, Harry Davis was. He was a funny guy and was with the railroad for like 20 years. He took over as Superintendent after his brother, George Davis, had retired. With Harry, you had to be on time. He was a real stickler for being on time. If you showed up a couple minutes late, Harry would really let you know that he wasn't happy.

We'd be out working on the tracks and the heat was a big thing in the summertime. The creosote from the ties would burn your stomach and under your eyes if you stood above them too long. Obviously, we had good gloves on when we were lifting those. Harry would just grab them with his bare hands. His hands were so used to it, or whatever, he wouldn’t even use gloves. It was hilarious watching Harry grab these smoking ties with his bare hands, I couldn’t believe it.

All the track work we did was usually manual but, if we had large sections of track to do, Harry would get the backhoe out. He would lift off all the rail and drag them out. He would then use the backhoe and just rip through the ties, basically just digging a big hole. His older brother, George Davis, would still come around and would say, "Harry, just pick out the ties so we don’t have to tamp forever! You’re creating more work!” but Harry on that backhoe was like a kid on a Tonka toy, forget it man. He was in the zone and you couldn’t say anything to him. Joe Ferry would tell us to clear out of the area. We’d be standing in the clear and he’d be taking out trees and just making a mess of everything. George is yelling at him to stop, “You’re giving us extra work! You can just slide out the old ties and slide the new ones in so we don’t have to spend the whole afternoon tamping” but he’s just digging holes and ripping things up.

There were a lot of hornets and wasps that would nest in the ties, which was a real problem sometimes. One time, Joe Ferry and I were out gauging the track and we found an area that needed tie replacements, new rails, etc. We saw that there were hornets coming out of the tracks. Harry needed to burn the bolts off so we could replace the rails and connectors. We said, “Harry, don’t go down there man, there are hornets all over the place in one of the ties down there.” He said to us, “Ahh, the bees don’t bite this time of year. Don’t worry about it.” So, Joe and I are just shaking our heads. Harry goes down there with an acetylene torch and he starts, getting his big glasses down there, and he’s torching away. Next thing we know, we see Harry running down the tracks with his shirt up patting away at his stomach, his eyes bugging out of his head. His whole stomach had welts, he got stung all over. Joe and I are cracking up because he said the bees don’t bite this time of year.

It would be boiling hot out on the tracks in New Jersey in the middle of the summer. There’d be no breeze and you’d see the heat riding from the tracks. It felt like 120 degrees on the tracks. Well, Harry would have this thermos of hot coffee. It was hot - boiling hot. He say to us, “Guys, you drink hot coffee when it’s hot. That cools you down.” That was his theory. Joe and I would look at him and say, “What the hell is he talking about?” We would have a water container with us and were sweating all day. We’d be tamping track at the end of the day, it’s hot as heck, and Harry would be sitting in the shade with his hot coffee - drinking his hot coffee to cool down. We’d be cracking up.

Harry was also nearly blind. He had these bifocals that were always crusted over with dirt. They would never be clean and you could barely see his eyes through them.