John West:
Hi Carl, your posts are always interesting, usually with social history value too. Thanks.Your mention of the warning whistle reminded me of an odd thing that happened at our Amtrak parcels depot. I’ll preface it by saying that I don’t believe in ghosts or life after death.
One of our lads owned his own van and worked as a subby. He also had a second van for which he employed a driver. That driver, Joe, was a chirpy Liverpudlian who had worked locally for some years. This particular morning, we were loading his van when he poked my arm and said ‘ey John, I had a funny phone call this morning from a mate of mine. He told me to drive carefully today, he’d had a nightmare and woke up sweating. He dreamed I died in a crash.’
Bearing in mind that we started early his friend must have phoned him about 5.30 am. I said something about that and that his friend must have been scared for him to phone him at that time.
‘Yeah, well he said that he’d had a similar dream a couple of years ago about his Granddad dying and he did die later that day.’
I told him to drive carefully and forgot about it.
He rolled the van about lunchtime, not wearing his seatbelt and was killed. A weird coincidence.
John.
Yes John that was weird,
Just like the whistle that quite probably saved my life.
There was a comment that it might have been a train, but I don’t know if you ever drove one of these BMC/Leyland FGs with the 4 cylinder 3.8 diesel. They were really a loud drum drum sound worse than any CV I’ve ever traveled in. They were popular as bread vans & urban delivery so if you kept hopping in & out I suppose you didn’t suffer ear damage & not designed for long distance journeys that we used them for. (I took one to Naples & back) In those days no radios and if there had been you certainly would not have been able to hear anything.
Like you we had a couple of Leyland Mastiffs reminded me of the Thames 4D that we like most Removal contractors operated in the mid 50s. Cheap answer to a problem of the time.
Sad about your work mate but glad at least you like me are still here.