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12 Express Lobsters

Frendy Graham’s favourite train passengers were the Nova Scotia lobsters that passed through Galt en route to the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago. He didn’t have to check them through, but he ate quite a lot of them. An express handler on the train carrying the lobsters, Frank “Slippery” Morrison, always plucked a couple of live ones from their crushed ice crate and passed them to Frendy in a paper bag. Rod MacLeod, the station operator, plopped them into a pot of boiling water, and the two dined on them after the train pulled out.

“Boy, were they ever good!” Frendy said. “Whenever I met people going to Chicago, I would tell them to be sure to get the lobster at the Palmer House. Slippery, or Slip as we called him, was a wiry little Irishman who loved people. He had a degree from the University of Dublin but preferred working on the trains. Sometimes he got off and did an Irish jig on the platform. He also sold light bulbs on the side.”

One night after Slip handed Frendy his bag of lobsters, CPR London division superintendent Art Tees stepped down from the train for a chat. While the chat went on the lobsters were trying to claw their way out of the bag. To avoid the embarrassment of having a lobster grab Tees by the thumb, Frendy excused himself to move a couple of suitcases and tossed the bag into the flowerbed surrounding the illuminated Galt sign.

After Tees departed on the train, all Frendy could find in the flowerbed was an empty bag. He searched frantically in the dark until he caught the lobsters crawling down the lawn in the general direction of the New Albion Hotel.

Frendy suspected that he and MacLeod weren’t the only station crew Slip treated to lobster. He probably gave some to the guys at Guelph Junction, too. And Woodstock and London and Chatham and Windsor. Maybe he even took a couple to Rosie’s Bar, his favourite haunt in Detroit. And there was always a pot boiling in the baggage car. Who knows, maybe he even shared a few with Art Tees? Whatever, the kitchen staff at the Palmer House must have wondered why they kept getting crates of nothing but crushed ice from Nova Scotia.