The Cine Technician (1943 - 1945)

.-—June, 1944 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN 41 '— ,AR out on the bald-beaded prairie of North H Saskatchewan a model T Ford appeared on the horizon and chugged slowly towards a ork party, 50 miles from anywhere, busy laying •acks for a Canadian Pacific Railway extension, 'be outfit consisted of about 30 men working at ill belt to the speed of the engine, which dvanced at a steady two miles an hour on to le new-laid track, dragging their food car and leeping cars behind it. As it came on, it fed ies, or sleepers, down a convex or in front and man on a crane swung up the rails from a rock behind and dropped them ahead. The •orkmen slung the ties into place, heaved the ails into position, secured them on the ties with couple of spikes and tightened up the bolts at he joints. And all the while the engine came teadily on and the men sweated away under he hot prairie sun. Now and again they stole an iterested glance at the approaching Model T. ut the only thing they were allowed to stop lor .as a drink of water. A boy was kept busy muring up and down the lines with a pannikin I water so alkaline that after an hour or two very man's mouth was coated with white. When -lie Ford finally arrived the driver pulled up pposite the work party, stood on the seat gfaid roceeded to harangue them. What fools they .ere to sweat their guts out like this for the ailroad; why didn't they come and work for him —a far better job and $5 a day all found. Where wis his place? Why (pointing), about 10 miles i that direction; you couldn't miss it. Now this ounded like sense to a lot of the men. The 'P.R. were only paying them s:i..",n a day and •1.50 a day of that was stopped for grub. They lorked all the hours of daylight till their hands ere torn and every joint ached, and at night, s cold as the days were hot, they had only traw to sleep on in their bunk car unless they ould afford tbe $5 deposit for a Hudson Bay blanet. Not to mention that the water had upset them 11, though in different ways, causing near CLOSE-UPS No. 24 — CHARLIE WHEELER dysentery in some and a complete stoppage in others. So the stranger's proposition sounded very attractive to them, and to none more so than to two gallant representatives of the British Film Industry— Charlie Wheeler and his mate Cliff Sandall. After a week or so of their job our two churns were already heartily regretting having joined the little queue' in Winnipeg who they were told (and had been suckers enough to believe it) had all been promised cushy jobs as station agents (station masters) by the C.P.R. They had jumped at this proposition as they had only just arrived in Winnipeg and the fearful tales they had heard had put them oft their original idea of doing farm work. The next thing they knew, of course, they were all working like niggers in the w ilds of Saskatchewan. But how they came to be in Winnipeg at all is quite a story. Charlie Wheeler is a cockney born and hied. He started in Bermondsey, but as his father, who was a master baker, worked on the principle of buying up tottering businesses, building them up. selling them out, spending the money and then starting at the beginning again, Charlie spent his childhood all over London, but mostly in the East End. By the time he was six he was helping on the round, and his reward for that was to join the men in the pub afterwards and be given a half of beer. In 1907 (Charlie was born in 1901) the Liberal Government passed their Act making the Long Pull illegal and forbidding children to come into pubs, so Charlie's drinking career suffered a temporary check. Later on he got a part-time job at 2/ a week (of which he gave his mother l/9d.) looking after the front of an ironmonger's shop in the evening and fetching him his dinner at midday. For some time he doubled with this the Id. a week job of fetching his headmaster's dinner. This meant a rather tight dinner-time schedule — work had to be done at the double, in fact — so it was not surprising that on rounding the final bend before the school one da\ a collision occurred and the headmaster's dinner shot out into the road under a passing dustcart. That meant that the headmaster took him off that particular job, but on Charlie pointing out that he needed that Id. a week, he ° him the job of cleaning his bicycle and an afternoon period off to do it in. All went well for a time, until one afternoon Charlie crashed hoavih ,