Turning the Tables

Virgil and Garrard “Babe” Smock pulled into Los Angeles from Oakland this week aboard a Pullman sleeper car as they had thousands of times before--but this time after a ride the likes of which neither man had ever experienced.

They were not required to ferry any meals. Neither made any beds. No one asked them to shine any shoes or press any suits; they did not run for any drinks or carry any luggage.

At the second of six stops on a cross-country train trek called “the Pullman Blues Tour,” the Smock brothers, third-generation Pullman porters, arrived in their native city to be honored Tuesday along with the memory of A. Philip Randolph and the union he began, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

And after a series of speakers reminded a small audience at Union Station of Randolph’s struggle to organize the almost exclusively African American train porters and win a 12-year battle for livable wages and tolerable working conditions, all attention was on the Smocks.

“I am a product of a family that Lincoln freed and the Pullman Co. hired,” Virgil Smock told those gathered. “The railroads had it tough going for the porters. But if I could, I would do it all over again.”

George Anderson Smock, Virgil and Babe’s grandfather, had a 27-year career on the rails, according to the book “Those Pullman Blues,” by David D. Perata, who organized the tour in honor of Black History Month and Randolph’s role as one of the fathers of the civil rights movement.

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The elder Smock, Perata wrote, died in 1929, making a bed aboard Santa Fe’s California Limited.

His son, Garrard Sr., joined Pullman in 1915 for a 35-year tour. Eventually, all three of his sons joined him on the rails.

Virgil and Babe, however, were the ones who most took to the rail worker’s life. Their older brother, George, quit in frustration over the bad treatment he received from white supervisors he compared to slave drivers. Virgil told the audience Tuesday what his brother said when one boss called the house asking why he had not shown up for work.

“You tell him he can bring that Pullman car and park it in the frontyard and I still won’t get on it,” Virgil said.

Virgil, 81, and Babe, 78, however, learned to take the downside of the job in stride. The advantages were worth it to the two brothers who grew up in Depression-era Los Angeles on 25th Street and Hooper Avenue.

Like so many other porters, the Smock brothers went to Pullman for the money. When he started, Virgil made $79 a month and $10 to $16 in tips for each of the 10 round trips he made per month between San Francisco and Los Angeles. That money drew many African Americans from the ranks of the very poor into the solidly middle class.

But for both brothers, the job also became a window on the world, a chance to travel to places they had never heard of and meet people they thought folks like them would never see.

In the process, they were one-stop servants in the Pullman tradition, which brought plantation-style comforts once enjoyed only by Southern gentlemen to anyone who could afford the cost of a train ticket.

“We were baby-sitters, veterinarians, everything to those people,” Virgil said, walking through Union Station and shooing away a pigeon as if he were still in his starched Pullman whites.

His first job was on the Southern Pacific Lark train, a 12-hour overnighter between Los Angeles and San Francisco, busing tables and working in the pantry. Sometimes he would prepare the food and drinks, sometimes he would wait on the tables.

After working the whole night and cleaning up as the passengers disembarked, Virgil would rest in an empty sleeper car stationed in the rail yard before working the reverse trip.

On that route, Virgil began learning the tricks of the trade guaranteed to earn higher tips. He would leave a box of whiskey on the table of late-night revelers so they would have it after the 2 a.m. alcohol cutoff. He also walked quickly so passengers knew he wasn’t delaying their orders, and he learned to call the passengers by name.

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Eventually, he moved on to other lines, including the Golden State from Los Angeles to Chicago.

Sometimes, Virgil would say, he “walked” to the Windy City because he spent just about every moment on the three-day trip on his feet.

But there was always the money bringing him back: the $20 tips for walking a passenger’s dog, a $50 bill--ripped in half by a passenger at the beginning of the trip, with a promise to hand over the other half for good service at the end. There were also the serendipitous gifts from passengers such as Mrs. Heinz, who sent Babe a box of products worth thousands of dollars after he served her along her winter trip to Arizona.

An experienced porter could tell what kind of ride he would have by how passengers responded to a greeting, Virgil said.

“If they say ‘Good evening’ back, that’s a good sign,” Virgil said. “When they say, ‘Hello, boy,’ you know right then they’ll be showing you no respect.”

Virgil didn’t much mind when a passenger called him “George,” a name some whites gave to all attendants in reference to George Pullman. But to the older workers, who had to fight George Pullman for every ounce of their self-respect, “George” sounded suspiciously like the racial epithets they thought they had left in the Deep South.

“They would say, ‘George didn’t come out tonight, I’m Sam,’ ” Virgil recalled.

Babe noted that when he met President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was seated in his compartment with his dog at his feet and a 4-inch cigarette holder in his hand, the president asked for his name.

“I said, ‘Garrard,’ and he said, ‘No. Your last name,’ ” Babe said. “People of nobility or class call you by your last name and Mr.”

On this trip, which headed Tuesday night for stops in Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago and Pullman, Ill., both brothers were accorded respect.

“I’ve been serving people for 60 years and now I’m getting served,” Virgil said. “Isn’t that something?”