This a photo of me walking around and warming up 44 years ago today [11/24/23] on Thanksgiving Day, 1978, during a 130 mile track patrol (averaging +-20 mph) at about 25 degrees below zero, on an unheated motor car with canvas curtains (Note the ice on the inside of the motor car windows, which we had to keep scraping, because they would fog up from our breath). I was working 200 miles north of my home in Anchorage and since Friday was not a holiday for us then, I had asked to use annual leave. My Section Foreman said “sure,” but his supervisor the District Roadmaster, denied my request and because of the distance, there was no way I was going to drive home and then back for just one day. Little did the Roadmaster know at the time (nor obviously myself), is that 7 years later after several promotions…I was HIS boss. Karma! Lol The Section Foreman, who lived upstairs from the crew’s quarters in the railroad provided section house year around (with his wife and two children), kindly suggested to the Roadmaster that the two of us work on Thanksgiving Day, patrolling the adjoining sections/territories looking for any problems, in exchange for taking Friday as our holiday…so that at least I could have a 3 day weekend at home. The Roadmaster agreed, as long as we didn’t try to claim holiday pay for it (as if that ever even crossed my mind). While my foreman and his wife said that it didn't really matter to them which day they celebrated Thanksgiving (since it was their home), I know his 8 & 10 year old children knew which day was Thanksgiving, as they would often come down to my kitchen to play games as I spent my week at a time there (no TV, no radio and before VCR’s). So it was really the whole, wonderful, family for which I was thankful...and that makes this memory so special. RIP – Charlie & Patty. I guess the moral is, that one never knows what might seem at the time as just a small, random act of kindness, might forever affect others and sometimes it is the little things in life…for which we should be most thankful.