Generally, we laborers were in our early twenties. I didn't witness the events at the motel restaurant, but they were related to me the next day. One guy, who was about thirty five, was in the restaurant in a profoundly drunken stupor. This guy was short, rotund, had a beard and whiskers, and was unpleasant and not well thought of. Brad and a couple of guys were also in the restaurant getting some late night food. They looked over just in time to see this older guy pass out face-first in his bowl of chili.

The next day, we were working about a quarter of a mile from a gravel road that intersected the rail line. Most of us had ridden out to the work area on the crew cars. These are short heavy cars pulled behind a short, small motorized motor car. Brad was near me holding a spike maul. His compatriots were there too. Just behind us was the gentlemen who passed out in his chili. One of Brads "friends" dared Brad to call this man, "Chili Face". Okay by Brad. "Hey Chili Face, Chili Face!", repeated Brad in an annoying tone. "Chili Face!" Chile Face approached Brad and pointed the sharpened edge of his shovel at Brad. When you shovel hard, sharp edged rock all day with a metal shovel the edge becomes razor sharp. One became proficient at break time at sharply flipping one's shovel down at just the right angle to make is stick deeply into the heavy wooden ties. You could slash a mans' throat clean through with a shovel.

Brad raised his spike maul to ward off any jabs by Chili Face's shovel. Thus stymied, Chili Face reached down, picked up a 1/2 baseball sized rock, and threw at Brad's head. Brad managed to duck out of the way. But as our dear reader knows from the rock throwing story, the order of the day was that rock-throwers were summarily fired. Tim, a foreman, witnessed this incident from afar, walked up the grade, and immediately fired Chile Face. Chile Face hadn't ridden the cars out to the worksite: he had parked his car by the gravel road. So "down the grade" he went toward his car.

The Road Master decided it was lunch time. He gave the word and everyone made their way to the crew cars to be hauled a couple of miles into town for lunch. Once everyone was aboard we started back towards the gravel road where Chili Face was busily digging around in the trunk of his car. This was a significant development, since it was rumored that Chili Face kept several guns in his trunk. We have now reached the point in the story that I want the reader to picture. As we neared Chile Face, every person on the crew car Brad was riding in suddenly fled to other cars. You can't imagine the agility shown as a dozen men clung to the nearby cars by only a hand and a foot. I was one of them. Brad? He sat there grinning moronically, now quite alone on one car, a perfect target for Chile Face. Happily for Brad, the shot never came. No gun was even observed.

Chile Face tried to get his job back, but never did. He threatened the life of Tim the foreman who fired him, and more than once his car was spotted driving across the tracks off in the distance, a shadowy yet unpotent threat.