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IT WAS LATE IN 1940, nearly the dead of winter. I had a small apartment on a faded city block near Shoreham Yards where I was living while I finished my degree. I’d just graduated from the University of Minnesota in civil engineering, so low in my class my father told me to toss my diploma into one of the snow-covered vacant lots across from the yards. He never went to college and thought my four years were a waste, saying, as he always did, that I never stuck to anything, when what he really meant was that I never stuck to anything he wanted. But he sent me a telegram—from Edina on the southwest side of town to me on the northeast, not more than ten miles away—a telegram with my name on it and no message, just a date and a place.
LAFAYETTE STREET. 29 DECEMBER 1940. THE BOARD ROOM. 5:01 P.
The 01 was railroad time. Train dispatchers never used the even numbers of hours, I never knew why. But it was in the Rule Book, the greatConsolidated Code, and my father followed it to the letter.
The day of the meeting, I had coffee in a diner at the Soo building on Lafayette Street. It was getting a little dark outside on a w
