The Queen’s City Leatherworks, that was Grandpa’s business. They made gloves down the basement for the railwaymen. That was when The Junction was a railroad town more or less. Up front they had a store and they sold gloves retail there as well as work socks, coats and hats and everything needed when you got a job on the railway.

One day a fellow came in and asked for an engineer’s outfit. He wanted the whole thing from boots to gloves. Dad was a boy then, so this was in the 20s. He told this story for years after. I must have heard it 100 times. He told it so many times I believed it was true. They outfitted this fellow with everything an engineer needed, from boots to bandana. It was a good sale back in those days.

When he left, Grandpa said, “Son, did you notice anything strange about that guy?”

“Only that he seemed different than most of the guys come in here for clothes.’

“Soft you mean.”

“Maybe that’s it.”

“Did you see his hands?”

“I just noticed they were clean is all.”

“They were the hands of a man never worked a lick in his life. He ain’t no railwayman that’s for sure.”

Next day, the outlaw Red Ryan, Canada’s Jesse James, was gunned down by police in a Sarnia liquor store. They say he was dressed up like an engineer.