AtD translation: brakebeam stiff

[Ian Livingston]

The answer is in Leon’s testimony. An ordinary man, making $5 a day riding a brakebeam at 50 mph in every weather. Brakemen on the early railroads had a very high mortality rate, it seems, with a life expectancy of about 27 years, according to one source. I wonder how such a fellow might feel at the end of a week he lived through. My experience was at heights, and some other very dangerous pastimes. Caught in a log avalanche and rolled over by a 10 ton log working as a logger, in the Pacific NW, for instance. Always at subsistence wages. I assure you that traumatic lifestyles resonate deeply of helplessness. You gotta get up in the dark, get dressed and get back to it every damn day. Put yourself in the position of a brakebeam stiff and consider the role of autonomy in the lifestyle. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 6, 2021, at 1:20 AM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 1 a dead body. 
> 2 chiefly North American a boring, conventional person: ordinary working stiffs in respectable offices. 
> • a fellow; an ordinary person: the lucky stiff!
>  
> That's my Webster entry.
> 
> If I hadn't found Leon Livingston's Testimonial – let me quote it again: “People riding in coaches . . . cannot imagine how it feels to be rushing through space 50 miles an hour over a loose sand ballasted track seated upon a brake beam" – perhaps I would have given it a thought: brakebeam stiff = working stiff at a brake. (And why should a stiff working a brakebeam look helpless?)
> 
>