December 1954 page 9

Profile [image: silhouette of man]

[image: Malcolm H. Jones]
Malcolm H. Jones
Agent at Anderson

THERE is a wide river between dairy
farming and railroading . . . but
it has been bridged many a time in both
directions by young men looking for
greener pastures.

The case in point is the P&N's agent
at Anderson, S. C., Malcolm H. Jones.
He was born in 1915, grew up on a farm
near Belton, studied dairy farming at
Clemson, worked for a dairy several
years, then a drug store . . . and sudden-
ly found himself learning the railroad
business.

After hearing his father's warnings
of the privations and uncertainties of
dairying, young Jones decided that may-
be in the long run he would do better by
leaving the work he had trained himself
for and learn something different. One
day in 1937 while he was waiting for a
P&N passenger train at the Belton depot
he decided to ask agent, J. J. Burnette,
if there were any openings as flagman
on the P&N.

Working on the railroad

His inquiry paid off and in a few
days he was on the railroad payroll not
as a flagman but as a clerk-trucker
under Agent Tom Bruce at Greer. There
he began waiting out a vacancy in the
transportation department so that he
could start his training as a flagman.
During this period of service Jones com-
muted between Greer and his native Bel-
ton and on his daily trips he learned
how to take up tickets on the passenger
trains.

In 1939 when the railroad transferred
him to Lyman, Jones decided that his
commuting was getting a bit too long;
so he moved his home to Greenville. In
August of the same year his break came
and he went to work as flagman. But
after a few months on the road he had
a close call with pneumonia, and his doc-
tor advised him to give up the outside
job in favor of an inside job.

So when he returned to work he was
assigned to duties as yard and ticket
clerk at River Junction until October 31,
1940, when he was sent to Anderson as
clerk operator.

World War II veteran

Six months after Pearl Harbor Jones
joined the Army and soon found himself
with Army ordnance in North Africa

10 SEMAPHORE