I worked in the Kelso depot as a custodian, dish washer and maintenance guy in the summer after my high school graduation (1967). My father (Gene Smith) was the chief clerk of the dining car department for the Union Pacific office in Ogden, Utah. He could get me a summer job at my choice of either the North Rim Grand Canyon hotel or Kelso. I chose Kelso because it was $.50 more per hour. The depot was used as a hotel for tourists and also as an overnight layover for train crews that swapped from Las Vegas and Los Angeles. It had a counter type restaurant that served some pretty good food (and dirtied a LOT of dishes). I had weekends off, so my recreation was walking the Death Valley desert trails......but I had no idea how hot 120+ degrees actually is. No matter how much water I carried, it was never enough. Memories of bats, rattlesnakes and scorpions. I had a free pass on the passenger trains to and from Vegas, so if I got up early enough to catch the 5:00 AM to Vegas, I'd I sometimes meet my friend (his mom ran the Kelso Post Office) and we rode the train to "the big city." I won't say what we did for fun, but you can use your imagination since I was an innocent (sort of) 18 year old from Utah and the hippies were big in Vegas.

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