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HOLY-STONING AND THE
BRITE BOY TRADITION
HOLY-STONING IS AN OLD NAVAL TRADITION. TO CLEAN
their decks, sailors would get down on their knees with a
piece of sandstone about the size of a brick, and rub the stone
up and down the width of a single plank until told to move on.
Progress was grindingly slow. Inch-by-inch, shoulder-to-
shoulder these long-suffering gobs would move in a weary
line along the deck. Smaller pieces of sandstone or ‘prayer
books’ and larger stones called ‘bibles’ were used every day
to scrub off salt, grime and, oftentimes, blood.
Eventually, all this time spent on their knees paid off. Our
sailors’ prayers were answered.
Somewhere, some labor-saving genius bored shallow holes
in his ship’s stones. The idea caught on, and within decades –
things move slowly in the sea service – broom handles were
shoved into the stones making them true nautical tools. For
the first time in centuries, sailors could get off their knees,
but the scrubbing effort was the same and so was the pur-
pose: clean, white, wooden decks.
Holy-stoning was a back-breaking drudgery that every midship-
man and gob faced. But eventually it was banned in the United
States Navy, not because it wasted sailors’ time when they could
be chipping, grinding, and painting, but because it wore out
decks. Or was it because steel replaced wooden decks?
TRACK CLEANING CAR |
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If the practice of holy-stoning sounds anything like what
goes on in the train rooms of model railroaders throughout
the entire civilized world, it might be time for a different
approach, because in truth many of us have fallen prey to
this same drudgery, the moving of a small piece of hard rub-
ber back and forth on a slender piece of track. No salt, no
blood – just paint, hairspray, and other grime.
Yes, the rumors are true. Some wild men do use abrasive pads
or very fine emery cloth or even sandpaper to clean their
tracks. Oh, the horror! Nasty, microscopic scratches, all the
better for giving gum, dirt, and other debris a place to collect
and cause trouble.
Given that all model railroaders are not equal in the eyes of the
IRS, we may freely acknowledge that others use expensive track-
cleaning machines and what my wife would call “harsh chemi-
cals.” All this to clean those slender bands of rail, it is a wonder.
Model railroad tradition credits not General John R. Allen,
USMC Ret. and US Naval Academy class of 1976 (who no doubt
also learned about holy-stoning decks) but John Whitby Allen
of Gorre & Daphetid fame with using the first Masonite track
cleaning pad.
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TRACK CLEANING CAR |
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“Model railroad tradition credits John
Whitby Allen of Gorre & Daphetid
fame with using the first Masonite
track cleaning pad.”
