Is that "ringleader -- Mr. Schallmo" your grandpa that you mentioned in the other thread TM? Pretty cool!
Like many men of the time, they may not have been big of stature, but life and work probably made them tough as spring steel.
My greatgrandpa worked in a quarry as a mason. He was skinny as a rail until the day he passed, but he could do extreme manual labor in the hottest/coldest and dirtiest of environments, and lift tremendous loads for 10 hours a day. Unimaginable these days --