Seventeen

            Sometimes I think of it today, two fellows starting on that kind of a trip, just the clothes they're wearing, a little over a dollar between them, no way to ride, no air just talk. I wonder if it could be done today.

            Anyways, we didn't go into the school that morning. I think Mother thought there was something funny that morning when I left the house to get on the bus. I never said 'good-bye', just 'see you tonight' and ran out, but that morning I said 'good-bye' and ran out. She just stood there and watched me go.

            We got off the bus in town before we got to the school house. We told the driver we had to go to the store first. He left us off. We went to the station and to the railroad yard where the freights stopped but there was no trains there, just a few train cars sitting here or there.

            We waiting about half an hour but no trains came. We started wondering if we should go back to school or what.

            We soon decided we would walk. So we started to walk down the tracks. We had our lunch pails and in two or three hours we sat on a rail and ate what we had. We left our lunch pails set and started some more walking. 

            I guess we walked until ten or eleven that night. We had no supper that night. Boy, we sure was hungry and tired. We laid down in some bushes and soon went to sleep.

            It was daylight when we woke and we started thinking of breakfast. Also we didn't think much of walking any more but we knowed we couldn't go back now. No use. We done like the fellow said he'd done. We stopped at a house and asked if we could do a little work for a bit to eat. The man had no work to do but he said they were just eating breakfast and invited us in. They gave us a dish of oatmeal and some toast.

            Anyways, that's all we had until sometime in the afternoon. We got to Canton, Ohio that evening which was only fifteen miles from home. Almost two days to get that far. We soon decided this wasn't going to get us to California so we stared for the railroad yards again.

            Neither one of us know anything about we were about to do. We just walked right down into the middle of the railroad yards asking everyone we saw if they know where to get on a freight going toward Chicago but no one knew. We soon saw a dressed up fellow. We asked him and all he said was, 'yes you come with me, I'll show you two where to catch trains. You're on private property and I'm a railroad detective, see my badge'.

            That's as far as we got that day. He took us right to jail. We never was in trouble before and we sure was scared. All he'd tell us was, wait until you see the Judge in the morning. That made us feel like we get at least hung and thinking like that kept us awake most of the night.

            Anyways, we got some supper and when morning come we got breakfast too. After a couple of hours the guard game in and said, 'hey you guys, let's go'. We went with him right out the front door, then he said, 'now you fellows get gone and no more freights and I better not see you again'. We were so surprised we couldn't talk, we just took off and kept gone.

            We walked through town so we wouldn't have to go through the railroad yards again. As we neared the end of the yard we began running into a lot of the fellows that was after the Chicago train, so we just hung around with them. A couple of them asked us if we traveled a lot. We told him it was our first trip and that we never was on a train yet.

            While waiting for the train they told us how to do it and said never to stand still and grab hold of the step or we could get killed or thrown under the wheels. We were glad we did have to wait for the train. We never knew how much there was to know to keep from getting hurt. There must've been fifty to sixty fellows waiting so they told us to watch real close until at least one of them was on then to it exactly as they did. It was nice to have a couple of teachers with us.  

Sixteen

            I had to ride the school bus after a couple of years when the country school closed down. I met up with an Italian boy my age and we became good friends and started doing everything together. Nothing bad or didn't bother anyone, just in the same grade, rode the same bus, ate together.

            We started playing hooky from school and catch the bus when it started form school to go home in the evening.  We spent a lot of days at a small pond near town swimming. We had a rope on a limb of a tree near the bank, we'd swing on it and get way out over the water and let go. What a splash and lots of fun.

            Sometimes we'd catch the bus when it came through town. The different officers from school where trying to catch us for missing school.  They used to follow the bust to see where we got on but we'd always see them first and stay hid and walk home after they were gone.

            There was a cider mill near the pond. We both liked cider and got all we wanted free just for helping out around the mill for an hour or so.

            They had a hand pump like we had at home and a hand dug well. It was about thirty feet deep. We took turns pumping the water into a long tank o wash all the jugs before the cider was put into them.

            We had one on the farm at the watering trough to pump water for the cows and horses. In the Winter every time we used it we had to hold the handle up so the water would run back down into the well then it wouldn't freeze. We had to prime it when we wanted to pump the next time. We used to hang things things by a rope down into the well so it would keep cool during the summer.

            I looked down into the well one day. It was light enough so I could see something moving. I asked Father what it was. He said it was a frog. A lot of people found them in them in their well. It didn't hurt the water so the people thought nothing about it.

            It got so we took two days a week off from school and we use to sit by the pond and talk about the other parts of the country and soon was talking about going to see them but we didn't have any money as that was that was hard to come by back in the early 30x.  But once we did meet a fellow fishing in the pond and we told him how we would like to go out west to see some cowboys and maybe be one ourselves. We told him of all the places we would like to see. We had no idea how far it was but we knowed it was too far to walk.

            One day he came again and he told us that he traveled some and told us about riding the freight train and how he did it. How he worked for people along the way for his meals and slept out under the stars. He told us about the CC camps the government had in certain cities all over the country just for the people on the road to stop in and sleep or get a meal and a new change of clothes. Usually it was shoes, bib-overalls and a shirt and go on your way. It was during the bad depression and there was thousands of people out of work and on the road looking for work.

            This fellow sure had us sitting up and taking in every word he said. The next day we talked about it again and I guess now we thought we knowed all about it and felt sure we could do it but we still hated to leave home and didn't know how we would get along without a Father and Mother to help us along.

            So things went along and was all talk for about another month which brought us close to the time to be out of school and at the same time we were getting anxious to go but didn't know how or where to go to get on a freight train. So if we did go we decided to walk.

            We finally decided on the day examinations started. 

Fifteen

            While I was in the company school we used to get pencils for getting good marks every week and on the way home there was three of four colored boys at wanted to take them from me.

            After a couple of weeks I started fighting back and started swinging my lunch pail. I came home quite often with it all bent and Father had to straighten it out but they soon left me alone after they found out how much it hurt them when I did get a lucky swing in. Anyways, I kept my pencils.

            I became friends with a colored boy a couple of years older than me. He was even helped me fight my battles. We spent quite a lot of time together. I went to his house one time to visit. They were a little better off then most of the colored people and had a nice home. His Father was a foreman at one of the mines and he invited me over whenever I could come. They never had the other colored people at their place. They kind of stayed to themselves.

            He showed me one day how to wing and snap the heads off the black snakes. The skin was tough and wouldn't let the head come off but when it broke the neck so the head hung limp, but they would make a loud snapping noise just like a whip.  So we tried to find the big, long ones. They would make the loudest noise.

            Then we took some of the carbide our Fathers had for there carbide lamps they wore on their caps in the mines, and took a can that had a cover on, put a nail hole in the bottom. We'd put carbide in it, pour a little water in and put the cover on, lay it on the ground, light a match and hold it next to the hole. It would bang like a big firecracker and blow the cover right off. We always had plenty of carbide as our Fathers bought it in 25 lbs. cans. They used it all the time in the mines for their lights.

            There was nothing much to do around the house while we lived there, but there was an old railroad track that went by the back of the house. It wasn't used. I spent a lot of time looking for snakes. They'd like to lie on the old ties in the sun. There was a lot of them all summer long. Most of them were the big, black snakes. They'd be about four feet long when full grown.  I had one or two in a box in the cellar. A lot of times Mother didn't now about them. It was a walk-in the cellar so I came and went when I wanted to with snakes. 

            One day I had one around my waist like a belt. I sued to sand on them. They were strong enough to pull me along for a few inches pull them out from under my feet. I put one in a gallon jug over time but I didn't know he had to have air and he died because I put the cap on the jug and shut the air off.

            There was one kind that was a nice blue color but they were so fast I couldn't catch them. I told Father and Mother about them. Father said the people around there just called them the blue snake and that they were poison if they bit you so I didn't bother with them. 

Fourteen

            One day Mother told me they were gone to sell the farm. I didn’t know why or where we was going. I just couldn’t understand why we were leaving everything and all the good things we had. Mother just said Father said he could make more money in the mines in Ohio and that someday maybe we would have another farm somewhere.  I thought of all the other kids I knew in school. This was the fourth school already that I was in and I hated to start in another one, but I couldn’t do anything.

            I had a lot of little things I wanted to keep but we could take only the things we really needed in the car. I hated another long trip in the car too. All I knew was that Mother said it was a long trip from Vega, NY to Ohio and that we would be on the road for about a week. To me it seemed like riding forever. Father was getting things together and trying to see what he could get in the car.  The other people came one day. He had to show them about a lot of little things so they would take over and get things gone their way.

            I think I spend a couple of hours going around to all the animals saying good-bye and petting some of them. Some of them was pets to me and I hated to be leaving them for good. Most of all I hated to leave the little bull calf I used to chase and catch. He was the one I used to ride. He always run and kicked when he seen me coming but then he’d quiet down and come to me, then we’d start. I use to take a lot of spills off his back till I got so I could stay on a while. I think he liked it as much as I did the way he acted sometimes.

            By now he was about two-thirds grown and almost ready for the ring in his nose. Those days most all the bulls had them to lead them by and tie them up outdoors. Talking about rings, it reminds me, one time I pushed my finger into a bottle and just couldn’t get it out. I thought if I broke the bottle the neck of the bottle would break too and I’d be all set but the neck didn’t break as I still had it on my finger. I was afraid to tell anyone and I couldn’t figure out how to get it off. I kept my hand hide when I was around the house but after the third day my finger was swelled and started to hurt. Mother happened to see it. She told Father. All he said was come here, I’ll take it off. When I see him get the hammer and told me to lay it on a stone, I was afraid. I thought for sure my finger was gone but he gave it a very light tap and it cracked and fell off. What a relief! I didn’t stick my fingers in no more bottles after that.

            I don’t remember how long it took to get from Vega, NY to a small town near Canton, Ohio but he would only go around 25 miles with the 1927 Model T and it had an awful load to haul too. I remember Father used to stop along the road and he had to change the bands in the transmission when they started to slip a bit. There always was a lot of places those days along to road to stop and set up the tent. Father had a 12 x 12 tent with sides to sleep in and keep us dry when it rained at night. Sometimes if it rained long or hard the water would come running through the tent. We would all wake up soaked. Our blankets were laying on the ground anyways. Mother hung them up on the tree limbs or rope between trees till they dried so we lost no time there when that happened.

            Sometimes he had a flat tire and he’d change it and pump it up by hand. If there was a thin spot on the tire that might blow out he would put a big patch inside the tire before the tube went in. It would keep it from blowing out and those days we didn’t go fast enough to cause it to bump so there was no balancing tires like today.

          We got to Lindentree, Ohio, a small town near Canton, Ohio. It was mostly all housed owned by the mining company and they would rent them to the help that worked in the mines for them for ten dollars a month. I had to ride a school bus into a larger town eight or ten miles away. The first year I went to the country school house that the company owned just for people in their houses and what few people that lived near by but then it closed down se we had to ride the bus.