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.