Twenty-Four

            I kind of believe so far I was more interested in the HoBo Jungles and the cowboys and ranches and the way they lived and done their work. It was a new and different work and way of life. One that before I only read about and now it seemed like I was living the real thing and that's why there was so much time spent just traveling around, back and forth, while gone through the mid-western states. It seemed like where everyone went. People would tell us of something we should see before leaving the state. Sometimes it seemed like we'd never get out of the state. I think we spent a couple of weeks or more 'till we decided to move on

            The last town in Texas we headed for was El Paso, where fellows told us we could walk across the border and I did want to see the bull fights I had heard and read about, but we were a long way off and had a lot of riding to do.

            I seen a lot of oil rigs working but never stopped at one. I saw one that was burning. I thought it was burning up and no good 'till I was told they would put it out and put a cap on it.

            Sometimes, while riding, I'd be sitting on top of a boxcar. The sun was really hot and off in the distance I could just about make out a mountain with the top white with snow. It looked like they had white caps on lots of times. I wished I could of had a big handful to eat or leave melt in my mouth. It also made me think of how I put snow in a pan back home and put boiling syrup on it to make sugar and snow.

            After a couple of days the train was near San Antonio, Texas. There was two or three HoBo Jungles around that city. We spent a couple of days there, mostly around tow of the nearest ranches. There was a CC camp in town so we slept one night there, got clean cloths and food. We had to wash dishes and do some other work in exchange for the clothes and food but that was ok for a bed.

            Once in a while, at one of the ranches there, I got to try to use a lasso but it was too much rope for me to hold and I came out a zero on that one but I knew I'd try it someday again, but the chance never came again. I just wanted to keep going.

            For the next week there wasn't much doing but ride. One day I was laying on my belly on top of a boxcar on the catwalk with my arms bent, one under each side of it. I didn't mean to but I fell asleep. When I woke up I had slept for fifteen or twenty minutes. The first time it happened I was sure scared about it. I could've put one hand out and rolled right off the top of the boxcar. Nobody woke me because they done the same thing on purpose all the time. It was quite a while before I started doing it, but I did before the trip was over and didn't think too much of it.

            We were getting pretty well towards the western tip of Texas by now and crossing some hilly country. It was the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains and Sacramento Mountains. The train stopped quite often for water along the way and to add more engines. Sometimes there was three or four engines used to get over the mountains. That was some horseshoe curves. I could look straight across a small alley and see the last part of the train coming up the mountain and the front part was going the other way. It seemed funny to me at the time.

            I sit and think so many times of life and days gone by. I wish so many times I could see a certain few of the friends I grew up with, spent days in school with or during my twenties years. Certain little things we did or said, things that seemed to mean so very much at the time.

            The farms back then seemed so far apart and no fast means of travel like today. Farm life then was a hard way of life with no tools and machinery like today, which left very few times to go see any friends, how little we knew, the last time we talked or seen one or the other and walked away it would be the last time to ever see each other.

            I think when people say today, life is so lonely, it's those days, life and friends of so long ago during the years of growing up that we're really missing. It seems that everything, one at a time, was cut off, never to be seen again, especially what few real friends we had. It seems what friends we make later on in life are out to better themselves or make money off each other. No more giving, no more just a handshake or giving your word. When we come right down to it two-thirds of the people on this earth are a pain in the neck, when you compare them with the people fifty years ago.