Twenty-Nine

            I was in Minnesota now, near Minneapolis in a Hobo Jungle. I found out I had to head farther south or I'd run into Lake Michigan and there was no way for me to cross something like that so I went down through Madison, Wisconsin, past Chicago, into Indiana. I was headed back to Ohio but when I did get there my father and mother had moved so I kept going for my Uncle Paul's at Somerset, Pennsylvania where I could met up with my brother Frank. We headed back for Mineral City, Ohio where we met a fellow who had a small country coal mine and he gave us a job and taught us about working in the mines.

            It was only about four or five feet high. I had to walk bent down all day. When I shoveled coal onto the little car that run on a track I had to do it on my knees. Some days I drove the pony he used to pull the car out of the mine. I sat on the front bumper with my feet up on the single tree of the pony and rode out and back into the mines that way.

            My brother Frank and I had a room on the second floor over a store. There was one long stairway to go up, seventeen steps. I used to count them many times. I also fell at the top and rolled all the way down and out onto the sidewalk. I'll never forget that night.

            We had our boss come over and was drinking a little. I couldn't drink much anyways till I was dizzy or couldn't hardly walk. Sometimes I'd be sick. My brother Frank was going down to the store. I wanted to go along. He said no, then I wanted to go any ways. He was half way he steps by the time I got to the stairway.

            Anyways, I stepped right off the top step and fell. He heard me and looked around, seen me coming, he just stepped to one side and watched me go rolling on by and right out the door. I just heard him say, "It's good you're drunk or you'd be dead now, what the hell you trying to do?" He didn't help me up either. I think after a while I did get up on my hands and knees and crawled all the way back up the stairs.

            I did get like that once more after that. I had to get to the bathroom and couldn't so my brother helped me there, sat me on the toilet and left me. He came back a couple of hours later after I didn't come out and I was still sitting there. He just walked out and left me. I came out when I could. That was the last time for that. I just didn't enjoy that. It was just one drink after that.

Twenty-Eight

            While we was in Bakersfield we headed out one day to collect different things to cook up and we forgot to say where we would meet and never did find each other again. I stayed around there for almost a week just looking for the fellow. I went westward but had no luck so I went on alone.

            I heard years later that he had stayed there and found a job and never did come back east. Years later I stopped in where he lived when we were in school but his folks weren't there anymore, different people had the house and no one knowed where they had went so that was the end of that boyhood friendship.

            Anyways, I was so close to Arizona that I went across the southeast corner of the stat just so I could say I was in it and headed back to the northern part of the state. The heat wasn't so bad but Idaho and Montana, the trains were finding their way over the Rocky Mountains and I had never seen so much hilly country and rock mountains. It was cooler weather all right. Some nights I was shivering and was thinking of the desert.

            There was plenty of cowboys but by now I had seen so many it didn't get me all excited like at first. There was quite a lot of nice big ranches and real big valleys after I did get over the mountains. I was alone now and missing my friend real bad. We had a lot of good days together in school and on the trip gone west. We were together all the days we skipped school. I used to go to his home quite often. I remember eating with him and his folks but there wasn't too much to do as he was alone at his age. His brother was a lot older and he didn't hang around with them much so we went our way. I don't remember much more about his home and we didn't stay there much.

            Anyways, I sure missed him now that things had ended so quick with us. The days was long and the trains seemed so slow now that I was used to them. I didn't make friends very easy and that made it bad. I was alone most of the time except when I got off to stop at the HoBo Jungles. The fellows there always called me over when they see me coming. They did that with everyone. They all was in the same boat, out of work and just traveling around looking for work and they seemed to want to be together.

            The only one during the day I was with very long was a girl dressed like a fellow and had a man's haircut. I was there three days before I found out she was coming back east too so we was together for a while, ten days, until she went in the other direction towards where she lived.   

            While we were together she would help find food and share things she got different. We slept the last two nights in the end of a reff car as she would not go to the HoBo Jungle. That was a train car like a box car for refrigeration or meat. It had a trap door on top at each end to fill with ice. It was four feet by eight feet across the end. When empty it was a good place to climb down in and sleep while riding at night. Her father was a coal miner in Kentucky and I didn't want to go down there at the time she left me. 

Twenty-Seven

            I heard a lot of the fellows talk about the Grand Canyon in Arizona and wondered why we missed it but at that time I didn't know anything about it and never heard anyone talk about it at home. I went up through the state a little too far in the eastern part of the state so I missed it. I went into the southwest corner of Wyoming, a small town of Granger right on a river a large Ho Bo Jungle.

            A few of the fellows at that one had little shacks made of tin, old boards, even card board, just about anything they could get their hands on. Some of the pieces was held in place with pieces of wire or rope. Those few just decided to stay right there instead of traveling around. They picked up odd jobs when they could, no pay, just some cigs or things they could cook up and get along.

            The Jungle was something to see but it had gotten too big for the size of the town and part of the fellows had to go to the next town to collect things to eat.

            The next day I went to the railroad yards to get the train and headed for Nevada. It was a week of slow going as there was a lot of small mountain ranges in that part of the country and the old trains had a lot of climbing to do and not many towns al through the state of Nevada.

            There was a day now and then with nothing to eat but as we got near to California we were running out of desert and into more towns and better days ahead.

            We ended up in the southern part of the state at Bakersfield.  It was a lot easier to pick up odd jobs. There was a lot of lettuce fields and grapes. We got a job bagging beans. They were put threw an old looking machine that got most of them out of the pods. Something like the old thrashing machines we had at home on the farm later on in the years to come.

            I stayed there eleven or twelve days and got a little money. It wasn't much but it sure felt good to have money in my pocket. There was some real good Hobo Jungles near a large city too. I spent a lot on ice cream and frappes while it lasted. I never had anything like that at home and I went crazy over it but after I had enough bagging beans I headed north as there was more open country.

            I didn't like the big cities too much. I went through Fresno, Stockton, then after Marysville and up through the Sacramento Valley the big cities thinned out and the Arizona state line was getting near.

            I was alone at the time and was thinking too much of the farm back home and was about ready to head home.