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.