Twenty-Six

            I didn't get to the next town 'till the next day and there wasn't any trains stopping to set off or pick up anything the next day so I had a day to wait around. It didn't turn out too bad. I met up with another fellow and we was at a horse ranch nearby. We had a big three sided shed to sleep in. The whole front was open so the horses could get in and out as they wanted to and we had a job in the morning for about an hour and a half then had a good breakfast. They also fixed us a lunch to take along. They told us about a brook not too far away that they had dammed up and made a small lake for the livestock to drink at. We had a swim and got cleaned up a little.

            When the time came to go the first train didn't stop. It went by around fifty miles an hour. We didn't dare try to catch it. We thought we were stuck for another day but we found out there would be three more. The next one did stop to leave some cars loaded with grain so we was all set and I was on my way again.

            It was another day's travel before we got to El Paso, Texas. It was quite a wild town and a lot of Mexicans there. I didn't think much of it. Everyone looked unshaven and was just laying and sitting around. I didn't see many doing any work.

            We was told about going across he border into old Mexico so we looked for the crossing. It was a bridge over the Rio Grande river. People was going and coming both ways. We had to pay two cents to cross over into Cinedad Juarez, Mexico. All we could do was walk around and look at things as nobody spoke English. There was a lot of women and young girls on the street and they kept running after us and grabbing our arms and trying to pull us into their houses. We thought they were crazy. We didn't know anything. We found out later we were walking right through a Red Light District and thought they were after us because they thought we was good looking, but we found out before we got out of there. Just one of the first lessons learnt in life.

            We didn't hang around in that town too long. It seemed there was a lot of drinking everywhere. There wasn't many Americans around so we headed back for the States.

            It was good to find a HoBo Jungle after a couple of days. I was over the state line in southern Arizona headed north toward Tucson. There was a government CC Camp there and I got new clothes and food, slept over then was moving on again. Just before I got into Phoenix, Arizona there was a HoBo Jungle, a really big one. It was just like walking into a city. I got in with seven other fellows and we decided to take different streets in town then meet back at the Jungle and combine everything for dinner. I bet we had everything anyone could think of and we had the biggest boiled vegetable dinner you ever seen. Everyone was so full, nobody felt like going anywhere so we all stayed there over night.

            I never saw so much desert in my life. The next state north, which was Utah, was the name. I didn't know it at the time but I had twice as much desert ahead of me as I had already seen and I sure found it out when we got up into the Great Salt Lake desert I thought I'd die of heat. Them old freight trains seemed so slow. I sure kept thinking of cooler country back home. The little towns was small and far between and there was a few hungry days and it seemed it never rained in that country.