Harley Hears Hard Stories

The ride to Omaha was educational for Harley. These fellas talked about all sorts of things they had seen while riding the rails. They exchanged some experiences about begging for food and running into dead ends on work leads they had, or some infrequent opportunities to work. Leo was most likely about five years older than Harley, and Clarence was the same age. The more they shared their stories with him, the luckier Harley knew he was.

Leo’s life as a hobo started nine months ago, about the same time Harley started his wonderful senior year at Roosevelt. Feeling a twinge of guilt, although he knew none of the young man’s miserable tale was his fault, Harley listened. Leo’s father was a coal miner in North Carolina. There were seven children in the family. Leo’s father came home one day and said the coal mine had been closed. He watched his mother and father hug each other and cry. His mother said there would not be enough money for food for the children. Leo left that night. He had five younger sisters and one younger brother. Leo said he decided he was not going to take food from their mouths. He left a note for his parents, telling them he loved them and that he would write them as soon as he found a job. He had not written them yet but was determined not to go home until he had some money for them.

Clarence left Wisconsin for adventure. His family’s dairy farm had been auctioned off by the local bank. His parents moved in with his widowed grandmother, with no room for him. That was okay with him because his father was a mean guy, and sometimes got violent with him. He was supposed to go to Chicago to live with his aunt, but he decided to take off on his own. Clarence just hopped on a train and went right past Chicago, hoping to go to California. He had worked for a little while as a dishwasher in a restaurant in St. Louis but quit so he could head west.

The two older men had obviously been on the rails much longer. They were much thinner and their clothes were in pretty poor condition. Harley was pretty sure they were not as old as they looked; the fatigue and hopelessness was in every line on their faces. Both of them had some horrible experiences trying to earn a few dollars. Adam said he had worked all day to unload a truckload of coal for a man. It was cold and he worked hard to make sure he got it all thrown down like the man wanted it done. Then the man paid him with two tomatoes. In South Dakota, Ed had gotten a one-day job in a wheat field. At the end of the day, the farmer gave him five cents. Adam told the men, “I gave that nickel back to the farmer and told him to keep it, ‘cause he needed it more than I did.”

They all had stories like that. No wonder it all sounded so hopeless. The more they talked, the more Harley began to think that no one in the country had any money to pay anyone to work. He knew how it was around where he lived. People like Mr. Flynn were okay, and they worked hard to get there, but Mr. Flynn had savings, and owned a business selling something everyone needed: milk. Harley could see what appeared to be a deep division in classes; between rich and poor, but he had never seen people as destitute as these four fellas. At least, he thought, farmers can grow their own food. At least up until the day they lose their farm to the bank.

Ed told them what he thought was a foolproof way of getting a hot meal in a restaurant. He said he would walk back and forth in front of a restaurant, waiting for a man to sit down at the counter. Then he would go in, sit down next to the man, and speak to the waitress, giving her a sad story and then asking if there was a job he could do in exchange for something to eat. If there was work, that was swell. He did the job and they would give him a meal. On the other hand, if there was no work and the waitress turned him down, chances were good that one of the other people sitting at the counter would speak up and say, “Give him a sandwich, I’ll pay for it.”

Both of the older men said they could always ask other hobos where to find home-cooked meals, at regular folks’ houses and farms, where you could go and sometimes get fed. They also knew the places to stay away from; where the man of the house kept a gun by the door. Harley also learned that hobos had a language of signs that they would leave for each other on fences and on other buildings, signs that left messages about food, police, and jobs.

Suddenly, Clarence told everyone, “Shhhh! All of ya, shut up! The crew is checkin’ the cars. Take cover, don’t talk!”

All of them moved to different corners of the car. Ed grabbed Harley, saying, “Git over here, ya dummy.”

Harley didn’t resist. He plastered himself in the corner next to Ed and barely breathed.

They heard someone rattling the door of their boxcar. “This is another cold car. It’s shut tight,” a guy hollered.

They all sat still and listened. The conductor hollered again, and then it got quiet. Leo spoke up, “We got a few minutes before we start movin’. Any of ya gotta pee, ya better do it now, or anything else, too. Jest hop out the far side here,” he directed them as he cracked open the sliding door on the far side of the boxcar. All of them hurried out, and then hurried back in about a minute later, Harley included. It was quite a sight.

Then Leo informed them, “Looks like the next stop is Denver, because they have uncoupled all the passenger cars. They’ll get picked up by the next train and be stoppin’ in Lincoln and Crete and Hastings and McCook, I think, is the last one before Denver. Us? We is goin’ all the way, non-stop!” Then he added, “As dark as it still is, I think I’m gonna curl up and try to get some shut-eye.”

“How do you know all that?” Adam asked.

“This was one of the first routes I was on. Couldn’t figger out why it never stopped all the way to Denver. Found out when I got there. Learned my lesson. Had to relieve myself in the darn car and then smell it all the way. Hooooey… won’t do that again!”

The train gave its first lurch forward about four or five minutes later. The men stayed in their corners until the train was well underway. Curling up with their bindles, the hobos all hunkered down for some rest before Denver. Leo told them it was about a seven or eight-hour trip. From Denver, they would have to figure out how to get to Chelan, Washington. Harley noticed no one was complaining about the smell of the carcasses anymore. They must have either gotten used to it or they were too tired to notice. It still smelled like a lot of raw meat, though.

Harley slept a little, but he was excited about going to Denver. He had never been in Colorado before and neither had his father or mother. He figured he was now going to be the first person in his family to ever go that far west, except for Uncle Gene. He would like to get off the train for a little bit and look around but decided that would not be a good idea; he might lose track of his new-found friends, and that would cause problems for him and them. He would be all alone and these guys might get mad at him, thinking they got ditched. Maybe he could take a look around Denver on his way back home in the fall.

The rhythmic swaying of the train, once again, was comforting. He managed to sleep a little bit at a time but would then have to rearrange his bindle and pack of supplies and clothes. All the other guys appeared to be sleeping as though they were dead. He hoped they weren’t.

Harley thought about his parents again, and about how he would write them. It wouldn’t be easy trying to decide what to tell them and what to leave out. There would be a fine line between trying to impress his father with his bravado and trying not to frighten his mother with his foolhardiness. He also thought about what he would write to his Uncle Gene, if he even had time to do that. Harley had to find a proper way to ask if he had any extra jobs for a few more men who desperately needed work, but that might have to wait until they got there. He was hoping his uncle was as generous as Harley’s mother, Lena. She was Uncle Gene’s sister, after all. Maybe it ran in the family.

Lena's family was large and close-knit. His mother's four brothers and two sisters all lived in Iowa, except for Uncle Gene. He had moved to Washington to “protect his heart.” Harley had overheard Lena talking to Uncle Lynn about it one day. He wasn't supposed to have heard the story, so he never told anyone he knew. Apparently, Lena's brothers Gene and Earl had fallen in love with the same girl. Earl proposed marriage to her and she accepted. Heartbroken, Gene decided he couldn't stay and see them together all the time, so he moved west. He eventually found another woman to love and marry, and was happy again, but he still did not want to see Earl and his bride together. He came back to visit family briefly about every five years or so. Well, now Harley would get to meet Aunt Lou and get to know Uncle Gene better.

As the hours passed, Harley alternately slept and thought. He noticed it was getting quite a bit cooler. Sometimes, he could actually feel the train going uphill. They must be coming to the mountains! He wasn’t going to be able to see them until he was in Denver, when he would be in the middle of them. He started wondering if it was going to be much colder in Denver. Summer was starting, and he did not bring anything at all close to being a warm jacket. Surely it couldn’t be cold enough there in early June to need a winter coat, but he was actually shivering a little bit. It wasn’t just the coolness of the meat boxcar either; it was getting even colder than that in there.

Only because Ed woke up and saw him shaking with the cold was Harley able to catch any more sleep. He offered Harley an old gray blanket. That blanket looked like it had been worn for the past fifty years as a donkey blanket, but it also looked warm, so he accepted the offer. It was terribly itchy and scratchy but it was warmer than nothing and allowed Harley to get some rest.

When he awoke, the train had slowed but it was not pulling into a station. He looked over and saw that Leo was awake, looking up at the vent in the top of the boxcar.

“What’s going on, Leo,” Harley asked him.

“We is goin’ up a mountain, Harley, goin’ up a mountain. Gonna be goin’ through a tunnel soon. A dang deadly tunnel, too,” Leo replied, shaking his head sadly.

“You mean we’re going to die?”

“No, I mean I knew a guy who did die in this tunnel. We are smart to be inside this stinkin’ boxcar.” He paused, then added, “Never thought you’d hear me say that, did ya?”

“How’d he die?” asked Harley, still wanting to be assured he was safe. He wasn’t a fraidy-cat, but he certainly did not want to die.

“Well, last time I came this way, there was a fella like you who wanted to see the mountains. It was early morning when we left Omaha and he decided that when we got closer to Denver he would climb out and ride on the top of the train. As we slowed down to start up into the mountains here, he opened the door and he climbed out onto the roof of the car. I’ve seen lots of men ride up there when the trains in the harvest places get really full, but never seen a man get on top of one in the mountains. I told him he was bein’ a fool and I was right.” Leo almost sounded like he was boasting for being right.

Of course, he might be entitled to brag because if the other man had listened to him, he maybe would still be alive.

“Did he fall off?” Harley asked.

“Nope. Suffocated, the dummy. All the smoke from the engine filled up the long tunnel. Weren’t nothin’ for him to breathe but that black ol’ coal smoke. There wasn’t no vent in the top of that boxcar, so there was no fresh air anywhere for him to get. We could hear him yellin’ about havin’ trouble breathing, but we couldn’t do nothin’ about it. He was pounding on top of the car like a wild man, but we couldn’t do nothin’. When we looked up there after we got outta the tunnel, he was gone. We was lucky there was no vent in that car. Now this car, it’s got a big ol’ vent in it.”

All the men were awake now and heard about the smoke, so Adam and Harley started scrambling to boost Clarence up to the vent, so he could stuff their clothes into the openings in it. The train started to take a wide curve, causing the men to struggle with finishing their blocking of the vent, but they got it done. Harley felt a rush of relief.

“The tunnel is at the end of this curve,” Leo told them. They all sat down and then decided to lie down. Harley figured they wanted to be as low as they possibly could in case any smoke came into the car during their trip through the tunnel. He laid pretty low himself, putting the old gray blanket over his head. He peeked out and saw they all had something over their head, or at least had their handkerchiefs over their faces.

A thought crossed his mind that maybe these men were all having the toughest, roughest of times in their lives, but none of them had it so bad they wanted to die. They were hungry, flat broke, wearing tattered clothes, with no place to sleep at night. Having abandoned any family they had, they were alone with no sure destination in mind like Harley had. A couple were sick, Harley was sure, from the coughing, wheezing, and moaning that he had heard come out of them, whether they were awake or sleeping. They were living a brutal life and he was off on an adventure.

Even Clarence wasn’t in the same category as he was. He had heard the men talk about boys they had encountered on trains, who were trying to get out west to be cowboys or find their fortune in Hollywood. The hobos laughed about them, but none of them had laughed at Harley. He was tempted to tell them about college but didn’t know if they would think he was crazy or maybe think Harley felt like he was better than they were. He did not want them to think either of those things, so he confirmed his initial decision not to let them know about his ambitions.

That got him thinking about his Lincoln. He was so certain that a new Lincoln every year was actually within his reach. He just had to keep the picture in his mind and keep his plan in motion. Start small, work hard. That was what Mr. Flynn had done and that is what Harley was going to do. He just had to get started on his plan. Money for college was the first step in that direction, so he knew he was in the right place. There was not enough money for him in Des Moines, Iowa, so he was going to Chelan, Washington and get it!

They got through the tunnel and uncovered themselves. A faint black haze remained in the car, but only Adam was coughing much. He was nearly choking and Harley imagined that was what it sounded like when the kid on top of the boxcar died. It was horrible. Then Adam spit a huge black wad of mucus against the boxcar wall, which ended his coughing and gagging. It was a nasty sight, but Harley was relieved not to have to listen to that cough any more. He made a mental note that as he returned home, if he came through the mountains again he would be sure there was not a vent in the boxcar he chose.

They knew there was maybe an hour left, so Ed said he wanted to share his story. Seemed like the two younger fellas had gotten a chance to tell theirs so he wanted to tell his. Ed said he was single and that he and his older brother had a stock market business in Kansas City, where Ed sold stocks and bonds. They were doing really well until a couple of years ago, and they lost everything on Black Friday…their main-street business, their big fancy houses…and they couldn’t find other jobs anywhere. Someone in their family had a little cabin up in the Arkansas hills; it didn’t even have running water or plumbing. They let his brother’s family and Ed live there rent-free, but they still couldn’t find any work. Ed said his brother never made another dime. Died of sadness and despair, he told them. They had gone from middle-upper class gentility to just being plain ol’ scrabble-ass poor. All at once, just like that. As the surviving brother, he was the next logical bread-winner, so he hit the rails. He had no idea what had happened to his sister-in-law and two little nieces. He said he prayed every day that either someone took them in or that they found a charity mission to live at. Thinking that they were doing okay was the only way he could keep going, looking for work. It was the only thing that let him sleep at night. Harley’s guts were in a knot when the guy finished his story. It was probably how the Great Depression got its name. Being destitute was depressing.

Gary, Indiana had been Adam’s home. “I was a construction worker; really good at framing houses. Folks just stopped building houses.” His voice was shaking, which surprised Harley; Adam was a tall, well-built man, in spite of that disturbing cough. He was not the crying type, for sure.

“I had to leave my Mina, she’s my wife, and our six-year-old twins girls; Ruth and LuRae. I miss ‘em so much! I need to get some money so I can go home. They are staying with Mina’s mom. Her father passed away two years ago and left some money, but it ain’t going to last all that long. I need to get some money and get back home!”

Adam wiped his eyes with his sleeves and blew his nose on a faded red handkerchief. As he stuffed it back in his jean pocket he was still whimpering a little, “I just want to go home.” These bums seemed plenty tough on the outside, but all of them had been crushed on the inside.

The train started slowing down. All of the men, except Harley, knew they had to jump out of the boxcar before it actually arrived in the Denver station. Ed explained that the tracks would be busy and crawling with armed railroad bulls. He had heard many stories about men beaten and sometimes killed by the bulls, so he decided to jump off when the rest of them did. They laughed at his earlier lie about being on the rails for six months; they didn’t care that he was new to this or that he had lied to them. He was young, and they were turning out to be pretty regular guys as far a railroad bums went, so Harley laughed at himself right along with them.

They jumped off in the outskirts of Denver. It wasn’t too bad, Harley thought. It was not much worse that jumping off the moving tractor on the farm. There were some fields, a few pastures, and a couple of stores. It almost looked like Commerce, which was on the outer edge of Des Moines. Dirt roads, but otherwise some pretty serious attempts to look like civilization. Stores, a bank, and a block of little row houses lined the street near where they landed. It butted right up to a small ranch but it looked like the start of a town. There was a grocery store as well as a harness shop/gas station combination, too. Seems like the guy who owned the harness shop was ready to help folks with horses, as well as those with automobiles. Harley always admired a man with good business sense.

He thought it was about noon. Seemed like the people here had seen plenty of rail bums. In fact, Harley saw some fellas who looked to be in the same situation he and his friends were. They waved at each other and one of the other guys pointed and hollered, “We ate on the east side of town. You’d be better off on the west side now.”

“What’s he talking about,” Harley inquired.

“Him and his guys hit the houses on the east side of town already. Begging for handouts and food. He thinks we should look on the other side of town,” Adam responded.

“Well, I’m getting hungry. Actually, I’m really hungry,” commented Harley.

So, the men walked through a back alley of what looked like the main street, heading to the west side, wherever that was. It was a windy, sunny day. It smelled like spring, but not spring on the farm. There were more pine trees than Harley had ever seen in one place before. Colorado looked a whole lot different than Iowa. He wasn’t really paying attention to where he was walking; he was struck by the size of those mountains! So, these were The Rockies? Impressive! Nothing like this in Iowa, for sure. He was walking at the rear of the group and their dragging feet left a cloud of dust for him to walk through. He just followed. Then he started itching. His chest itched and then his legs itched. His feet itched. His head itched. What was going on? He kept stopping to scratch and was falling behind.

Leo called back to him, “What’s goin’ on, farm boy? We walkin’ too fast for ya? I thought you was hungry!”

“I don’t know what’s wrong, Leo. I’m itching something awful!” Harley yelled, stopping again to scratch his head and his legs.

“He’s prob’ly got them lice. I figure they was on that blanket I loaned him last night. I’m itchin’, too,” Ed offered.

“Lice? You loaned me a lousy blanket? Thanks a lot!”

“I found it just before we got on the train. Looked okay to me. I wanted somethin’ warm if we was headin’ to the mountains. Kept ya warm didn’t it?” The bum didn’t even apologize to Harley.

“Oh yes, thanks a lot! I was warm, but now we’re crawling with lice. How are we going to get rid of them? I can’t stay like this. I’ve never had lice. I know how we got rid of them on the pigs, but does mayonnaise and vinegar work on humans?” Harley was raving by now. The itching was getting worse and he didn’t know what to do. His mother would have known what to do, but he was never going to let his mother know he got lice on him. She would kill him for sure, letting himself get that “dirty”.

“Mayonnaise and vinegar works on lice, period. Pig or man, don’t matter,” said Clarence, slowing down to walk with Harley. He didn’t walk very close to him, however.

“Where are we going to get mayonnaise and vinegar?” asked Harley. He wanted to do something quickly. “My dad told me that kerosene works good, too.”

Clarence tried to calm him down. “We’ll ask at one of the houses. We can offer to do some chores. For a dime we can get a quart of mayonnaise, and it’ll only be a nickel for the vinegar. Folks want to hang onto their kerosene. They need it for light and fuel.”

“Where’s a house? Let’s find one and ask. I can’t stand this itching!” Harley was getting frantic. He had heard that lice carried disease and he didn’t want to get sick now.

The men walked, scanning the area for a house that seemed like it might need some work. They saw a large house, back a ways from the lane, looking like it needed the crumbling wooden fence around it repaired. Clarence knocked on the door, as he was the most presentable of the crew. After gesturing and a lot of friendly nodding, he returned with good news; they would receive mayonnaise and vinegar in exchange for repairing the fence. On the back porch, there was already a stack of pickets they could use and they didn’t even have to paint them. The woman also made them sandwiches! The men set to fixing the fence with the tools she laid out next to the pickets and they were done in about two hours. After giving them some vinegar and mayonnaise, the lady directed them to a nearby creek and the motley crew thanked her generously.

As he and Ed sat with mayonnaise and vinegar soaking on their hair and skin, Harley thought that the woman would have made a wonderful neighbor back in Iowa. He missed his mom for a few minutes, but then returned his thoughts to his reality. He sat on a towel and only had a handkerchief across his lap. The other men had built a little fire on the bank of the creek, but the two “lousy” men sat to the side so as not to infest the others until the gooey cure had about two hours to kill all the lice. It smothers them, and then they would have to spend some extra time looking for any eggs the lice had left and pick those off. It was a little cool to sit around naked, but they had to get the lice off their clothes, too. Those were washed in the creek and hung up to dry on tree branches. Harley just knew he had to get rid of these pests before he got to his Uncle Gene’s ranch. His mother must never find out he had lice.

The raggedy band of rail bums decided to spend the night on the banks of the creek, so they added to the fire and laid out their bindles. Slumber did not come easily to the Iowa farm boy, as he still felt the ghosts of the lice all over him. He knew they were all dead, but a tingle here and there throughout the night made it an uneasy, interrupted sleep.