I highly recommend this memoir for those of you who are interest in The Great Depression, Prohibition, Organized Crime, trains and train travel, and well, hobos. Transients who often grabbed a free ride, lived in 'jungles' (encampments), often went from one "gig" job after another, were called hobos. Author Sam Hobrecker's story is that of a teenager who followed the work. After his mother died and his father remarried, Sam found his step-mother to be controlling and mean. He took off and learned to hop trains which proved to be death defying. Though he often went to a household or farm begging for work in exchange for food, he also did stints of hard labor with other men. This is a coming of age story also. There are some rather humorous parts of the story, but overall, you can feel what it was like to live with three days of hunger and take the risks. The part that I was not expecting is the third, when he finds himself involved with people who were criminals, mostly bootleggers, and attached to organized crime in Chicago. He finds himself of service at a boardinghouse and farm on the outskirts of the city where the mobsters and their girlfriends take respite or hide-out.
Here is what it says on the back of the book. "Although I was the main actor, the true heroes of this tory are the American People. Our common enemy was the time in which we lived. The Great Depression. Our only goal was survival. My purpose in writing this book is to show future generations how we lived and survived with grace and courage - a factual story too real to let die without being told.
I leave you with one dramatic excerpt from page 116:By now it was almost dark and the rain was starting to fall. The temperature was dropping fast and we were still climbing. We close the door and lit a five-hour plumber's candle that I had in my coat pocket. Tearing off some of the heavy brown paper that lined the lower half of the boxcar, we made a pad from several layers and laid it on the floor. We then twisted a long strip around into a teepee, and also wrapped paper around like a blanket.
We sat cross-legged in the teepee with the candle between us. I am sure the lighted candle gave off a little heat, but its warm yellow glow was comforting. Looking upward I said, "I hope they made it up to the engine." Ron (his temporary traveling companion) closed his eyes and shuddered.
Hours later we felt the couplings jam together as the head engine slacked off preparing to stop. The screech of the steel brake shoes against the wheels indicated we had passed the summit and were heading down grade into lower altitudes. It took both of us to pry the door open; it had frozen shut. As the train came into a shuddering stop, we jumped from the car into a lighted rail yard.
The awesome sight that met our eyes as we turned to look back at the train seemed unreal. The train, almost a mile long, was now a glacial-like mound of glistening ice. Ice, two or three inches thick, covered all exposed surfaces of the boxcars. We must have passed though a massive sleet storm as we crawled over the mountains pass. Cascades of curved icicles hung beneath the cars, extending to within inches of the rail bed, completely obliterating the sight of the wheels and understructure. The long wall of glistening ice standing silently beneath the lights of the rail yard seemed to belong to another world. The only evidence of reality was the half-opened door of the boxcar we had just jumped out of.
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