Shoofly Pie: My Dad—Jake's Granddad;Transcript of Tape 1

How does one go about talking about your life?¹ What can a person put in and leave out to make it interesting to somebody else?

I think I’ll go back to 1932. At that time, I was 19 years old.² There was a Depression on in the United States. There was no work for married men, let alone single. I had worked previously three years at Western Union, and they were just in the process of expanding, and I was to go to Buffalo, New York, to learn to operate the teletype.³ Instead of that, I got laid off. I had no income at 19 years of age. My father had other children at home–a brother and two sisters⁴–and he couldn’t find any work at all. Finally he got a job cleaning rabbit pens at a dollar and a half a week. I felt perhaps that at my age, I could go out and earn some money someplace in the world.

Leaving Home and Heading West

My cousin and I–Bill Anderson⁵–talked about going to his home. He lived about 110 miles further west from us.⁶ We lived at Nappanee, Indiana at that time.⁷ We hadn’t any money. So we decided to take a freight train, because my brother⁸ and Joe Mullet had gone to North Dakota that way, and then came back after we left. One March morning, we went down to the railroad and took what they call the local.⁹ Now this was a local freight train. It would stop in every town. Kick off and drop off freight. They had three through freights that just wouldn't stop in Nappanee. So we went down, climbed into an empty box car, and we were soon on the way.¹⁰ I had one dime in my pocket. That's all the money that I had. I don't remember if my cousin had any or not. But keep this dime in mind–I’ll mention it again. Well, we got on and went to La Paz, Indiana, and there was a water station where the locomotives would stop to get water.¹¹ And we got off the local. And when these red ball freights would come through, they would all stop for water. So we climbed on one of those fast ones that wouldn't stop anyplace. It was toward evening when we got into the Chicago area. Understand that there was no railroad that ran through Chicago. But there was one connecting railroad that connects each railroad to the other one. They come that far and they break up a train, and the EJ&E Railroad¹² would shift the cars around. We wound up in Blue Island, Chicago.¹³ And we didn't know beans–now remember, I was 19 years old and this was the first time I was away this far. I had never been to the Chicago area before up to this time.

Chicago to Joliet

So we climbed into a box car and we slept.¹⁴ It was pretty chilly. We got up and we found a place to eat, and we ate a little bit, and then we didn't know where to go because every place you looked, it was railroad tracks and boxcars. Miles and miles of 'em. It seemed so to us. So we went down–Bill must have had money, because we went to the railroad depot and bought a ticket for Joliet on the Rock Island Railroad. We rode out to Joliet, and there we got off the train. And from there, we started riding trains on the Rock Island.¹⁵ We didn't ask permission. Fact is, we got throwed [sic] off a couple of times.¹⁶ Not literally, but they told us to leave in a general manner.¹⁷ So this was the start of my wanderings–never knowing that God would call me some day, here in the East, and let me have the privilege of being a pastor and a dispenser of His Word. Well, we were there in Joliet. We didn't know anything. We were so green the cows would have eaten us if we'd have stayed still. But we hung around the depot a little while and after while a train came through pretty fast. We managed to get on to it. I know that I got on first. Grabbed the ladder as it was going by. Climbed up on the top and run back over the top to see whether my buddy had gotten on or not. But he was on.¹⁸ We went to East Moline, Illinois, and there was another water stop. You know these water stops are such that these locomotives, they were fired by coal or oil, and they used steam to operate.

Staying in the Hobo Hilton

So at East Moline, we got off and there was what they call a jungle. Now, some of this vernacular is perhaps not known to you, but a jungle is where all the hoboes and bindlestiffs and the bums gather round, where they could build a fire.¹⁹ They have access to water and there are cans there and things like that. Some of them clean up there. Maybe they'll boil their clothes and wash ‘em there. It's just a little out of sight and out of the way of everybody. They also cook their meals and make their coffee and things like that. It just seems uncanny to me now since that...how you learn so quickly...these things. Well, then we got to talking where we're going. We were heading for Hutchinson, Kansas. So we talked to some of the fellows around the fire there, and they told us the number of the engine. I don't remember what it was. I used to know every division point and engine number that we needed clear out to Los Angeles. One train with a certain number would go to Des Moines, Iowa, and the other would branch down to Kansas City, Kansas. And that's the one we wanted.

Kansas Bound

Well, we got it. Crossed the river into Davenport, Iowa, and...I'm gonna digress here a little bit. One other time that we came into Davenport, Iowa, it was snowing, and we had nothing but a cattle car to be in. That's roughly like a...well, it's got...it isn't solid wood–it's got cracks in it so the cattle won't get too hot or too cold or anything like that. And we were in an empty one. We got off at Davenport, Iowa, and went down to the jail to sleep. I was afraid my shoes would get stolen in the jail, so I slept with my shoes on. Anyway, we finally got to Kansas City. And there we could feel the difference in the weather. Up till that time, we would have frost about every morning. We'd get up after sleeping out or sleeping in a box car, but at Kansas City, we felt the difference. It was more warm, more balmy, more spring-like. And we had to wait then until about 3 o'clock the next morning. And we got the Ma Ferguson–that's the name of a freight train.²⁰ The engine number I can't recall. Because all the other trains went down through Wichita, and then into El Paso. And this one went to Hutchinson, Kansas, and then Amarillo, and then on down to El Paso.

Working In Kansas

So we got to Hutchinson ²¹ and we knew quite a few people there, young fellows.²² And we went to see Felda Yoder.²³ And he didn't have any work for us, but one day, we found out that a man by the name of Levi Knepp had some work. Somehow the word got around to us, and we got Felda Yoder's shotguns...it was four or five miles across the fields from Felda's to Levi's...and we went jackrabbit hunting on the way. Well, to make a long story short, we got the job. And the job was this: every Tuesday and Thursday, or every Monday and Thursday, we would butcher a pig and get it ready for market. And the rest of the time, they had...years ago, they planted hedge trees. And these were up about twenty feet tall...twenty-five, something like that...a man gave Levi a whole fencerow. Said if he cuts it down, he can have all he cuts out of there as fenceposts. So he got us...now eighty rods, that's a quarter of a mile. It's pretty long, and they were from five inches on up to eight inches thick at the butt. And we started cutting them down. And we cut hedge trees galore.²⁴

South to El Paso

Well now, we worked there for a while...I don't know how long...earned a little money...remember, I still had that dime. I never spent it. One day, we just...like this...went down to Hutchinson, Kansas, and waited until the train come along, and grabbed it. Well, this [train] went on, down through Pratt, Kansas, and into Amarillo, Texas. It went across the panhandle of Oklahoma. And that was a cold thing. That was, more or less, later in the year...later in the fall. And going across the mountain range and coming down into Amarillo, it was really cold.²⁵ But the trainman...the man on the train...conductor...he came along, and he got us to help unload some beef there at one stop. We hung it there in the depot. They had hooks there: this was a regular thing. They had a refrigerator car, a “reefer” as we called them, and so we helped unload this, and then they left us sit up...this was an oil-burning locomotive...and they left us sit up in the tender with our feet hanging down in the cab where it was a lot warmer. And we traveled that night. I don't know where we stopped the next day, but they told us there's a place down there where a jungle is, and we could stay there...you know it was only...this train went every twenty-four hours. It went every morning at the same time. It came through there. So we slept in the engine roundhouse, on the floor in the boiler room, where it was warmer.²⁶ We finally got another train and went to El Paso. And we were told long before we got to El Paso, “...if the police catch you in El Paso, riding the trains, you would get thirty days on (unintelligible) Street in a chain gang.” Well, we were kind of apprehensive, but we couldn't change our train and make it run the other way, so we went on. And we got to El Paso all right and went to the jungle. There was about thirty, thirty-five men, and one woman in that jungle.

The Bonus Army in El Paso

Now you know this was in hard times. There was a Depression on, and nobody had any work. It was just at the time after that the Bonus Army had been in Washington, DC, and they wanted their World War I bonus, and of course, they put up a shack city outside Washington, DC. And General MacArthur, he was the one that drove 'em out. And he went along...he rode in a limousine...they took bayonets and drove their former...drove their buddies out, you know. Bayonets and guns and burnt the shacks. And then they asked the railroads to let these fellows ride. So everybody was a Bonus Army marcher.²⁷ They didn't pay too much attention to us. But they told us that in El Paso, that’s the way they get their streets fixed, by getting this free labor.²⁸

Police!

So we were sitting around the fire, and after a while, we got surprised by some police. They come on to us all at once, and they had...you never saw anything so big in your life as the end of that gun barrel. And they picked us up and they herded us into a...and they said “Now there's a train coming out of here in about five minutes. We want you on there.” Well, usually in the marshalling yards, where they gather to make up the trains, they make up close to the end where it goes out on the main line. But this one they didn't. It made up....it made up and highballed out from about the center of the marshalling yard, and it was going a pretty good clip when it came out of town. But when you had police standing there with a gun, you can do a lot of things you never thought you could. So I grabbed the step as it come...went past me, and whipped around and hit the side of the box car, and one hand slipped off the ladder, I thought I was going to fly under the wheels, but I didn’t. And then I got on top, and ran back, and there I found my buddy, Bill. But the woman didn’t make it. She got throwed and rolled in the ditch. The last I saw her, she was sitting there and was shaking her fist at the train.

Westward to Arizona

So we left El Paso, and we went to Santa Rosa, New Mexico. And there the Rock Island Railroad changed to the Southern Pacific. And of course, we were down in the deep south then and it was warm. It was the latter part of September, first of October, something like that, in 1932. And we then got word of a job we could get pea-picking at Eloy, Arizona. Well, this was just a wide spot in the road. It had...so when the train came along there, we couldn’t get off–it was going too fast.²⁹ But it stopped at Casa Grande, and we got off and started walking back to Eloy.³⁰ I remember yet how warm it was, and it was...you know we were always used to, in September and October, it would be cold. The Border Patrol came along and picked us up, and they hauled us into Eloy, and they turned us loose. They were looking for wetbacks–that’s people that come across the Rio Grande River...Mexicans...illegally...and work in the United States.

Pea-pickers

Anyway, we found out where these pea fields were and they were way south of Eloy...and found out that the trucks that haul the peas to the warehouse go out every morning with empty boxes. So we didn’t say anything to anybody. We just climbed onto the truck as if we belonged there and then we went back out to where they unloaded and grabbed a hamper...I think its about...oh, it’s a little more than a half bushel...just about like a peach basket...and started picking peas. Now these peas were planted on rows, two rows on a ridge. And every night, they'd irrigate it, and this ditch on each side of the ridge was muddy. Well, in the mornings it would still be muddy, but by evening it would be dry. And we picked peas...and you got your hamper full, then you would go to where the trucks were with your hamper, and they would weigh it and they’d punch a ticket. We got paid one and 1/4 cents a pound for picking them. And sometimes we could make two dollars a day, if we had good picking. But after the first picking, you don't make so much. But anyway, they accepted us and left us keep on working. The bosses were all white, and they had, I don’t know, maybe a thousand Mexicans there. I don't know how many there were. And they were interesting people. And so there for a while, people would come out and work and not come back the next day. Now these tickets were punched for how many pounds they had, and you could use them in the butcher shop, the...well, the butcher shop and grocery store was all together there...and you could use them as currency. So we, the two of us, you know, we’d work and we’d make as high as two dollars a day. We’d buy our groceries. We slept under the warehouse and cooked out in the open there at Eloy. And incidentally, in 1975, I think it was 1975 or ’76, we were out to Arizona to my sister’s,³¹ and we drove to Eloy. It wasn't at all anything like it used to be. There was about 7,000 people living there, and the sheds were down.³² Just nothing like it was when we were there before. Forty-three years in between. But anyway, we got tired of it, and picking was slacking off. But these people would go pick awhile, and then they'd never come back again. So they passed out metal tags with numbers on them and if you didn't have one of those in the morning, you did’'t go to work. But we had ours, and I don’t what happened to mine. Last I saw it was in Indiana at my mother’s house. I don’t remember whether I lost it, or throwed it away, or what happened to it. Worked there till after Halloween. I know we slept out under that warehouse Halloween night. Then we got...picking got a little slack and...wasn’t making the money. We had been there three or four weeks.

On to California

We got on the freight and went out...started to California. This was interesting to me to see all these sand hills...sand [unintelligible] deserts and mountains and after we got into...I remember we were coming into Gila Bend and we asked the...the train was going real slow, and went past some section hands. And we asked what's the name of the town. And it was Gila Bend. G-I-L-A. And the people, they said it so fast and we thought it was as crazy as all get out. We had to ask them two or three times before we could get it through our heads.³³ We went into Gila Bend...Yuma...then the train cut north...Oh, incidentally, before we got to...after we left El Paso, we...heading for Tucson, Arizona, and a branch there too. One went down through Bisbee...said there might be some work in the copper mines down there. But we didn't—we went the other way. But remember, before we got there...in the evening...and we got there the next morning about daylight...the evening before they had a gunfight in town and the one guy was shot six times and he staggered over and sat down at the undertaker’s door and died right there for him...it made it awful handy for him. But we were at Yuma, and then we went out through California...branched up a little bit north and went on the north side of the Salton Sea. Now the Salton Sea is the body of water where the Colorado River one time broke through the dike and spilled a whole lot of water into a bottomland, and it’s been there ever since.³⁴

Los Angeles

We went past that and got into Los Angeles on a Saturday evening about 4 o’clock in the evening. There were no empties on this train, so we were riding a flat car. And as we were going past a crossing...a railroad crossing...street crossing...we saw the police patrol there. So we also got word that you get picked up in Los Angeles, if you were real dirty, you got two days in jail and were cleaned up and then told to get out. If you weren't so dirty, you only got one day...clean up and get out. So my buddy and I and two other fellows jumped off the opposite...oh everybody got off the opposite side of the train but four of us . And they started running up the street. And we went on down into the yards...cut across a little bit...climbed a...there was a gully there...the railroad was below street level and we climbed up on the street and got away. We heard afterwards that they had the paddy wagon there and they had piled them in sitting on top of each other and they all went to jail. Except us four. Well, we had a little money then, so we rented a hotel room. 25 cents, I think it was for the night. We went to a rescue mission to eat. And we had a man preach to us...and all I can remember that he preached to us how he left the Standard Oil Company to come to preach to us bums.³⁵ And the next morning we got fed again with sour milk for our oatmeal.³⁶ We had blankets and a couple of cooking utensils, and stuff like that. We had them wrapped up. So we went to the Salvation Army building and bought a suitcase to put all this stuff in there. Well, we couldn’t find a...we were there in the Los Angeles area for about four days...we went to Santa Monica and went...got our feet wet in the Pacific Ocean. And up to that time, I still hadn’t ever been to Chicago...and I got my feet wet in the Pacific Ocean before I got to Chicago. Blue Island is down around south and I had never been in Chicago proper at all. So we were out there, and we heard that Herbert Hoover–he was president then–had a ranch and they were looking for help there. So we found out later on that there was nothing to it. We couldn't get in on the grounds at all. They had guards there.³⁷

Boulder Dam and Las Vegas

Then we went to Boulder Dam in Las Vegas, Nevada, and we thought we might be able to get work there. They were working 24 hours a day. When we got there, it was in the night time, too. It seems we all traveled by night. I don't know why. We went out through San Bernardino and on up into Las Vegas at the edge of Nevada. Employment office was at a certain place. You went in there and registered. Then you had to wait till your name was called. Well, there was...we estimated there was close to three-four hundred people there...men...or more, waiting for jobs that had registered long before we did. So we didn’t hang around there. We thought “Nothing doing.”³⁸ So we went back and went into some of those gambling halls. Every restaurant, every fruit market, and filling stations, every place you looked, there were slot machines. I want to come back to my dime. Arizona was that way, too. There were a lot of slot machines in Arizona. And we worked there in Arizona then, down at Eloy, I spent the dime I had–tried a slot machine. Didn’t win anything, either. We were in Las Vegas, and we watched them play dominos with silver dollars stacked up. And a whole lot of things like that. And our eyes just bugged out because we were just people that never heard of those things, but we never saw them.

North and East, Hungry and Cold

We got a train out of there the next morning...went across the desert up into Glenwood...well, Provo, Utah. That was pretty high in the mountains and it was getting pretty late in the wintertime. And snow. And it snowed. The brakeman used to come and talk to us. We had an empty boxcar. We left Provo, Utah, on the same train...didn’t stay...and went through the mountain pass ³⁹ to Glenwood Springs, Colorado. There, ohhh, was it cold. Somebody said it was around 10 below zero and here we were in a boxcar, no heat or nothing. We walked and walked back and forth in this boxcar to keep warm. And we got into the railroad yard there at Glenwood Springs, and they had a trainmaster’s shanty there, and he had a stove going, and we went in there and warmed up. I wasn’t feeling good that day...I sort of had a cold and things like that. So I couldn’t eat very...I was very hungry but I didn't have the ambition to get something to eat. I watched a guy fix some pancakes on an oil drum in the jungle there. He had an oil drum fixed up with a grill on it somehow...He was frying...fixing pancakes and one was burnt a little bit and he threw it away. And I was so hungry, I could have ate that pancake very well, but he didn’t ask me to. Well, Bill Anderson then, he got us something to eat. We stayed there and then we hit the D&RGW. That’s the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad.⁴⁰ We traveled east on that towards Pueblo. We went right through the Royal Gorge. This railroad runs down at the bottom of the Royal Gorge. There’s mountains on each side. And it was cold....[end of Tape 1; Side A]. We went on to Pueblo, Colorado, and there we got so cold we just went right directly into the depot and got warm. We didn’t care if we did go to jail. And then we got a train out of there in the afternoon.

Heading Back East

We rode on out through Dodge City, and couple of Grand....Grand Junction, Kansas ⁴¹...some of those places...Garden City, Kansas, rather...got back to Hutchinson. Then we went back out to these Knepps and went back to work again. But we didn’t work long. We went on back to Indiana, and we went home. We got home before Christmas. I don’t know...I had no idea then yet that God was calling me to this work.⁴² But there was several times that I could have easily been killed. But He kept my life, because He could see the end from the beginning. And this was our first trip...Bill and I traveled together.

Westward Again

We stayed at home in Indiana until in the spring. And my brother Ammon, and some more of us...we had a group of five altogether and were talking about going to the harvest fields in Kansas and get work. This had been the common rule for years already...for young people to go to Kansas and then follow the harvest north to North Dakota. And we...but it seems somehow that just Bill Anderson and I were together and we traveled to Hutchinson...or started to go there, and...in the early spring...before...wheat harvest used to start around the tenth of June or something like that.

Hay, Wheat and Straw in Kansas

So we went out and we got a job help making hay and finally the wheat harvest started...I started down on what they call the Red Jaw...it was a portion of land south of Hutchinson...south of Yoder, Kansas ⁴³...and I worked for a man by the name of Krehbiel ⁴⁴...well, first I worked for a man named Freddy Fry.⁴⁵ With Fred, we cut the wheat with the header. This was a machine something like a binder. The only thing...it just cut the heads off...you’d set...you hitched the horses back of it...back of the platform that was rigged up. You had four horses hooked in there and a long tongue went back and there was this iron seat on that and you would sit...straddle this, and you would cajole the header right or left with this...it had sort of a rudder on this seat like a boat, you know, you turn it one way and it would swing one way...keep it...you just cut below the head. They didn’t want the straw. They didn’t need the straw. But we had this fixed up to use with the tractor. And then it had instead of binding it up in sheaves, it would take the wheat and elevate it up just the heads into a wagon that was...oh...it was what we called the header wagon. It had a screen around it to keep the heads from falling off on the ground. It was just like a big basket. And then we would take and ... over to where we wanted to stack it...and it had sort of a sling in there and a stacker...this was a pole straight up and then it had an arm on it, and it had an arm on down below, too. And then you would swing...take a hold of this arm and swing the harpoon or the grab hooks, whatever you want to say, above the wheat in the wagon and drop the thing down...[unintelligible]...then you would take a pair of horses or you would take a tractor and pull this rope and this would...the claws then of this harpoon would gather together and pick the wheat out of the bed and swing it over and put it on a stack. And we put about...say for instance about twenty acres on one stack. We put two of them side by side, with a little room between them large enough to get the thrashing machine in between. And then when we stacked up about 40 acres, then...we worked in a field of 640 acres...and they would do...put a number of stacks on like that. Then when it came time to thrash, then they pulled the thrashing machine in between and thrashed the wheat...they’d put fellows up on the stack, throw it in on the feeder, and this would thrash it and then they'd have a truck to haul the wheat. Well, I worked for Freddy Fry, and then I worked for a man by the name of Krehbiel on the Red Jaw. He was a General Conference Mennonite...and he was...oh, he was a get-up-and-goer. He about killed us from working. But I was running the wheat truck, taking it from the...take it in to the elevator into Haven, Kansas, and dump the wheat and come get the...and if I didn’t get back in time...this was combining though for him, not heading...and they would just dump the load on the ground and I'd have to shovel it on the truck. So you could understand that...sometimes we’d have to wait quite a while in line to unload. They would just take you in over the scales, weigh your truck, and then you would dump your load, come back onto the scales, and go barreling home. Oh, they’d be lined up for quite a ways. So, we spent some time there... and...the wheat harvest was...no, the wheat harvest was quite good that year...it was another year that the five of us went to Kansas...I’ve kinda mixed up on this. It’s been so many, many years ago that it’s hard to get. But, I worked there and then went back to Illinois from Kansas with John Kauffman and some of them. Then I worked in Illinois. Then the next year I went back again, but I went with another fellow. Went to Milford Junction, and we took the Big Four Railroad ⁴⁶ down to Wabash, Indiana...we took the Wabash Railroad across the state of Indiana into Missouri.

Railroad Cuisine

We got to Moberly, Missouri...just before we got there, our train stopped out in the country for some reason, for quite a while. And we weren’t too far from a farm house, and they had hedgerows there also. It was Willard Truax and I, and a black man⁴⁷ were in the car...boxcar...and there along the fence-row was a chicken. So we captured this chicken...“requisitioned” it...and dressed it there in this boxcar. And then finally the train did start. We went on to Moberly, Missouri,⁴⁸ and there we had chicken that evening. We stewed this chicken. And this black man said: “Man, this is living.”

Walking Around in Kansas City

Somehow, I got separated from the rest. I don’t know what happened anymore, that I was separated...and I followed...took the Union Pacific in to Kansas City. Well, their yards were clear at the northeast corner of Kansas City, Missouri. And I needed to go clear to the southwest corner of Kansas City, Kansas to get Ma Ferguson. And I started walking...and I went down...it was getting late at night and I was walking along...and we'd see these...I’d see these streetwalkers on the street, and things like that, but it never occurred to me to be afraid. Walked across the bridge that spans the river there, and [unintelligible] Kansas City, Missouri...and went clear down...oh, it was just...I don't know long it took me to walk across there, but it was quite early in the morning, but I was still in time to get the Ma Ferguson. I went out there and got out to Hutchinson, and I went out to Knepps, and slept a good while, because I was...[pause]

Making Hay in Kansas and Nebraska

And I think it was that year, there were five fellows from Lancaster County [PA] came to Kansas...and the wheat harvest wasn’t very good. It had been so dry.⁴⁹ I had been making hay...the fellow I worked for, he was a big husky guy, weighed about 210, and he could fork hay around...and we had these basket racks for hay. We’d throw them full too, you know, from the ground. We pitched it on by hand. And I tried my best to keep up with this man, to have a load when he had a load. He about killed me. And on top of that, I had the whooping cough at the same time. The biggest bother to me was the fact that when you pull at the end of the barn, and we let the hayhooks down to grab, I didn't have enough weight to pull the hooks on the outside...you know the track went clear out of the barn. There was a little, pointy overshot, or roof, and I could hardly get that dumb thing...I didn’t weigh enough.⁵⁰ But anyway...five fellows come—I don’t remember who all it was. I know Mose Stoltzfus ⁵¹ was one and Chris Lapp was another one. Chris Lapp’s a brother to John Lapp here.⁵² And they wanted to go to Nebraska and wanted me to go along with them. They wanted to go up there and see some people and put up hay. So Chris Lapp took my job...I didn’t want to quit in the middle of a man’s harvest...he stayed in Hutchinson while five of us went north to Nebraska. I worked for a man named Ball. And if you can imagine alfalfa in 200 acre fields just level...but there we also...we did it all by hand. There were six in the crew and but they only took two forks along. They put me on the stack to stack it. I said, well, I never stacked hay before. He said never mind. Just so the stacks stands till we get the stacker away. Now this was put up with an overhand stacker. It was a long arm out with fingers on the end. Then we had what we called a bull rake.⁵³ The hay was raked up in rows—windrows...and they would take this...they had an old car that they had changed around and it was run backwards most of the time...and they would go out...and they had a thing at the front with long fingers on. They’d go along the windrow until they get that full, and then they would raise it up so it wouldn’t fall off and then they would run for the stacker. And then they would put this stacker hand...it was down on the ground...it was down on the ground...and they would come in with this bull rake and drop their hay on these fingers; then the horses would pull the rope, and this thing would go up just like your arm goes up and goes over backwards and lands on top of the stack. Well, we put up hay for quite a while there. Oh, I wouldn’t know how long...and, well we had I don’t know how many hundred acres of hay to put up...and then this [work] run out...but we...Amos Fisher, “Shorty” Fisher, we called him, he wanted to ride the trains.

Back to Indiana

So Bill Anderson and I...Bill was along there I think...we went to Grand Island, Nebraska, and got the train and started back to Indiana. Well, we got to Davenport, Iowa, one of the railroad men, one of the police...we called them “bulls”...had been shot by some itinerant traveler...side-door Pullman...and they shot him...[tape pauses]... Well they said after this man was shot and killed, they were screening the trains. But they never bothered us. I don't know why...I guess they looked at us a little bit and thought we’re harmless...and we got back into Chicago and then we got the train out of there back to Nappanee...and I think that was the last trip I made with Bill Anderson.⁵⁴

A Dry Year

Next...next spring...next harvest-time, I and my brother Ammon, and Shorty Smoker, and Roy Miller...is that five of us?...no, it was ...Bill was along, I think. I don’t know. Well at least there were five of us went out to the harvest fields in Hutchinson. And again it was a dry year. They had drought, you know, sand storms...I saw it rain mud out there...it would rain and the sky was so...the air was so full of dust, it come down in mud chunks, you know...instead of raindrops.

Looking for Work

We then finished our harvest, and we heard that there was potato picking at Walsenburg and Alamosa, Colorado. So we took the Santa Fe Railroad out, and went to Pueblo. And then we took...I don't remember what road that was. I guess it must have been the D&RGW then...go down to Walsenburg and across the hill to Alamosa. Now this was something for me, to see these big high mountains...and we’d go up over the pass,⁵⁵ and we just didn’t...well, you know from Indiana where it’s so flat they have to dig ditches to run the water off, they...they went and had these great big mountains...I had seen them before, but they never...I can look at them again and again and again and I’m always thrilled at the thought of these great big mountains–there’s a lot of dirt piled up there, and my God put it there for...not only for...He had a use for it...but...to show us His mighty power. Well, we got to Alamosa, and here it was too [also] dry. They didn’t have any potatoes.⁵⁶ We hung around there a couple days...I don’t know what all we did...we washed up our clothes and things like that...and then we took the narrow gauge. Now the narrow gauge railroad isn’t...very...well, it’s only about...I don't know how wide that is, but it’s a lot smaller than...than regular railroad.⁵⁷ And we took the narrow gauge and went north. Again, we went into Cañon City, Colorado, where the state penitentiary is.⁵⁸ And then we come back again on the D&RGW...it was the Denver and Rio Grande Western, back to Pueblo. Then we got the Santa Fe out of there up to Denver. And then we heard that you can’t go straight north of Denver to Cheyenne because it's supposed to be a rough town on bums...railroad riders...I mentioned side-door Pullman...that’s a freight car. You get on at the side...and the door opens on the side. So we worked out another route. We went out to Brush, Colorado; then north, and then swung around and come into Billings, Montana. Then we stopped there and we talked a little bit. Now understand, this was still in...Depression time...and we went to a restaurant. Now we had money from our harvest fields. So we went in this restaurant to eat, thinking, you know, like you do in a restaurant, bring you menus. And as soon as we walked in, they said: “Here comes three more!” And we sat down and they just came with three plates of food and slapped them down in front of us. And here the town was feeding these people that couldn’t get work...and well, we thought “OK, if you want to feed us, we’ll eat it.” And we couldn’t eat it all...so we had a bunch of sandwiches made. They give us some kind of little ticket, and we had a bunch of sandwiches made, and we went back out to the jungle with these sandwiches.

Council

Then we had a council there...we had enough money...we’d have had enough money to live well, comparatively speaking, to go to Washington–state of Washington–or go back to Indiana. So we debated there for a while. Then two of the fellows said, well, they’re going to North Dakota to go to the harvest fields...they’re going to work up there...they had some relations up there anyway, and we traveled...and the rest of us decided, well, if they're going to do that, we're going back to Indiana. So three of us...well, we all five went to Casselton, North Dakota, and there the other two got off and went on up to Mylo, North Dakota. But we didn’t see any wheat from the western edge of North Dakota until we got to Casselton and then it was very thin on the ground...what I mean is they had it cut with binders, and it was on wheat shocks...it was a very poor crop.

Redball to Chicago

But the other three of us, we went on out and in Mandan, North Dakota.⁵⁹ There we got on a redball freight.⁶⁰ It was a carload of turkeys, heading for Chicago. And we thought if we could hang in...hang on this car, we’ll get home in a hurry. And this is what we did... you know, these were refrigerator...“reefers” as we called them...they were refrigerator trains, and they had the ventilator doors propped open...the ice doors where they often times would put ice in to keep things cold. But these didn’t have ice in them, but they were propped open and sealed so they couldn’t be closed. And we crawled in that small space and down into the reefer and rode that. And we would just stick our noses out once in a while. One time we stopped in a town for a little while...a division point, and...I think this was on the Northern Pacific...I don’t remember for sure anymore...or the Great Western...and they had stopped at a small town, and I went...went to the store and here the town again was feeding people so they would keep on going and get out...and they gave us a third of a loaf of bread and a can of pork and beans.⁶¹ So I got all of this stuff...and then in the meantime, there was an other train pulled in, and this one came from the east, going west, and ours was going...came from the west going east...and we were opposite from this store where I had been in. So I had to get on the first train and go between...and it was just moving slow...get on the other side and jump. In the meantime, our train had started up, but I got back to the same reefer...got in and we had a feast and we had an old pocketknife. We’d open this can of beans and then make bean sandwiches, as much as we could. Everything’s good when you’re hungry.

Chicago

Then, by the next morning at daylight, we were in Chicago. That train really traveled. They didn’t delay it at all because of the turkey spoilage...they didn’t want to be responsible for turkeys to spoil...and we got off on the northwest corner of Chicago...Melrose Park...and then, as I said before, we still had some money. So we got the streetcar...just about daylight when we pulled into that Melrose Park yard ⁶²...and then we got the streetcar and rode down to the Loop...and then we...the Loop is State and Madison...that’s the center of town...and then we were waiting for another streetcar...we wanted to go down on South Street and then get the bus to Gary, Indiana, because we knew we couldn’t get out of Chicago by train, you know...you had to go to some outlying, suburban town. And while we were standing there, a cop came over, and he was as big as a tree. And he asked what we were doing, and I told him we were waiting on a streetcar....and so, he left us go, he didn’t do anything.

“Well, what do you know! Amish bums!”

So we got a streetcar and we got home again...but we were...again, we were on the tender...and it stopped at La Paz for water...and the fireman, he came back over before the train wholly had stopped so he could open the hole so they could just...be ready...wouldn’t delay them anything ⁶³...he was surprised to see us...they didn’t know we were on...and so...he said something, started talking to us ...he asked where we were going. I said “Nappanee.” And he said, “Well, there’s nothing there but Amish.” And I said, “Well, we’re Amish.” And he said, “Well, what do you know! Amish bums!” And that’s what we did. It seemed...another coincidence that the first person we saw when we climbed off the train at Nappanee was my father. And we all went home for dinner. We got there before dinner time. But it certainly...sort of a coincidence that he happened to be at the depot when that train pulled in and we could get off...it was going slow enough that we could get off and...Dad was there. So that was the end of that journey.

1936

As you remember, I started this tape in 1932. What I mean is, this was...point in time when some of these experiences began. Then in 1936 was quite a year for me also. I had been in Arthur, Illinois...went out there doing the winter and worked around different places. In the spring of the year, I got a job on a farm where a man had terminal cancer...and I just had to go ahead and do everything...tend the pigs and horses and cows ...and he was too ill, he couldn’t do it.

An Old Sow

So in March there, I was...had an old sow had a batch of young one...and of course she would go on the north side of the stack when it was cold...and I went out with the bushel basket...I was going to put the pigs in the basket and take her round on the other side of the stack. Now the old sow wasn’t in her nest with the pigs...I don't know where she was...I picked one of the pigs up and it started squealing...and just all at once in back of me I just heard a “ruh, ruh, ruh...” sound, you know, like pigs do when they get real mad. I didn’t stop to look. I just went up over this straw stack just like everything. I just left them go then. I wouldn’t change them because she was vicious...she was mad...and I left her go. We didn’t lose a pig, though...she raised them all right. And he had an old 1020 International tractor. Now that was the horsepower and the drawbar power...20 horsepower pulling and 10 horsepower on the belt. And I got this old thing started and worked on the hog lots...had to sow stuff in so the hogs would have something...you know they go up...either rape or something like that...now don't get excited about being...about rape because this is a vegetable that pigs liked real well ⁶⁴...it was broadcast sowing. I got that ready, and then I went out in the field and started getting ready for oats-sowing.

Appendicitis

And I was disking away there just like...and I got an attack of appendicitis...and I tried to finish that day yet. I’d get off the tractor and sit down on the ground awhile...then get off again...and get going...so I finally couldn’t take it anymore, and went in and I got my brother-in-law, Obie Bontrager, out and he finished the field, disking. And then I had an opportunity to go back to Nappanee and so...I hated to go and leave this man in the hole like that...but I went anyway. I went home and went...Nappanee had a hospital at that time...and I went in there and had an appendix operation.⁶⁵ And I got along real well, so, latter part of May, beginning of June...sometime like that, Bill Anderson and I got together and we talked about the Kansas harvests...so we decided to go out again...so we went over the same route...but the only thing is, at Silvis, Illinois, there...we got separated...now what happened actually is we went on the train at different places but the police caught [tape ends]⁶⁶

1. This is a transcription of the first of two tapes my father, Alvin E. Miller, made during the mid 1970s about some of his life and travels. For eighteen years, Dad was pastor at Birch Grove Mennonite Church, Port Allegany, PA, but, as this memoir will show, his preparation for the ministry was not altogether ordinary. I transcribed this tape in 1992 and annotated it in 2005-6. ↵
   
2. Dad was born on January 22, 1913, in Fair Oaks, Indiana, to Phineas and Elizabeth (Anderson) Miller. They were Amish and so Dad was raised Amish, although he never joined the Amish church. ↵
   
3. Operating a teletype machine was not a typical vocation for a young Amishman in the late 1920s. Dad's family had already made some breaks with the Amish tradition, although his parents remained Amish. ↵
   
4. Phineas and Elizabeth had six children: Emma, Ammon, my father Alvin, Mattie, Willard, Marvin, and Ruby. Willard passed away in 1929; I don't recall my father ever mentioning him—and indeed, there is no mention of him on these tapes. ↵
   
5. According to Harvey Hochstetler's Descendants of Barbara Hochstetler, Bill was the son of Dad's maternal uncle Simon J. and Sarah (Mullet) Anderson. They lived in Jasper County, Indiana. ↵
   
6. Dad's birthplace, Fair Oaks, Indiana, is also in Jasper County. There was an Amish settlement there, much of which seems to have been composed of my grandmother's family. Her parents were John and Lovina (Hochstetler) Anderson, although my great-grandfather's real name was Augustus Walbus. He was a Dane from Copenhagen who, when faced with conscription at the age 21, set out across the North Sea in an open boat with a few of his friends. They were trying to make their way to America. Walbus landed in Chicago, got a job working on the physical plant of the B&O railroad. At some point, he and his railroad crew found themselves in Amish country near Bremen, IN, and some of the railroad crew were boarded by the Andersons, who lived near there. Augustus met their daughter, Lovina, and was so smitten that he changed his name to John Anderson and joined the Amish so he could marry her. They had many, many children, one of whom was my grandmother, Elizabeth, and another of whom was the last Amish bishop in the Jasper/Newton Amish community, Albert Anderson. The Amish communities in Jasper and Newton Counties gradually dwindled, with some moving away and others joining the Mennonites. According to J.C. Wenger's The Amish in Indiana and Michigan, the last Amish moved out of Newton County in 1960. ↵
   
7. Nappanee is a small town in north-central Indiana's Amish country, about 30 miles south-southeast of South Bend. Along with a fairly sizable group of other Amish and Mennonite families, Dad's parents had homesteaded in eastern Colorado near Kit Carson during the first decade of the XXth century. When their attempt at farming in Colorado failed (hailstorms; prairie fires), they returned to the Nappanee area. They did not, however, return to farming in Indiana: Dad's father found work as a night watchman/fireman for the boiler in a local porcelain factory—an unusual choice of occupation then for an Amishman, and one that seems to have brought about some conflict with the Amish elders in the community. Dad's mother and father remained in the town of Nappanee for the rest of their lives. His father and mother—my grandparents—passed away in 1953 and 1964, respectively. ↵
   
8. This will have been my uncle Ammon, Dad's older brother. Having witnessed the conflict between his father and the Amish elders, he swore he would never join the Amish church, and he never did. He apparently never joined any other church either. He served in the Army during WWII and, having worked as a short-order cook at the B&B Café in Nappanee, was assigned duty as a cook at Hamilton Field near San Francisco. There, he met a Polish Catholic girl named Barbara Rozychic, a "Rosie the Riveter" who spent the war building Liberty ships at the shipyard near Hamilton Field. They married, settled down in San Francisco and in 1949, had their only child, a daughter, Sandy, who was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition. ↵
   
9. One of the lesser-known stories of the Depression is the number of young people—teenagers in particular—who resorted to riding the rails around the country to find work. Errol Uys's Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move during the Great Depression (Routledge: 2003) estimates that some 250,000 teenagers were hoboes at the height of the Depression. ↵
   
10. This will have been the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) Railroad, the main east-west line of which ran through Nappanee. ↵
    
11. La Paz is on the B&O line about 18 miles west of Nappanee. Trains through the rural areas of the United States were still steam-powered during the 1930s, and so had to stop regularly to take on both fuel and water. The conversion of the rural railroads to diesel-electric locomotive power wasn't completed until the 1950s. ↵
    
12. This will have been the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railroad. There was considerable intra-urban rail business in shuttling freight cars from one major Chicago-area railhead to another. Because, for example, the B&O's northern branch didn't run any further than Chicago, anyone wishing to ship freight from Baltimore to points northwest of Chicago had to have the freight transferred from the western terminus of the B&O to a railroad that served destinations north and west of Chicago. The EJ & E looped around Chicago, with much of its traffic consisting of transferring freight cars between the long distance lines. ↵
    
13. Blue Island, on the southwest side of Chicago, is one yard where the EJ&E met the Rock Island line. Because Blue Island is still the nexus of several major railroad lines, it remains a favorite spot for modern railfans. ↵
    
14. Boxcars were known among railroad hoboes as "side-door Pullmans." ↵
    
15. The EJ&E line also intersected the Rock Island line in Joliet. The Rock Island line was a major line west to Iowa and thence south and southwest through Missouri to Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and points west. A 1937 Rock Island Route Map may be found here.  ↵
    
16. Dad's formal education ended, in the Amish fashion, at the eighth grade. His English, while colorful and idiomatic, was not always grammatical. ↵
    
17. Just to be completely clear, hopping freight trains was trespassing when Dad did it, and is still trespassing now. During the Depression, railroads employed private police forces to deal with trespassers. ↵
    
18. Hopping freight trains was also very dangerous. Uys (op. cit.) cites a 1932 government study estimating that 5,000 hoboes were killed or injured every year while riding the rails; of that 5,000, approximately 1,500 were teenagers. ↵
    
19. There was indeed something of a social hierarchy. In descending order: "hoboes" were laborers—sometimes skilled—who traveled the rails looking for work; "tramps" were local laborers who walked about in search of work; "bums" were local ne'er-do-wells uninterested in either traveling or working. See Gypsy Moon's Done and been : steel rail chronicles of American hobos (Bloomington. Indiana University Press: 1996) for more. "Bindle" was slang for a hobo's pack, or bundle of possessions; "stiff" was slang for "man"; hence, "bindlestiff" was a man with a bindle. ↵
    
20. Miriam Amanda "Ma" Ferguson was the first woman governor of Texas. After serving as first lady for her husband when he was governor, she later ran for the office herself, winning her first term in 1924. The "Ma Ferguson" freight train appears to have been a Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific train that headed south from Kansas across the Oklahoma panhandle into Amarillo, and thence across Texas to El Paso. Most of the Rock Island lines followed a more northerly route, approaching Albuquerque and El Paso via eastern New Mexico. ↵
    
21. Hutchinson (KS) is about 50 miles northeast of Wichita. ↵
    
22. The reason Dad and his traveling companion, Bill Anderson, knew so many "young fellows" there is probably related to the fact that Bill's mother was from Yoder, Kansas, which is just a few miles southeast of Hutchinson. There was a small Amish community in this part of Kansas, and Dad and Bill were clearly availing themselves of the hospitality of friends and relatives as much as they could. ↵
    
23. The US Census from 1930 has listings for "Felty Yoder" in the Hutchinson area, but no "Felda." Given the Amish propensity for nicknames, "Felda" may have been one. ↵
    
24. These hedgerows were almost certainly Osage orange trees (maclura pomifera). Osage orange hedgerows were widely used for fencing in Kansas until Joseph Glidden patented barbed wire in 1874. Barbed wire fences, however, still need fenceposts, and it turned out that the Osage orange wood made extraordinarily durable fenceposts. Hence, a brief period of gainful employment for Dad in Kansas, cutting Osage orange trees to make fenceposts. A brief but informative article about the Osage orange may be found on the Kansas State Historical Society website. ↵
    
25. Amarillo's 3700 ft. elevation ensures cool temperatures, even though the winters are not harsh. A major oil field had opened near Amarillo in 1926, but there is no indication that Dad was ever interested in being a roustabout. ↵
    
26. Although the railroads had private security forces whose job it was to evict trespassers, degrees of enforcement varied considerably. As this example shows, some railroad crews even depended on the hoboes for casual labor, giving them warm rides in return for help in loading and unloading freight. ↵
    
27. Dickson and Allen's The Bonus Army: An American Epic (Walker & Co., New York: 2004) is a thorough treatment of the Bonus Army. Dad got it mostly right, the main point of difference being that the Bonus Army had encampments within the city of Washington and not outside it. The railroads' treatment of the Army marchers varied. Dickson and Allen recount (p. 87) that the Rock Island and several other lines quietly permitted Army marchers to ride toward Washington unharassed. The B&O, however, which was the mainline from Chicago to Washington, flatly refused the marchers passage to Washington, meeting them with armed force in Illinois. B&O management were apparently told that unless they supported President Herbert Hoover by stopping the Army marchers, their application for a loan from the federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation would be held up. Dickson and Allen report (p. 73) that the B&O received $25.5 million only a few days before the major confrontation with the marchers in Caseyville, IL. The marchers, however, got through peacefully.
    
    The B&O reversed itself in most astonishing fashion after MacArthur's federal troops (led by a young Lieutenant Colonel named George S. Patton) drove the marchers out of Washington on July 28, 1932, burning their encampments and killing at least two of them. Many of the marchers made their way to Johnstown, PA, where another camp was set up. Dickson and Allen note (p.196) that, with some "hidden assistance from Washington," Daniel Willard, the president of the B&O, granted the Johnstown campers free coach—not boxcar—passage on the B&O as far west as Chicago and St. Louis. ↵
    
28. Texas was certainly not alone among the states in using convicts for forced-labor, although it did have a reputation amongst hoboes as being a place one didn't want to fall into the hands of law enforcement. See Michael Uys's 1998 video documentary about Depression Era hoboes entitled Riding the Rails (not to be confused with Errol Uys's companion volume of the same name) for commentary about the treatment some received there. El Paso, long a port of entry for many Mexicans seeking work in the U.S., may have been particularly hard hit during the Depression. ↵
    
29. As Dad's experience jumping a train out of El Paso showed, boarding or descending from moving freight trains was and is extremely dangerous, primarily because it is so easy to misjudge the speed at which the train is moving. Gypsy Moon (op.cit.) records the following advice from a hobo regarding getting off a moving freight train:
    
    "Very few hobos know how to guess at the speed of a train. You can look at things along the route and see how fast you're passing them, or just judge it as best you can. But a few hobos-I was one-found out that when you're on a train and you'd like to get off, you can go down the ladder and get in the stirrup. That is the very bottom step on the ladder. Get a good grip on two rungs on the ladder, and, when you see a clear place, you can let your foot down and let it touch the ground firmly. If that foot flies up and hits you in the rump, that train is going too fast for you to get off....If you got off of one going too fast, you'd really take a nasty spill..." (p. 49) ↵
    
30. About 60 miles southeast of Phoenix, Eloy has been an agricultural center in the Santa Cruz Valley since its founding around 1919. ↵
    
31. Dad's younger sister, Magdalena ("Mattie"), and her husband Oba Bontrager lived in Mesa, AZ, for many years. ↵
    
32. The "sheds" Dad refers to were apparently the outstanding architectural characteristic of Eloy, as the venerable WPA Writers' Guide Arizona: A State Guide (Hastings House. New York: 1940) describes Eloy in two short sentences. The second sentence reads: "Three vegetable packing sheds and a cotton gin employ transients in the picking and packing seasons." (p. 385) What both Dad and the WPA writers seem to have missed was a folk story behind the name "Eloy": to wit, that some of the earliest arrivals—possibly a Southern Pacific railroad switch-building crew—found the area so deserted that it reminded them of Jesus's Aramaic outcry as recorded in Mark 15:34 "Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani." So they named the area Eloy. In the tradition of preachers, Dad was never one to forget a colorful anecdote; had he known this one, I'm sure I would have heard it dozens of times from the pulpit. ↵
    
33. The pronunciation of "Gila" is "hee-la." Dad's enjoyment over the prounciation is clearly audible on the tape. ↵
    
34. A river dike was breached by flood in 1905 and the entire volume of the Colorado River consequently flowed into the bottomland until 1907, when the breach was finally closed by the Southern Pacific Railroad. ↵
    
35. Likely Los Angeles's well-known Union Rescue Mission, founded in 1891 by Lyman Stewart, president of Union Petroleum. Stewart also founded a Bible Institute in L.A., now Biola University. He died in 1923, so Dad must have heard somebody else preach. ↵
    
36. One former hobo, interviewed for the video documentary Riding the Rails, reported that, among hobos, the quality of the oatmeal served was a common indicator for the quality of caring they received from relief agencies. Particularly telling was the presence of various forms of invertebrate fauna, some winged and some not. ↵
    
37. According to the Memoirs of Herbert Hoover (Macmillan. New York: 1952), Vol. II p. 205, Hoover owned a ranch up near Bakersfield. It became fodder for the 1928 presidential campaign when some Democrats painted a sign saying "No white help wanted," hung it on the gate below the name "Hoover Ranch," took a picture of it and used the picture to campaign against Hoover. He still won. ↵
    
38. Joseph Stevens's Hoover Dam: An American Adventure (University of Oklahoma Press. Norman: 1988) reports that by May, 1932, the Las Vegas Employment Office had filed a total of 36,000 letters and 20,000 personal applications for employment during the preceding 15 months. (p. 274, fn.9) This was before the concrete-pouring for the dam had even begun. In any event, Dad was a farmhand with no experience in heavy construction. ↵
    
39. Utah's Soldier Summit, altitude 7,440 feet, was on the mainline between Salt Lake City and Denver. ↵
    
40. The Denver and Rio Grande Western was a narrow-gauge railroad known for going through the Rockies rather than around them. The line served Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. ↵
    
41. Grand Junction is of course in Colorado, not Kansas. Dad corrects it to "Garden City" immediately. ↵
    
42. The pastorate at Birch Grove Mennonite Church, Port Allegany, PA. ↵
    
43. According to "Romance and Magic in Red Jaw Valley Told in its History", an article by Father Schaefers in the April 15, 1934 Wichita Eagle (p. 25), the Red Jaw Valley was the valley of the Ninnescah River in southeastern Reno County, KS. Schaefers reported that the soil of the Red Jaw Valley was "as red as the red-colored stripes on our flag..." He is, alas, silent on the mandibular aspect of the name. Schaefers also reported that the valley soil was not productive and that it was the flatlands above the valley itself that were being farmed. Much of this valley is currently under the waters of the Cheney Reservoir. ↵
    
44. Spellings of this family name vary. ↵
    
45. This appears to be the Freddy Fry who is identified in Descendents of Barbara Hochstetler as being an Amish man from Haven (KS). Fry was born in 1911, which made him only two years older than Dad. Haven (KS) was in Reno County, near the aforementioned "Red Jaw" section of Kansas where Dad had harvested wheat in the past. ↵
    
46. The Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati & St. Louis Railway, which had become a part of the New York Central line by the time Dad hitched a ride on it. ↵
    
47. I have yet to come across any estimates of how many of the young people riding the rails during this time were African-American. One of the hobos featured in the Uys video documentary (vide supra) is an African-American who speaks quite movingly about the time he spent riding the rails, as well as the singular difficulties he faced as an African-American. ↵
    
48. Moberly, in north-central Missouri, was a major Wabash railroad shop and must have had a "jungle" somewhere by the edge of the yards. ↵
    
49. Indeed: the Dust Bowl was on. There are many good sources on the Dust Bowl, e.g., Bonnifield, Mathew P. The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt, and Depression. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979. ↵
    
50. Dad was about five feet, six inches tall, and weighed somewhere between 115 and 120 lbs. at this point in his life. When he married in 1941, he still weighed only 119. ↵
    
51. This will have been Mose D. Stoltzfus, Sr., an Old Order Amishman who was later our neighbor near Gap, PA. His son, Mose Jr., and I were best friends and classmates at Millwood School until our family moved from Gap to Port Allegany when I was ten. Mose, Jr., himself kept the traveling tradition alive, although not by train: I chatted with him when we were both in our mid 20s, and he recounted that he had already visited the majority of the fifty states—far more than I had visited at the time. ↵
    
52. "Here" meaning "in Port Allegany." John H. Lapp was, along with his wife Floy and their family, a co-worker at Birch Grove. John, originally from Lancaster County, PA, and Floy, from Hartville, OH, had served the Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions at Northern Tier Children's Home (Harrison Valley, PA), about an hour's drive from Port Allegany. They subsequently settled down to farm near Port Allegany and to help with the church planting that had been undertaken at Birch Grove. After Dad retired, John was ordained to the ministry at Birch Grove. He retired in 1997. ↵
    
53. Bull rakes gather the hay lateral section by lateral section, with the sections conjoining at the ends to make windrows extending perpendicular to the direction of the rake's travel. Modern side-delivery rakes leave a single long windrow extending straight behind them. ↵
    
54. Bill Anderson died of tularemia on January 15, 1934. ↵
    
55. The D&RGW route between Walsenburg and Alamosa crossed La Veta Pass at an altitude of 9,313 ft. ↵
    
56. Alamosa was at the western edge of the "Dust Bowl." Potatoes remain a major crop there. ↵
    
57. "Gauge" in this context refers to the distance between the steel rails of the railroad. The D&RGW gauge was 3 ft. vs. the standard railroad gauge of 4 ft, 8 ½ inches. The narrower gauge meant that the rails could make the sharper bends often necessitated by the vicissitudes of rail travel through the mountains. ↵
    
58. The penitentiary is still there. ↵
    
59. The order of travel seems jumbled here, as it appears that they were traveling west to east, but Casselton is in eastern North Dakota, while Mandan is in central North Dakota near Minot, so they surely must have reached Mandan before Castleton. ↵
    
60. A "redball" freight was a high-speed, priority freight train typically carrying perishable cargo. ↵
    
61. Uys's video documentary reports that sometimes the number of hoboes arriving doubled the population of small towns. Since there was no work, the towns would arrange to feed the hoboes with the caveat that they were to leave town on the next train. ↵
    
62. The Chicago and Northwestern Railroad operated the large Proviso railyard in Melrose Park. ↵
    
63. The "tender" is the car immediately behind a locomotive that carries fuel and water for the locomotive. Diesel-electric and all-electric locomotives typically don't have tenders. In this instance, the fireman came back to open the hole atop the tender's water tank so that water could be taken on at La Paz. ↵
    
64. Rape (Brassica napus) is a vegetable in the cabbage and cauliflower family that is grown mostly for animal feed and rapeseed oil, the latter being more commonly known these days as canola oil. ↵
    
65. One of Dad's oddest mementos was a small jar with his appendix preserved in it. I not only saw it, but am embarrassed to say that I'm the one who lost it. I'm not sure where, but I think I left it in my Aunt Martha's Packard. ↵
    
66. Dad passed away in March, 1978, following heart surgery. He is buried in the Annin Creek Cemetery in McKean County, PA. He did dictate a second tape, though. ↵