My Life. Flynt Josiah
when he promised to have another talk with me. That second talk was the beginning of a series of mishaps, which, could the good yardmaster have foreseen them, would certainly have made him hesitate before securing for me the position which his influence enabled him to do. The mishaps will be described later on, but I must refer to them here on account of that second interview with the German. Whatever else we may or may not wonder about in life, it has always seemed to me interesting to speculate about what might have happened to us of a momentous nature had certain very trivial and insignificant circumstances in earlier life only been different. How many men and women, for instance, on looking back over their lives, discover just such slight events in their early careers, and realize, long years after, how important these events were, after all. Only the other day I made the acquaintance of a man, now a resident of Hawaii, who explains his present success and permanent home there by a much-advertised eruption of a local volcano. He was a poorly paid telegraph operator in Oregon at the time of the eruption, which occurred just as he was thinking about what to do with his vacation. He finally decided to see the volcano, even if it cost him all his savings, and off to Hawaii he sailed – and there he stayed. Opportunity after opportunity came to him, and he had succeeded. Why? The man says, "On account of that derned old spouter." Qui lo sa?
What would have happened later if that yardmaster had not looked me up again and put me through another series of questions I, of course, cannot say. But it is easily possible that something very different from what I have to report upon in Part Second might have happened. The immediate result of that second interview with the yardmaster was that he promised me a position as "yard car reporter," and took me into his own home at the very cheap rate of $15.00 a month for board and lodging, there remaining for me to save or spend, as I saw fit, $20.00 out of the $35.00 which was my monthly stipend – a princely sum I thought, at the time, not exceeded in its wonderful effect as a salary, until years after, when $300.00 a week, for two months or so, once again gave me more or less the same inflated sense of joy which the $35.00 a month had formerly also been able to achieve.
The car reporting proved more difficult for me than the yardmaster had anticipated. First of all I had to learn the names and location of all the different tracks in the yards at East Buffalo. I studied them mainly at night, because this was when I was on duty. It ought to be stated immediately that I never mastered their geography or nomenclature satisfactorily, and that my reports about the numbers and ownership of the cars were very faulty. As I recall these reports to-day I fear that officially I sent many a car out of the yards that remained at home, and that I unintentionally reported as safe in port an equal number of cars that, for aught I know, may to this day be wandering about aimlessly over the prairies. However, I was not to hold this position long, so no great damage was done, I hope.
Writing about my early years and bidding good-bye to them here in print has been a harder task than I expected. Bidding good-bye to them formally and physically years ago was not difficult. To reach twenty-one, then thirty, then – I always looked on thirty as a satisfying goal, the years seemed to come and go so slowly. Then, too, I realized, after a fashion, that my youth was considered pretty much of a fiasco, and I wanted to get just as far away from failure and disaster as possible. Now – well, perhaps it is better that I keep my thoughts to myself. I will say, however, that retrospection can bring with it some of the most mournful hours the mind has to wallow in.
CHAPTER V
MY FIRST IMPRISONMENT
A friend, on receiving word that this book was being written, and that it was intended as a wind-up, for the time being at least, of my Under World reportings, wrote to me as follows:
"Whatever else you do or don't do, don't forget to get some romance into the story. I mean that you should try to get some poetry – oh, yes, I mean poetry – into your account of yourself. Merely a string of dates and facts will not go."
Perhaps the reader may be able to find some scattered bits of intended "poetry" in this Second Part, but on looking it over myself the "bits," if they exist at all, are so widely scattered that I cannot locate them. Yet I had to write this section of the book to make it coherent and connected, "poetry" or no "poetry."
My car reporting in East Buffalo lasted just a week. Then my benefactor, the night yardmaster, and I went to Buffalo proper one day. The yardmaster soon found other friends and, telling me to amuse myself, left me to my own devices. Perhaps, if we had remained together this second part of my book would tell a very different story than it does, perhaps – But something in me says: "What is the use of 'perhapsing' at this late hour? Go ahead and blurt out the truth." I am not sure that there is much use in "perhapsing," but somehow it seems impossible for me to throw off the habit. At times it is so strong that I have caught myself going back to my lodging three times to make certain that no coals had fallen out of the grate – when there was no more probability of such a thing happening on the third inspection than on the first. "And yet," I have reasoned, "perhaps a live coal might have fallen out and burned up the whole place had I not taken a last look and made sure."
So it is in looking back to that day alone in Buffalo – the inevitable perhaps comes to my mind, and I wonder what would have happened if I had simply staid with the yardmaster, which I was very welcome to do had I been so minded.
What I did during the morning and early afternoon I do not recall now; probably I merely wandered about the streets and took in such sights as attracted me. Of this much, however, I feel certain: there was no great Wanderlust in my intentions. My work on the railroad interested me not a little, and I had already begun to calculate the amount of savings I should have at the end of the year. As the day wore on I remember measuring how much time I should need to get back to supper and work, and up to the middle of the afternoon it was my firm determination to report for work early. Then – ah yes, then! I saw a horse and buggy standing idle in one of the main thoroughfares. What it was that prompted me to get into the buggy and drive blindly onward I cannot say, even now. As I have remarked, my job was satisfactory, I was my own "boss" in the daytime, the horse and buggy no more represented personal wealth to me at the time than did one of the stores, and there was no reasonable excuse for a wandering trip. But something, strict church people might say the devil, prompted me to throw over the job, run the risk of being sent to prison as a horse thief, and to ride away with buggy and horse for parts unknown. There is no wish on my part to palliate this crime in the least; I merely want to know why I committed it. At the moment of driving away it no more occurred to me to turn the outfit into gold than it did to turn back. On I went for a good hour, regardless of direction and the police. Then the seriousness of my offense gradually began to dawn on me. What should I do? At first I contemplated leaving the horse with some farmer, thinking that its owner would eventually locate it. But I threw over this plan. It was too late to report for work, and the growing darkness brought on a mild attack of Wanderlust. "Why not proceed as far as possible under the cover of night," I reasoned, "and then leave the rig somewhere in good hands?" I had at last found a road going in the direction I desired at that time to follow, if the car-reporting job was to be given up, and my mind was pretty definitely settled on that score, although a week's wages were due me.
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