Experience, Strength and Hope. Anonymous

      Riding the Rods

      Fourteen years old and strong, I was ready—an American Whittington who knew a better way to get places than by walking. The “clear the way” whistle of a fast freight thundering over the crossing on the tracks a mile away was a siren call. Sneaking away from my farm home one night, I made my way to the distant yards. Ducking along a lane between two made-up trains that seemed endless, I made my way to the edge of the yards. Here and there I passed a silent, waiting figure. Then a little group talking among themselves. Edging in, I listened eagerly. I had met my first hoboes. They talked of places I had never heard of. This town was good. A fellow could get by on the Bowery all winter if he knew the ropes; that other town was “hostile”; thirty days for “vag” awaited you in another if you didn’t hit the cinders before the road “bulls” fine-combed the train.

      Then they noticed me. Somehow a new kid is always an object of interest to the adventurers of the rails. “Where ya makin’ for, kid?”

      I had heard one of them mention “Dee-troit” and it seemed as good an answer as any. I had no plans, just wanted to get away—anywhere—just away!

      “The Michigan Manifest will be along any minute now; I think she’s moving.” The tall hobo who had spoken grabbed me by the arm. “Come on, kid. We’ll help you.”

      Suddenly I felt big. I had gotten away! The two hoboes talked, the tall one about getting work in Detroit, the other arguing for staying on the road. Then the one who had boosted me up began to quiz me. I told him I had run away from the farm. In a sort of halting way he told me not to get the train habit or it would get me until I would always want to be moving. The rocking motion of the car as the train increased speed became a cradle song in my ears. I fell asleep.

      It was way past dawn when I awoke. My two companions were already sitting up and talking. The day wore on. We passed through small towns. Soon the train was threading its way between factories and huge warehouses, crossing tracks with brisk clatter, coming into a railway yard. Brakes went on. They helped me off. We were in Detroit.

      My hobo friends parted at a street corner. The tall one took me along right into town and got a room for both of us with “Mother Kelly,” a kindly Irish landlady if ever there was one. “Sit tight, kid,” he said. “I’ll see you through as much as I can. Me to find a job.”

      He got a job. For almost two years he looked after me. He was always vigilant, steering me past the snares and pitfalls that are always in the path of a growing boy. This hobo, Tom Casey, who never talked much about himself or his experiences except as a warning illustration of “What not to do,” made me start a bank account and keep it growing. It is to him I owe the fact that I didn’t become a “road kid,” that I never became a hobo. Came a day when he left me. The road was calling him, he explained, although that never seemed to me to be the reason. I never saw Tom Casey again, but from this man I received my first lesson in the guiding and compelling principle of the Good Life. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

      I was city-wise by this time, uncontaminated to be sure, thanks to my friend. No longer a “boy rube in the big town,” I found a job quickly enough but I missed Tom. I began to hang around pool rooms and it was inevitable that I soon learned to handle a schooner of beer and an occasional “shot.” Jobs were plentiful. If I didn’t feel right in the morning after a night with the “corner gang” I didn’t go to work. I lost jobs. My bank account dwindled, disappeared entirely. My new barroom friends were little help. I was broke.

      It was summer and the park benches, hard and uncomfortable as they were, appealed to me more than the squalid “flops” of the city’s slums. So I slept out a few nights. Young and full of energy, I hunted for work. The war was on and work was easy to get. I became a machine-shop hand, progressing rapidly from drillpress to milling machine to lathe. I could quit a job one day and have a new one the next with more money. Soon I again had a good boardinghouse, clothes and money. But I never started another bank account. “Plenty of time for that,” I thought. My weekends were spent in my conception of “a good time,” finally becoming regular carousals and debauches over Saturday and Sunday. I had the usual experiences of being slipped a “Mickey Finn” and getting slugged and rolled for my money. These had no deterrent effect. I could always get jobs and live comfortably again in a few weeks. Soon, however, I tired of the weary routine of working and drinking. I began to dislike the city. Somehow my boyhood days on the farm didn’t seem so bad at a distance.

      No, I didn’t go home, but found work not too far away. I still drank. I soon got restless and took a freight for a Michigan city, arriving there broke late at night. I set out to look for friends. They helped me find work. Slowly, I began to climb the industrial ladder once more and eventually achieved a responsible position as a machine setter in a large plant. I was sitting on top of the world again. The sense of accomplishment I had now told me that I had earned the right to have enjoyable weekends once more. The weekends began to extend to Tuesday and Wednesday until I frequently worked only from Thursday to Saturday with the bottle always in my mind. In a vague sort of way I had set a time to quit drinking but that was at least fifteen years away and “What the hell!” I said to myself. “I’m going to have a good time while I’m young.”

      Then I was fired. Piqued, I drank up my last paycheck and when I got sober found another job—then another—and another in quick succession. I was soon back on the park benches. And once more I got a break when everything seemed dark. An old friend volunteered to get me a job driving a bus. He said he would buy me a uniform and give me the hospitality of his home if I would promise to quit drinking. Of course I promised. I had been working about three days when the bus line superintendent called me into his office.

      “Young fellow,” he said, “in your application you state that you don’t use alcoholic liquors. Now, we always check a man’s references and three of the firms you have worked for say you’re a highly capable man, but you have the drink habit.”

      I looked at him. It was all true, I admitted, but I had been out of work such a long time that I welcomed this job as an opportunity to redeem myself. I told him what I had promised my friend, that I was sincerely doing my best and not drinking a drop. I asked him to give me a chance.

      “Somehow I think you are in earnest,” he said. “I believe you mean it. I’ll give you a chance and help you to make good.”

      He shook my hand in friendship and encouragement. I strode from his office with high hope. “John Barleycorn will never make a bum out of me again,” I told myself with determination.

      For three months I drove my route steadily with never a hitch. My employers were satisfied. I felt pretty good. I was really on the wagon this time, wasn’t I?

      Yes indeed, I was on the wagon for good.

      I soon repaid my debt to my friend for his stake in me and even saved a little money. The feeling of security increased. It was summer and, hot and tired at the end of the day, I began to stop at a speakeasy on my way home. Detroit beer was good then, almost like old-time pre-Prohibition stuff. “This is the way to do it,” I would say to myself. “Stick to beer. After all, it’s really a food and it sure hits the spot after a trick of wheeling that job around in this man’s town. It’s that hard liquor that gets a man down. Beer for mine.”

      Even with all the hard lessons of bitter experience behind me I did not realize that thinking along that line was a definite red light on my road in life—a real danger signal.

      The evening glass of beer led, as usual, to the night when I didn’t get away from the bar until midnight. I began to need a bracer in the morning. Beer, I knew from experience, was simply no good as a bracer—all right as a thirst quencher perhaps, but lacking action and authority