Since you and the boys you work with seem to have got a kick reading the short sketch of my trip to the gulf, I have decided to relate the whole thing.

It didn't really start in Kansas City. I came to Lincoln, Nebraska, in the fall, to find a rough winter ahead. Every barber in town was either married to their job or looking for a job.

I couldn't find a steady job in Lincoln so I went to Omaha. I belonged to the Barber's Union and went to Council Bluffs. As the streetcar came off of the bridge on the north side of the track there was a barber shop built in the right side of a saloon with doors to go in. The sign on the window said “Barber Wanted”, Shave 5 cents, Haircut 10 cents. The price in the best Union Shops was Shave 15 cents, Haircut 25 cents. I saw the Union Secretary, no jobs, no jobs in the scab shops (Shave 10 cents, Haircut 15 cents) so I went back down to the 5 & 10. I worked there from noon till midnight and made enough to send my two suitcases to Atchinson and less than a dollar to eat and sleep.

When I got to Atchinson my two brothers there had a room where they lived. They worked at the Missouri Pacific freight house. The younger was a checker, the other a trucker.

They let me sleep on the floor with my clothes and overcoat to keep me warm. Without a job I wasn't very welcome so I took myself to Kansas City.

In Kansas City, where I started my first letter, I found my other brother. He had a $9 a week job working in a job-print shop. He had a hall bedroom, just as wide as the hall (7 or 8 feet wide) and long enough for a half-bed. He griped about me eating on his meal ticket a 15 cent joint across the street.

I finally landed a Saturday job and when I ate a sandwich and coffiee I had $5.05. So I gave him the $5 and told him good-bye. He asked me what I'd do for money. I told him money was a small item in my life; I had the 5 cents. I told him I was going to New Orleans, where it'd be warm.

I went afoot to what they called The Lower Bottoms (a switch yard). I came to a railroad crossing where the trains would stop, whistle and go on. I grabbed some rods and swung on.

When I crossed the other tracks I saw a bum standing on the shoulder of the grade, and above the rattle of the wheels crossing the tracks I heard him yell, “Kid, if you're going South get off and catch the KC Southern. It goes to the gulf as straight as the crow flies!”

I slid off, and that fast, there was a loud thump and rattle up ahead. The draw bar (so the other bums said it was) had come loose and stood up between a couple of ties and went right between the rods where I'd been lying a moment before. I could have been killed or crippled there.
The other guy and I stood in the side door of a boxcar and watch the hills of Missouri go past. In the morning, we gott off at some town . . . I don't remember where . . . unless. . . it could have been Spiro. This other guy landed a job as cook in a restaurant on a corner. It must have been 25 feet wide and 75 feet long. I hit up the back door and there he was. Said he woudln't risk feeding me, so I went to the front door. The boss let me lift all the chairs up on the tables, sweep and scrub the joint, and when I got done he lined me up at the counter and gave me a couple of pieces of cold fried pork chops and stale punk to match. [For those who don't know, punk is stale bread]

Well, to get out of that town I climed in an empty refrigerator car, to find myself with about eight other guys. Some place down the line the train stopped and switched around awhile. When it started again our car didn't move. We'd been left on a side track, no boxcar along the track to use as depo, no nothing. We found a bunch of half rotten potatoes in the straw in the car, which we promptly toasted on the end of sticks over the fire. It was after daylight, and while we were having our breakfast a couple of Indian girls rode up on horseback and sat off about 50 feet, and laughed at our primitive way of cooking.

After that I ran onto a guy who was covered with sores. He said he was starving to death. The women slammed doors in his face. They were afraid of him. I agreed to bum for him if he kept away from me till we got to Benton, where he would go to Hot Springs, Arkansas. I didn't learn till later what he had.

At Alexander (I think it was) he went looking for coal and wood for a fire and I made the town. The first place I asked, there was a tall skinny guy answered the door and ran me off, “Didn't like no $!@ bums, no how.”

I got out in the street (road, rut, or whatever) when I saw him hop his front fence. Before I knew what was up he had jerked me down on the ground and was reaching for a rock to help me out of town the short way. I squirmed away and run to the railroad track where this sick guy helped me by throwing the nights supply of coal at him. About 15 mintues after that there was 8 or 10 hillbillies come toward us. We assembled our coal and rocks and prepared to whip the whole town. These boys were on our side. They sat around and talked a while, brought us some grub and gave us a nickel and dime apiece. They said the other one was a bully and no one liked him. I could have been killed there by that hillbilly.

Some place along the line I got off and started up town, when I came to a building with a little sign which said “Hot Chocolate & Whipped Cream 5 cents”, so there I let loose of the nickel.

I finally got to Texaskana. There I went over town looking for a barbering job. No jobs. Then I tried to work for something to eat. No eats. I tried to bum something to eat, no luck, so decided to get out of Texaskana and onto New Orleans.

I went down to the railroad tracks and, as I crawled through a sting of boxcars, I saw a colored fellow setting on a tie and eating a sandwich with another in a sack.

I said to him, “Say, [boy], how and where did you get anything to eat in this town? I've looked all over and can't beg, buy (being broke) anything to eat. Guess I'm the wrong color.”

This colored fellow had only one leg and a peg-leg. He said, “You're not the wrong color, you just didn't hit up the right places.” Then he went on and said, “Come here, where you can see [between the boxcars]. Y'all see that row of nigger shacks over there? Hit one of them.”

Then I said, “Why those people are broke worse than I am.”

“Don't make no difference. Hit 'em.”

So I went over to one of the row of clap-board shacks and knocked at the door. A large, good natured colored woman came to the door, and when I asked her what chance I had of getting something to eat, she said, “Come right on in, honey. Sho' you can eat here someplace. The white folks is feedin' my boy and nobody's boy leaves this place hungry.”

It was pork chops and bread (hot pork chops this time). It seemed everyone at pork chops and bread.

I went to the Sand-House (see: http://ghostdepot.com/rg/mainline/san%20juan%20branch/chama%20sand%20house.htm for info about sand houses) and lined up around the sand stove, and while the attendant shoveled sand in a funnel shaped hopper around the stove the sand, as it dried, sifted down hot on our feet.

Sometime during the night, while trying to sleep, some tramp came in the door and announced, “All aboard! Train going north, track 3 -- 13th car, open on the other side, horse in one end, flop in the other.”

All evening I had been listening to bums telling how they just missed getting on the chain gangs farther south. Bums chained together and made to work the roads with picks, sledge hammers and shovels. That didn't sound good to yours truly, with only a 115 lb, 5 ft 1 ½ inc frame to do it with, so when another guy had the announcement made again we went out to board the side door Pullman.

We found the accomodations satisfactory, and hadn't any more than settle down to sleep out the first lap of our trip back to Kansas City when the shack chased us out.

I don't know where the other fellow went, but I found an empty and was getting some sleep when some one went to pounding on the bottoms of my feet. Then he stuck his lantern in my face and says, “I thought I told you to get off of here!” I told him I did but got back on. Then he told me got get off and stay off.

I went up toward the engine and picked out some rods where there was 3, which make better laying than 2.

When the train started I waited for the rods I had picked and grabbed hold, running along side, just ready to swing on, when I ran off of a bridge. I must have injstinctively gripped the rod harder, anyhow I hung on long enough for my body to swing down and bump the extra long tie in the middle of the bridge and flip over on the other side. If my hands had let go I would have landed on the tops of a lot of old wooden piers of different heights, and have been crippled for life, or dead.

As it was I lit in what there was in the creek. When I opened my eyes I was sitting on the bottom with the water around my neck, overcoat just soaking and sinking around me and my clap floating down the stream in the moonlight.

I saw there was a few clap-board shacks near by [Rough sawn boards standing upright with flat lats over the cracks]. I knocked at a couple doors, where I was told to leave or they would set the dogs on me. About the fourth house I knocked at, there was a light (a coal oil lamp). Here a man came to the door and told me to come in.

There was a muslin or calico curtain across one side of the one room. He told me his wife and three children were sick; the reason for the light and he being up.

He made me strip and hang my under clothes by the fire, where they soon dried, and after I donned my clothes, drank some hot coffee and had another pork chop and bread sandwich, he gave me some pieces of fat pine and dry matches. I went back over by the railroad track, built a fire, and finished drying so I could curl up by the fire and sleep.

When daylight came, I saw that there was a large clap-board building which turned out to be a sawmill. On a table, which must have been 40 feet long, there was a log (about that long too) coming slowly toward me. The log must have been five feet through. They were squaring it up, just cutting off the sides, to make it square. The saw, which was close to where I looked in from the door, must have been 10 feet in diameter.

I wasn't looking for a job around there so I took afoot for Kansas City.

I think this is where, as I passed a small mountain, the track turned to the right and I remember, when I got to the Depot, about half a mile, I looked a way up to see the top of the hill.

The Depot agent was a woman. She sent me up the track to where she lived and I chopped up a pile of boxes and her mother gave me a couple pork chops . I tossed the sack with the bread in it over into a coal car, and up popped a bum's head, and he thanked me for “the lump”, as he called it.

Then, at Salisaw Indian territory or Oklahoma, I was walking with another bum when I said to him, “I think I'll ask that man up ahead where we could find a job to get something to eat.” He quickend his stride and left me walking alone.

I stopped the man and a chill went down my back: he was the law. I asked him anyhow, and expected to land in a bull pen cracking rocks with the others (all colored, I noticed), when he said, “Come with me.”

I went with him about 50 feet when he stopped and pointed over behind a row of buildings on the next street. He pointed out a pile of wood already cut in stove lengths and told me to go around front and go into the restaurant. There the cook told me to carry in firewood. I carried and stocked, at one end of the kitchen, a pile about 3 feet high and 12 feet long. Then he told me to go in and wash up, and sit down at the table.

The table was about 25 to 30 feet long. I sat and waited; pretty soon they flocked in and lined up around the table. When everyone seemed to be there, the waider, a young man, brought out a platter about 18 inches long stacked with steak and gravy. He brought 3 of these and put one at each end of the table, and one in the middle. Then he did the same with enormous bowls of mashed potatoes, and once more with bread, then a piece of pie for everyone. At the drop of the last pie, as if it had been the prearranged signal, everyone went to helping themselves. So, like “In Rome, do as the Romans do,” I did likewise. After dinner I asked the cook if he wanted me to help with the dishes or anything else, he said everything would be taken care of – I would be in the way.

At last, at least, I was out of the land of the pork chop. But not entirely in the clear. These people didn't know for sure whether they were in the Indian Territory or Oklahoma.

At Texaskana they hadn't made up their minds as to whether they were in Texas, Arkansas, or Louisiana – and even to this day, over fifty years since I was there, you can address a letter to Taxaskana, Texas, or Arkansas or Louisiana and they will get it just the same (and if you write it just Texaskana and put on a secret number that no one else but them is supposed to use, they will get it just the same).

Now, to get back to my journey to Kansas City. At some town, I don't know which, I decended from the side door pullman and wandered up the one street. I hit up the first hosue after the general store and a girl came to the door. I repeated the same old gag, about the work, and she went in to see what momma would say. She returned with a plate heaped up with chicken and dumplings, mashed spuds and a piece of pie. She shad the while and talked and listened to my tale of woe. That was my Christmas dinner that year.

At some other town I don't know the name of, I came to the door of my sidedoor pullman and was enjoying the crisp morning air, when I saw a hobo coming toward me down the track. When he came to where I was he asked me, “Been to breakfast yet, kid?”

And I said, “Ha, ha.” He said, “Come to breakfast with me.” Then I said, “ho ho” but I hopped off on the ground and followed him. Pretty soon he stepped out of the path along the track and picked up a piece of wire about 7 feet long. Then another time he salvaged a gallon can. He told me to gather some firewood. He built a fire with matches from his vest pocket.

Then, bending a hook in the wire, he went shopping. He went over to a chicken car, where he proceeded to poke in the wire under the grill and raked out five or six eggs.

After getting water in the can from a convenient hydrant, he got a paper sack from his vest pocked and poured coffee in the water. After the coffee got to boiling he dropped the eggs right in the coffee. After the eggs were boiled enough, he built a loop in the end of the wire and lifted the eggs out one by one.

When that was done he stepped out in the weeds again and brought back a couple tin cans to use for coffee cups. Then he again pulled out of vest another paper sack, this time with salt. And then he said, “Sit up kid, and enjoy your breakfast.” To me that was wonderful, the firewood right there, the cooking, utensils, the silver mug for the coffee. For truly, that guy was a Knight of Road.

The rest of the trip was taken up in trying to keep from freezing to death. Once I tried digging myself down in a car of wheat, that was like a cake of ice. Then on, under, around and through a pile of straw in a cattle car. Don't let anyone tell you that a straw or hay stack is warm. Even with newspapers around my legs, body and arms, I very near froze. Paper, as everybody knows now, is good insulation. Paper is a good idea but at that time I had never heard it applied to insulation.

Finally at Kansas City I landed in the Lower Bottoms again and went over to one of the coal fires built by the switch men to warm up once in a while.

There at the fire was a bum spread out on a grain door (a panel of 1 inch boards about 2 feet wide used to put across a boxcar door to keep the wheat in). I asked him where he got the matress and he told me over behind a near by tool shet, so I went over and got me one. I spent the rest of that night turning over and back again – one side freezing, the other burning up, and the snow silently building up around me kept the fire sizzling like a hot dog on a stick over the fire.

In the morning, back up town to take my chances with a hundred or so other barbers to get enough extra Saturday jobs for cakes and coffee.

I wore long-handled underwear, a suite of clothes, 2 or 3 shirts, coveralls, and over coat and cap. Razor strap usually over my shoulder, 1 razor in leather poke, shears, comb, hand clippers scattered around my apparel. Newspapers wrapped around legs and arms for evening and night wear. For a job, just peel off all unnecessary material and go to work.

My wife don't approve of my telling of my bumming trips, but it is really no worse than hitch-hiking today. In those days I worked in towns when the banker's kid, the doctor's kid, the grocer's boy, a rich farmer's kid, and a carpenter's kid would all board a boxcar and spend Sunday in another town.

And now, a movie actor, a novelist, or an artist might get out in the street in New York and hitch it to California, just for the kicks. And nobody's hurt.