Something about a family gathered around a table inspires good talk and reminiscing. So it was on Thanksgiving Day. One story told by my father-in-law needs to be passed on to his young descendants. I've forgotten why but the subject of railroads and hoboes came up. Adam related a story of the time he hoboed, too. Stories of this kind usually harken back to the Depression with its hard times and was the case in his tale. He and others jumped on a freight train headed to Fargo where the Red River Valley and its hoped for potato-picking wages drew them. My ears perked up when he talked about the bull who would come to kick them off at layovers. I remember from my reading of history that many of these railroad employees carried clubs and used strongarm tactics to clear a train of vagrants. Adam said when this bull came around they would get off, wait by the side of the tracks until the train started rolling again, and then quickly jump back on. Many of the details of the journey have been forgotten, but when they go to Fargo he remembered, "There were more of us there to pick potatoes than there were potatoes." He had counted 27 hopeful laborers on the train he rode. After hanging around 3 or 4 days, he caught another train back home.
Yesterday we continued the Thanksgiving celebration at my parents' place where Dad added his anecdote to the hobo story. He talked of the stockyards that stood in Sheldon at one time, and bums hung around there. His dad Charles would go there and hire a couple of them at harvest time, but after working only a day or two, they'd hop another freight train and be off with those few dollars in their pockets.
Railroads were important then, and a good deal of the literature about them was expressed in song. Jimmie Rodgers' song - Waiting for a Train - opens with this line: "All around the water tank waiting for a train, a thousand miles away from home sleeping in the rain." The highly optimistic song The Big Rock Candy Mountain carries the line where "the railroad bulls are blind." Johnny Cash's song Folsom Prison Blues sings of the prisoner who hears the train whistles blowing and wants to be on one. More examples would start to bore a reader since it would take thousands of words to list them all.
