The Film & More
Enhanced Transcript
JIM MITCHELL: We thought it was the magic carpet you know, - romance - the
click of the rails.
RENE CHAMPION: And the sound of the whistle, the mournful sound of the train -
it really pulls you.
JAMES SAN JULE: I was running into something that I thought was adventure.
For the next couple of years I was a homeless kid riding freight trains.
MUSIC - JIMMIE RODGERS "TRAIN WHISTLE BLUES":
"Whoo - hoo...
Every time I see that lonesome railroad train
Every time I see that lonesome railroad train
It makes me wish I were going home again."
RIDING THE RAILS
A Film By Michael Uys and Lexy Lovell
JOHN FAWCETT: 1935, I expect it was. I was only 16 years old.
PEGGY DE HART: I was 15 years old. I was real excited. I had two dollars and
a half in my pocket.
RENE CHAMPION: I was young, I was 16 when I started. I was also well brought
up.
GUITAR WHITEY: One day when school got out - it was the month of June, in
1934, me and another guy caught our first train out. There was about twenty
guys in the box car and they had to help us up 'cause I couldn't even reach the
floor.
"...I got the blues so bad
I ain't got a dime
And I don't know what to do.
Yodelee- hee- ee...
I'm weary now and I want to leave this town
I'm weary now and I want to leave this town
I can't find a job
And I'm tired of hanging around.
Who - hoo...
NARR: At the height of the Great Depression, there were 250,000 teenagers
living on the road in America. The country's economic collapse had destroyed
everything in their young lives. Their fathers had lost their jobs; they'd
been evicted from their homes, even their schools went bankrupt and closed
their doors. Like the millions of adults roaming the country between 1929 and
1941, thousands and thousands of boys and girls left home in search of a better
life. This is the story of why they left, how they struggled to survive, and
how their experiences shaped their lives.
MUSIC - JIMMIE RODGERS "TRAIN WHISTLE BLUES" CONTINUES:
"With the black smoke rolling
rolling from that old smokestack..."
JIM MITCHELL (Left Wisconsin home in 1932, at age 16): I remember the morning
it happened, I was working uh, down in my shop before going to school. My dad
came home and it seemed strange. The first time in my life I ever saw my father
cry. And he said, "I lost my job. I don't have any work." And, boy, that was
devastating.
JIM MITCHELL: They had now stripped him of his pride. Even though he was
nothing but - he put pieces of metal in a machine that went clunk andthat's it,
that's what my dad did. But he had his pride and he wanted to take care of is
family, and it was getting so he couldn't, he couldn't. And so as far as I was
concerned, it weighed in on you, and it bore down on you so hard that you said
hell with it I'm gonna get out of here. And the quickest and easiest way to
get out was go jump a train and go somewhere.
MUSIC - DOC WATSON - "WALK ON BOY"
JIM MITCHELL : And I left a little note on the pillow and said "I'll write."
"I was born one morning
The rain a pouring down
Heard my mammy say to my pappy
Let's call him John Henry Brown
Walk on boy
Walk on down the road
Ain't nobody in this whole wide world
Gonna help you carry your load
CLARENCE LEE (Left Louisiana home in 1929, at age 16): I wanted to stay home
and fight that poverty with the family. But my father told me I had to leave.
It was very hurting, very badly, but he meant I had to go. But I didn't have
it in my mind to leave until he told me, "Go fend for yourself. I cannot
afford to have you around any longer."
I left my mammy and pappy
Just about the age of ten
Lord I got me a job working on the levee
Toting water for the hard working men
Walk on boy
Walk on down the road
Ain't no one
In this whole wide world
To help you carry your load
Walk on boy
RENE CHAMPION: Emigrated from France in 1929, left Pennsylvania home in 1937,
at age 16) I was raised in what would be called today a dysfunctional home. I
was frequently beaten, beaten up for things which today would mark me or make
me to be considered as a battered child.
RENE CHAMPION: But I must say also I've always had a kind of a yen for
wandering and I think it was a combination of my unhappiness at home plus this
desire to roam,(SYNC) both of those things are the things that drove me to my
hoboing.
Walk on down the road
Ain't nobody in this whole wide world
Gonna help you carry your load
PEGGY DE HART (Left Wyoming home in 1938, at age 15): I was helping my dad
milk and I was getting pretty cocky, and I thought as long as I had to work
like a man, I ought to be able to talk like one. And, so I snuggled up to my
cow one night on my "T" shaped stool and started to milk her and she swatted me
in the eye with her dirty tail and I got up and whopped her one with my stool
and cussed her out and my daddy came across that aisle like a wind and hit me
up one side of the face and down the other and said, "Don't ever let me hear
you talk like that again." And I said, "I'll leave home." And he said,
"You'll be back for supper."
PEGGY DE HART: And there was this girl called Irene Willis and she wanted to
go to Issaquah to see her parents and she was going to hitch-hike so she asked
me to come along. And I thought that was a great idea considering the
conversation I'd had with my dad.
Walk on boy
Walk on boy.
COMMISSIONER HUDSON: And now Clive tell us about yourself.
CLIVE: Well, I'm from South Dakota and my home is in Rapid City - a very small
town and I've got a girlfriend there and the reason I'm in this large city is
because she turned me down because I didn't jhave a job to show her good times
and she turned to someone that could.
HUDSON: And now Charlie will you tell us where you came from and how you got
here and what your purpose was in coming?
CHARLIE: Well, I came from Louisville, Kentucky, came on a freight train, and
for adventure.
HUDSON: For adventure? Most everybody that I know that comes here is looking
for a job.
CHARLIE: Well, I'm different.
JOHN FAWCETT: I ran away from home three different times and I always left a
note on my dad's desk in his study, telling him not to worry.
JOHN FAWCETT(Left West Virginia home in 1936, at age 16): My dad was a doctor
so in the Great Depression years I didn't even hardly know there was such a
thing because we never had it hard. So, I certainly didn't run away from home
because of home life. I just ran away from home - why do boys run away from
home? For adventure, I guess...
CHARLEY BULL (Left California home in 1929, at age 18): You couldn't catch the
freight train usually in the yard unless it was real late at night and you
spotted where the bulls were, that's the railroad police, and if you knew that
they weren't on your trail, you could catch one slowly as the train was moving
out of the yard. But generally speaking, you have to go just outside of the
yard, therefore you have to get the train on the run.
BEGIN MUSIC - DOC WATSON - INSTRUMENTAL - "GOING DOWN THE ROAD FEELING BAD"
PEGGY DE HART: The detectives - the railroad detectives were patrolling with
lanterns and a rifle up and down the tracks. But when that train started and
it gave a - you know it always jerks loose and when it did that, this whole
group of men just rose up like one person and rushed to that one door.
CHARLEY BULL DEMONSTRATING HOW TO GRAB LADDER: You're running along and you're
trying to match your speed with the speed of the train and you get a hand-hold
here first and you swing yourself around and you're still running and you get
two hand-holds. Then is the first time that you lift your foot.
PEGGY DE HART: And I was the first one there and somebody grabbed me by the
nape of the neck and the seat of the pants and pitched me into that thing.
CLARENCE LEE: It was a good feelin' to be on one, really ... with that cluck,
cluck, cluck, cluck, you hear that sound as you go.
CLARENCE LEE: And the shakin'of it you know, and the cluck sound when the
wheels hittin' those joints. That's one of the things that I always thinks
about... You gonna feel good just to hear that train, the whistle blow, you
feel good when you get on it, you know. 'Cause you didn't have to walk, you
just gonna get there, and you gonna try to better yourself.
NARR. : By the early 1930s riding the rails became an epidemic, even though it
was dangerous and illegal. In 1932, the Southern Pacific Railroad threw half a
million transients off their boxcars, many of them teenagers. In 1933, Warner
Brothers produced the movie, Wild Boys of the Road warning young
people about the dangers of riding freights.
Road kids scream: "Tommy!"
GUITAR WHITEY (BOB "GUITAR WHITEY" SYMMONDS Left Washington home in 1938, at
age 16): Well I think "Wild Boys of the Road," kids loved that movie. If you
see a movie like that showin' kids travelling on trains, well that put the idea
in your head. Well I could do that too. I wouldn't mind doin' that. I'm not
gonna get my leg cut off like that kid did in the movie.
GUITAR WHITEY: And like they say, you ride a freight train one time and you're
hooked and I became an addict.
GUITAR WHITEY SYNC - "ALL AROUND THE WATERTANK"
"Well I haven't got a nickle
Not a penny can I show
Get off , get off you railroad bum
And he slammed that boxcar door..."
He put me off in Texas...
GUITAR WHITEY: I nearly was killed on my very first train ride. As it picked
up speed, the plank started to vibrate like a spring board throwing us up in
the air and all we had to do was hang onto that one grab iron. And she was
going faster and faster. And all I could think of was I shouldn't have got on
this train. And if I lose my grip I'm gonna die. And what will my mother
think?
MUSIC - JIMMIE RODGERS' "WAITING FOR A TRAIN" aka "ALL AROUND THE WATERTANK"
"All around the watertank
Waiting for a train
A thousand miles away from home
Sleeping in the rain.
Yodelee-ee-oo..."
PEGGY DE HART: It was absolutely full of men. We were the only women. And it
was evening, the sun was just setting. We sat down in the door and I was
swinging my legs and Slim slapped my shins and said, "Hey, keep your feet down
or you'll be jerked off by a switch and that can jerk you right off into
eternity."
CHARLEY BULL: You could ride on top of a freight car and then you just had to
be careful. If a train is going sixty or seventy miles an hour and hits a
curve and you're walking and your back's to the turn and you don't see it
coming - a little tiny turn can throw you right off the train. A lot of people
have been killed like that. They don't know.
JOHN FAWCETT: It was 6 below 0 when I ran away from home the first time. I
can only imagine how my mother felt.
JIM MITCHELL: Oh, hell I don't think I was twenty miles down the road riding
in the blind of the car and it was cold and miserable. Hell, I knew right then
I had made a mistake.
NARR: Being on a freight was full of unforeseen miseries. In one moment hoboes
could be thrown off a moving train by armed railroad detectives; in the next
they could be suffocated by the smoke trapped in a tunnel, as one survivor
Maurice Ayers recalled:
NARR. READING LETTER: "I looked up to see the train enter a tunnel. The smoke
overwhelmed me and I couldn't breathe. I panicked and crawled to the top of a
boxcar. When I came to, the train had stopped at a water tank. I was
violently sick, coughing up black coal smoke. I coughed it up for a year
afterwards."
JOHN FAWCETT (WORKSHOP LOCATION): It was around midnight when our train pulled
into the big passenger station Ann Street Station in Parkersburg, West
Virginia. And the train hadn't even stopped, and there was a gun and a
flashlight in my face, right up there in the blind. And so, the bull told us
to get down off there onto the platform and he took us, one on each arm, and
walked us down the station platform and all these people getting on and off the
trains. And I don't remember ever being so humiliated. This is at midnight.
JOHN FAWCETT: In ten minutes why we were behind bars. My first impression was
the awful odor and stink. "The brute" as they call him was the man - most
jails are like that - there's one person that runs the jail. Mick and I were
both brought into his cell the day after we got in and we had to strip down,
take our clothes off, prove to "the brute" that we didn't have any money belt
or something like that. And he asked us if we had any money. And we said,
"Yeah, we did" because by that time we were scared to do anything else. So he
says, "OK, take off your shoes and let's have it." So anyway, that's where our
six dollars went to. (Laugh)
PEGGY DE HART: Napa, Idaho, August 3rd, 1938. Dearest Mom, Just a line to let
you know I'm OK. The police picked up Reen and I last night and put us in a
cell. We sure made use of the cots. I hope they turn us loose soon so that we
can go again. This is the third time they've picked us up. They all think we
are runaways. Fooled, eh what? Love and kisses,
Peggy Eaton.
NARR: Sleeping in jails and avoiding the bulls was a rough existence and some
runaways went back home when they'd had enough. But this option could run out
when the Depression caught up with their families.
GUITAR WHITEY: My father had a security business where he sold stocks
and bonds and things and uh, he was doin' real well up until about 1938, at
which time he lost everything - lost his business, couldn't even keep his house
going and so my aunt let us live in a little cabin up in the hills rent free
while my father was trying to start another business - which he never did do.
He never earned another dime as long as he lived. And so we went from middle
class gentility right down to scrabble-ass poor. Overnight. And I was the
logical bread winner, so I had to go out on the fruit tramp and ride freight
trains and earn a little money.
NARR: Teenagers who were new to the road had high hopes about where their
journeys would lead them. Some tried to earn a little money and send it home.
For others, riding the rails was a passport to adventure. The freights would
take them out west where they would become cowboys, or to the big cities where
they would ship out and see the world.
JAMES SAN JULE (Left Oklahoma home in 1930, at age 17): I was seventeen years
old. My adventurous mind said `'I want to ship out.'' I read all kinds of
exciting books about people who did that - Richard Halliburton, Ross Simpson,
and some others. And I tried to get a ship out of New York.
(COMMISSIONER HUDSON NARR V.O.): One of the very unfortunate things in
connection with the Depression is the fact that so many people have left their
homes to look for jobs in other places.
HUDSON SYNC: My advice to all everywhere is not to come to New York. There
are not enough jobs here to go around and it is very much better for all to
remain in their own homes with their own friends and with those who can help
them in their time of trouble and distress.
JAMES SAN JULE: I never did ship out. And I lived down in a subway kiosk for
four months, stole food from the Washington Market. This was the days of
Herbert Hoover. Young people had no support whatsoever, none, zero. You were
totally 100% on your own.
NARR: Homeless and without jobs, kids who came to the cities had to turn to
the missions or the Salvation Army.
JIM MITCHELL: These missions were place to get a free meal and some of them
even had a place where you could sleep for the night so long as you sat through
the sermon. You sort of felt ashamed in a way. I was going there because I
wanted something to eat and they were preaching to me because they wanted to
save my soul - which probably needed saving.
NARR: City missions and relief agencies were overwhelmed by the number of
young transients coming to them for help. In an effort to send teenagers back
home, the authorities were tougher on them than they were on older
transients. Relief stations gave adults six meals and two nights' lodging, but
a teenager only got two meals and one night's lodging.
CLARENCE LEE: You didn't know where ya was gonna find a job. You'd say,
"Well, I'll go to such and such a place, I'll get a job. That was just out,
you just didn't - people just be walking just like cattle, you could see them -
heads bouncin' along - goin' out tryin' to look for jobs and there wasn't any.
MUSIC - JIMMIE RODGERS - "STRANGER THROUGH YOUR TOWN"
"I was a stranger passing through your town
I was a stranger passing through your town
When I ask you a favor, good gal, you turn me down
Yodelee-ee-o..."
NARR: City relief was so inadequate that most kids preferred to stay on the
move between small towns relying on the charity of farmers and housewives,
drifting into the hobo life.
GUITAR WHITEY: You had to really be on the bum, asking at back doors for
handouts. A handout was somethin' they would give to ya in a sack to take you
know, they called it a "lump" also and a "knee-shaker" is when you would sit
down on the back porch and they'd bring ya a tray of sandwiches or somethin' to
eat and a "sit-down" is when they would ask you to come in and you could eat
with the family.
CLARENCE LEE: If they was white kids they fared better, if it was black ones
you did not. Some of them would turn you down and some didn't want you on
their premises to go ask for nothin'. But a white one was treated much better.
They might let them stay in a house with them, but me, I could sleep in a barn
with the mules and the hay.
JOHN FAWCETT: You know I was hungry all the time, and I wasn't used to hunger.
I'd never been hungry before, dreadfully hungry. Sometimes two, three days
without anything to eat. Nothing, you know. Getting food from a restaurant
there's kind of a technique you learn, you go walk back and forth in front of a
restaurant or cafe and look for a man on a stool usually at a counter and you
buzz right in there and speak right up to the waitress: "Have you got any work
to do in exchange for something to eat? And if you do get turned down, one or
the other of these people that's beside you, there's a chance they will pipe up
and say, "It's OK, lady, give the man his breakfast" or "give him a cup of
coffee and I'll pay for it." And, then you're home free for the time, you
know.
JIM MITCHELL: You'd start talking with kids, kids your age, sometimes you'd
start talking with them. I was cutting the lawn once and there was a perfectly
nice girl, you know and I started talking with her and her mother called her
away. Boy, that really hurt, you know 'cause I, listen, I'm as good as she -
you know or anybody, you know. I'm not a bum. But after a while, people would
let you know that you were a bum, you know, and so...
RENE CHAMPION: You don't establish relationships. Certainly not with women.
The women in the towns where hoboes passed through didn't want to have anything
to do with them; we were viewed as bums. We smelled like bums, we looked like
bums, we were dressed like bums.
NARR: Towns which were struggling to take care of their own residents could be
actively hostile to hoboes.
MUSIC - SONNY TERRY AND BROWNIE MCGHEE - "I'M A STRANGER"
"I'm a stranger here
Just blowed in your town..."
CLARENCE LEE: My worst fears was bein' shot by some farmer who didn't want you
around. Because if dark catch you and you on their property they just might
shoot you.
MUSIC:
"Because I'm a stranger
Everybody wants to dog me 'round..."
NARR: For African-Americans, travelling in the south was especially dangerous.
Lynchings were still considered part of local justice by many Southern whites,
and a young black transient suddenly could find himself in deep trouble.
CLARENCE LEE: I was leavin' from Baton Rouge to go to Denham Springs,
Louisiana, and this man made one stop in between, he had a small station place
and somebody got on the train and was talking to the conductor and he says,
"Well, that boy has to be put off here. They're goin' to lynch him. See there
has been a rape between here and Denham Springs, and he fits the description."
So, he put me off right in the middle of the swamp. Probably saved my life.
"Going to write home to Daddy
Send me my railroad fare..."
NARR: Being a homeless migrant was considered a crime in itself. Vagrancy was
punishable by prison or hard labor.
"And if he don't send it,
I don't mind walking there."
NARR: To avoid being arrested, young transients slept in temporary camps set
up by hoboes along the outskirts of towns. The camps were known as
"jungles."
GUITAR WHITEY: A jungle is just a little transitory place where you can camp
while you're waiting for your train.
GUITAR WHITEY: And they were in little groves of trees where somebody would be
sitting over a fire or maybe had his bedroll out andup in the branches of trees
would be hanging things like mirrors so you could shave. And sometimes even
razors.
JOHN FAWCETT: Quite often in hobo jungles, there's residents in them, old
jungle buzzards as we used to call them, that lived there for weeks or months
at a time. And, you quite often get permission from them if you want to do
something. "Hey, I want to wash my clothes. Is that OK down there?" And he'd
say, "Yeah, well, go downtown and bring us back some cabbage and you can do
whatever you want. You can have some of the Mulligan tonight." That's the way
it worked.
CHARLEY BULL: I was usually assigned the job of bringing the money thing. I
had to go and offer to work at the Safeway store. And the man would say, "Well
yeah, you can come and clean up out here where the trash is and clean all this
up," and he says, "What do you want?" And I said, "Well if possible sir, I'd
like to get a can of coffee." He said, "OK, OK. You clean all that up." I
said, "We need a can of condensed milk too and maybe a pound of sugar." He
said, "Well, all right, all right, all right." And so it was almost tantamount
to begging, but I would tell him what we really needed and he would find enough
work for an hour or two for me and I would come home with the coffee.
INQUIRING CAMERAMAN: And now we're going to give you a real inside view, an
actual interview in a genuine hobo jungle. You fellows come a long way?
HOBOES: Chorus: "Yeah."
"Montana."
"Texas."
"Texas."
"Washington."
"Pennsylvania."
"Montana"
"New Jersey."
"New York."
INQUIRING CAMERAMAN: What are you doing out here, bud?
BOY: "That's my business, partner."
INQUIRING CAMERAMAN: How 'bout you?
BOY: "By special invitation."
BOY: "Out here for the climate."
INQUIRING CAMERAMAN::" What about you, son?"
BOY: "I'm just riding."
NARR: Jungles offered shelter, but many recall how dangerous, they were for
young travelers.
LETTER READ BY NARR. : "These three fellas started working a con game so I told
them to leave us alone. One of them jumped up and gouged me with a big long
pocket knife and then they took off. If the wound in my chest had been a
quarter of an inch deeper I would have died right there." - Ben Fowler
LETTER READ BY NARR.: "This camp had two or three old men with their "boys" and
they waited on the boys hand and foot just like they were queens. I being
young and off the farm was approached by them a number of times." - Keith
Weaver
LETTER READ BY NARR.: It was a time when a man could get killed for the shoes
he wore, no matter what condition they were in."
- Gillson Tallentire
JOHN FAWCETT: It didn't matter which direction the train was going. Just
because the guys in the jungle tell you one night "No use going back east to
Minneapolis, man I just came there was from there - there's nothing there."
But when that train came by people got on and went back there because you feel
like when you're in those kind of desperate straits that anything is better
than just sitting in the jungle, complaining or getting hungrier. You got to
get out and move.
NARR: Teenagers who traveled through Depression-era America saw a country in
turmoil. For many, it was a brutal education.
JIM MITCHELL: Probably the most devastating thing was seeing whole families
travel. We ran into a family once, there was a mother and two or three
children. And we found out that just a couple days before the father had been
killed about two hundred miles down the road. They had gotten onto the box car
and he was trying to get on and he slipped and fell. And this poor man was
killed and his family was all alone and she was goodness heading for where.
JOHN FAWCETT: Some of them were awful looking, I mean in real terrible
condition, because there's a lot of people on the road that were dreadfully
near starvation. Okie families dispossessed of their farms, you know, in the
midwest.
NARR: The Depression and the terrible drought of the Dust Bowl had forced four
million people onto the road. Young hoboes swelled this growing army of
migrants looking for seasonal work. Most headed west to California.
MUSIC - INSTRUMENTAL - "VASTOPOL" - ELIZABETH COTTEN
GUITAR WHITEY: It was all Okies, Arkies, Texas and whoever, you know. We'd
start in strawberries and work clear on through apples, and beans, hoeing hops,
all kind of things 'til potatoes in the fall down in Tulelake, California, and
end up shaking walnuts. So, we'd run the whole gamut, maybe six or seven
months and I would have had enough money to buy groceries to see the family
through the winter.
NARR: Young people looking for work had several strikes against them. They
were inexperienced and faced competition from adults who often had children of
their own to support. And young migrants were usually paid less than adults
for the same work.
CLARENCE LEE: I was doin' a man's labor not child's labor. And I had somebody
at home I was thinkin' about tryin' to go back and help. I figured I was a
man. 'Cause I was helpin' to put somethin' on the table before I put my feet
under the table.
NARR: The Depression pushed prices so low that some crops were almost
worthless. Young workers learned how desperate their employers were when they
tried to collect their wages.
NARR. READING LETTER : "Once I worked for man who wanted me to unload a coal
car. I stood up there and threw down the coal. I worked all day. He gave me
two tomatoes. In South Dakota I worked all day in a wheat field. End of the
day the farmer handed me 15 cents. I gave it back to him. Told him if that's
all he could give me for a day's work then he should keep it because he must
need it worse than me." - George Rhoads
JOHN FAWCETT: I rode the freight trains to Little Rock and then I had to walk
all the way from Little Rock to Marshall, Arkansas - about a hundred miles. I
got a couple short rides by hitch-hiking. But, I want to tell you about
Marshall, Arkansas, if I can do it justice. Because it was a small Ozark
mountain town of maybe a thousand or more, but it was a county seat with a
court house in the middle and a block away you're out in the country again.
And I spent the whole day just standing around that town square, listening to
people talk, mostly farmers in overalls -: poor hard scrabble farmers just
hearing how life was like for people on the real edge. They talked about how
tough life was and I had never heard people like that talk and what they talked
about. I was hearing about conditions in the country that seemed to me to be
very awful, but I was hearing it from the people themselves, not from guys
that were disconnected from society like hoboes, who weren't home anymore, and
that maybe were just exaggerating, these people were talking about the way
things are, and I think that had more impression on me than anything else on
that trip in that this was true. This is the way life is for people.
MUSIC - WOODY GUTHRIE - "THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND"
"As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me..."
JIM MITCHELL: I ran into two types. One that firmly believed in the American
system. By God, this is gonna work and the others were, honest to God, I
swear, Marxist Revolutionaries. They wanted to start the revolution now. I
was a kid, I didn't quite understand, I sort of knew a little, later on it all
started to sink in. We don't want to overlook the fact that this country was on
the brink of hell. We were looking and searching for anything to get us out of
this mess. Communism looked very, very attractive to people. We are going to
share everything and we are all going to be one great big happy family. It was
a lot of baloney, we weren't, but we believed it.
JOHN FAWCETT: Either on the trains or in the jungles, you do get to talking
about what this means in a broader sense, the social struggle. Why does it
have to be this way? : I can remember being aware of the difference between
the working class and the ruling class in society - to put it in the terms
that I use today.
"A voice comes chanting
And the fog was lifting
This land was made for you and me..."
NARR: Although teenagers on the road witnessed strikes and riots, social
upheaval did little to change their lives as hoboes. They were far more
concerned about their day to day survival.
BEGIN INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC "PEGGY'S LAMENT"
PEGGY DE HART:I didn't know when we left home to go on this trip to Issaquah,
Washington that my partner was already three months pregnant. I don't know how
she carried that baby because of the tumbles we took and the way we lived and
how we ate. It's a miracle to me that she carried that baby.
JIM MITCHELL :Being on the road was a humiliating experience. And it was -
for want of a better word - carefree, and yet you were going nowhere, nothing
was happening, there was no direction to your life, you were just drifting.
CHARLEY BULL: I was young and I felt nothing could defeat me, but some of
these men, you could see they had become defeated.
CHARLEY BULL: The experience on the road was tougher for older men because
they had been unemployed for a year or two or three years and it did appear to
be really hopeless in many, many cases.
JAMES SAN JULE (WALKING IN PARK): There wasn't much camaraderie on the road
that I remember. Everybody had his or her own problem and they seemed to be
all inward.
RENE CHAMPION: This road reminds me of many experiences that I had while
hitchhiking out in the west: a rancher would pick me up on the highway, give
me a ride, and turn down one of these dirt roads, and then about five or six
miles off the main highway, say, "Well here's where I turn off to my place" and
drop me off.
RENE CHAMPION : And the worse part of it sometimes it would happen at night and
there's no traffic whatsoever and I would have to spend the night out here.
And it's a terribly lonely feeling when you're in the wide open spaces. It's
beautiful and wonderful during the day, but at night time for miles and miles
you see no light, some of the worst feelings of loneliness that I have ever
experienced in my life were in situations like this.
JAMES SAN JULE :The road itself was loneliness. I'll never forget sitting in
that east Texas oil field one day when I wasn't working - my mother sent me a
birthday cake. It probably was my eighteenth birthday. And by mail she sent
it, I took it up on the hillside, I still remember, took this box with the cake
in it, the cake was kinda squashed from being in the mail, took it up on the
side of this hill and sat eating this birthday cake, crying my eyes out.
CLARENCE LEE : On the road I got homesick, lot of nights layin' in the dark,
total darkness, in a big empty house or barn. I got homesick. Some of it
hurts now. (He cries.)
BEGIN MUSIC - "HOBOES' LULLABY" SUNG BY WHITEY
"Go to sleep you weary hoboes
Let the towns drift slowly by
Can't you hear the steel wheels humming?
That's a hoboes' lullaby.
Though your clothes are torn and ragged
Though your hair is turning gray
After you've spent a lifetime seeking
You'll find happiness someday..."
JIM MITCHELL: You had to do something with your life. You couldn't just roam
around like a damn dog eating out of garbage cans. And that's about what you
were, you were a damn dog roaming the road. We took up with the
carnival for awhile, my buddy and I, and we ran into a guy and he was talking
to us. He wanted to know where we were going and what we were doing and we
said, "We might stay with the carnival" and he said, "Nah, you don't want to
live with the carnival, that's no life for you kids," and then he told us about
a thing called the C.C.C. camp.
JIM MITCHELL: Well you go back home and Roosevelt's starting this thing and
you can go off to a C.C.C. camp and I said, "What the army's running this
thing, (he spits) I'm not having any army guys push me around."
ARCHIVAL NARR AND MUSIC: Thousands of jobless boys jump at the C.C.C. offer of
a decent living and money to send home in return for their labor.
NARR: Young transients who could still provide a home address and get a
signature from their parents were able to qualify for the Civilian Conservation Corps, where they could work for six months of food and shelter.
ARCHIVAL NARR & MUSIC: Within a few months 240,000 raw non-descript lads
are pouring into 1200 camps all over the country. Opinions differ on the
C.C.C. as an American institution. Some point with alarm to its huge drain on
the federal treasury; some fear it as a potential New Deal fascist army, but
there is no debate on the value of the job the C.C.C. boys have done to date
for their country and for themselves.
JIM: I was probably such a hard worker that -
BILL: (Laughs) Hard worker!
JIM: You couldn't stand me setting such a bad example-
BILL: Listen, Jim, you'll never get way from your good-luck charm name that
you got - Goldbrick. What was the other name they had for you?
JIM: Mitchell the Moaner.
BILL: Mitchell the Moaner. You'd moan about all the problems you had.
JIM: Now there, there you are, Bill.
BILL: Yeah, I'll be darned if I ain't, and all shaved up too, ain't that
nice?
JIM: And here I am.
BILL: It's hard to tell what became of all these guys here.
MUSIC - INSTRUMENTAL "THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND"
JIM MITCHELL: There was a wonderful social mixture in the C.C.C. -- social
compost if you want. You felt good about yourself because you fit and you were
able to do your job along with the next guy that's what gave you confidence.
At last I could bring some help to my family. I could send them home
twenty-five dollars a month. You know, they could rent an apartment back then
for ten dollars a month. And I could keep five dollars a month to blow away
any way I wanted to. To this day, I can go and see parks that we built. It's a
living legacy. You didn't have a living legacy on the road.
NARR: The C.C.C. lasted for nine years, offering kids like Jim Mitchell a way
out. It was not available to everyone, however, and most young transients had
to find their own way off the road.
BEGIN FIDDLE MUSIC - "CARROLL COUNTY BLUES"
PEGGY DE HART :We got into Soda Springs, Idaho on a Saturday night and the
Henry Stampede was in full swing. And, that was real exciting. But that night
Irene, had decided to start a relationship with one of these cowboys. And I
wasn't interested in that sort of thing. And the next morning, I got up and
confronted her and said, "Come on, let's go," and she said, "No, I'm going on
with the boys to Sun Valley to the next rodeo. Come on and go with us." And I
said, "No way, I'm going home." And so I was really frightened to walk out on
the highway by myself. I was really frightened. The next ride I got was with
a couple of maniacs. They drove like crazy down that canyon and drove up
behind a hotel. As we got out of the car, he said, "You go around and go up to
room so and so, I'll be up after while." I said, "OK." So, I walked chalantly
- nonchalantly around the corner of the building and then I run as fast as I
could down towards the railroad tracks. I was trying to hunt a freight to get
out of there, you know. One ride took me across the mountains and clear into my
own town of Glendo. A neighbor was in town and gave me a ride home. So, I was
home in time for supper.
PEGGY DE HART ::I was lovingly greeted, I was never scolded, nobody ever
questioned me. I was glad to be home. But it was still hard times.
JAMES SAN JULE :I surprised my father as he was driving into the driveway when
he came back and he was angry. It startled him so badly that his first
reaction was one of anger. I'll never forget that. It was a bitter, bitter
time. : All I was thinking about was getting out and on the road again. And I
finally left and uh, instead of going east this time, I went west.
JOHN FAWCETT When I came back and I finished my senior year in high school,
believe me, that senior year in high school was a troubled year for me. I saw
teachers and heard teachers say things and I wanted to just go up and knock
them in the face. I was asking questions that were embarrassing for teachers,
you know, about why this is going on. And one of my teachers said "We're not
here to talk about things like that, I'm here to teach you geometry." You
couldn't ask a social question, or talk about people that are laying in the
street, right in your own home town - which there were.
MUSIC - INSTRUMENTAL - "FIELD SONG - CHANGED MY LIFE"
JOHN FAWCETT :That trip on the road in 1936 changed my life, and changed my
life in the way that I view the world that I live in.
NARR: By 1941 the Depression was over, and a generation of boys and girls had
spent their adolescence on the road. They went on to join the
army, find jobs, and eventually have children of their own. But it was their
time on the road which has had the greatest impact on the course of their
lives.
NARR. READING LETTER: "When I was on the road I looked in a shop window and saw
this dirty looking guy. It was me. I thought I was a complete failure. I
never overcame it. I'm 76 years old and still feel it." - Earl Matthewson,
Seldovia, Alaska
NARR. READING LETTER: "After World War II, I worked as a metal worker for 42
years. I missed 5 days of work in that whole time. I learned that when you
get a job, hang on to it." - Ben Fowler, Fremont, California
LEXY: John, do you want to do this again?
JOHN FAWCETT: Do what?
LEXY: Hop a freight.
JOHN FAWCETT: Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah! Damn right. Oh yeah. You never get
over that you know. It's dangerous, that's why it's fun.
CLARENCE OUT BY TRACKS
CLARENCE LEE (Laugh): No, I don't want to ride one now. I don't wanna ride
one now. I wouldn't want to do that again for nothin'! That was days though,
good gracious.
GUITAR WHITEY: Truth to tell, I've ridden much more since I've retired than I
ever did as a kid. Because now I'll ride maybe ten thousand miles a summer.
GUITAR WHITEY AT FREEDOM FARM LOCATION: And my wife says, they'll say "Where's
Bob?" "Oh, he's, he's on a trip, he's traveling." "Oh yeah, how does he
travel?" She says, "By train." And they all think it's by passenger train.
TITLE CARD OVER WHITEY: Bob Symmonds (Guitar Whitey), 72, joined the C.C.C. and
later shipped out as a merchant marine. He says he'll stop riding the rails
when he can no longer climb up onto a boxcar.
"I'm gettin' tired of ramblin' 'round
Think I'll retire, settle down
'Cause this ole tramp life
This ole hobo life is gettin' me.
TITLE CARD OVER PEGGY: Peggy De Hart, 71, married at 16, raised a
family, and ran a business. She worked as a missionary in Trinidad and is
active in her church in Seattle, Washington.
PEGGY DE HART: I would still like to ride a freight train, but I know it's not
safe anymore. Well, you know, I don't feel any older now than I did when I was
fifteen. I look in the mirror and see this old lady and don't recognize her,
you know, because inside I'm the same age that I was back then.
CHARLEY BULL: As much as the romance might have been there, it was never as
good as Richard Halliburton made it out to be. I wouldn't do it again now for
$100 day, I probably wouldn't even do it for $200 a day. 500 - you might talk
to me. (He laughs.)
TITLE CARD OVER CHARLEY: Charley Bull, 84, was an Army reporter during World
War II. He became a teacher and is a member of Veterans for Peace.
I been a hitch-hiker
Been a railroad bum
Now come my time
My time has come
That this ole tramp life
This ole hobo life is gettin' me.
TITLE CARD OVER JIM: Jim Mitchell, 77, left the C.C.C. to go back to high
school at age 19. After college and the Army, he made promotional films for
the auto industry. He lives in Jasper, Minnesota.
As I was walking in the rain
I heard a whistle of a train
And a voice down deep inside
Says one more ride's
Your middle name.
TITLE CARD OVER JOHN: John Fawcett was a merchant seaman, fighter pilot,
and longtime union man. He worked for civil rights in Mississippi in 1965, and
became an anti-war activist. John died in Seattle, Washington, at the age of
77.
TITLE CARD OVER RENE: Rene Champion, 73, joined the Free French Forces in World
War II. He drove one of the tanks that liberated Paris. He is a professor of
anthropology at the University of Denver.
RENE CHAMPION: The sight of that train, the sight of it, the smell of it, the
sound of it made me cry. And I'm probably going to cry again, because when I
saw that train leave, I said goodbye, I was really saying goodbye to a freedom
that really somehow meets the innermost me, but yet it's no way to live,
certainly not - not now.
TITLE CARD OVER JAMES: James San Jule, 81, arrived in San Francisco by
freight train. He became a union organizer on the waterfront. In 1937, he
co-wrote a pamphlet with John Steinbeck about migrant workers in California.
Only one thing I did was wrong
I rode those freight trains
Just a little too long
It ain't no good life
But it's my life, right or wrong.
TITLE CARD OVER CLARENCE: Clarence Lee got off the road when he found a
job at a dairy farm in Baton Rouge. With his earnings he was able to buy his
parents out of sharecropping. At 80, he works as the groundskeeper at St.
David's School in Richmond, California.
So I'm gettin' tired
Of ramblin' round
Think I'll retire and settle down
'Cause this ole tramp life
this ole hobo life is killin' me."
GUITAR WHITEY FINISHES PLAYING SONG
MUSIC - BROWNIE MCGHEE AND SONNY TERRY "POOR BOY FROM HOME"
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