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 raveling across the country was something I
had in mind that I wanted to do for a long time. I'd heard of other people doing it, so I knew it could be done. I
wasn't discontented at home at all. It was just an adventure that I wanted to go on. I felt I would be going to school
or going to work soon enough and that it was the last chance I had of doing anything of that nature. I had never even been out of
the state of Minnesota. I think I told my mother what I was going to do and where I was going, but I didn't mention anything
to my dad. My dad was not a very understanding fellow. I didn't talk to him much.
I'd been milking cows for a blind man in town. He had charge of a herd of
milking shorthorn cattle, and someone had talked to my dad about getting me to milk those cows for him because he was blind
and apparently couldn't do the work. So I went over and milked the cows for them. There were quite a few cows -- eight or
ten of them. I would milk them and then separate the cream. This fellow's wife was a classmate of my sister Frances.
She was a very kind soul. I think she married the blind man out of kindness. When I told them I was leaving, I said if
I had any money coming, they should give it to my mother. I left town the next day. It was June 1, 1933.
I didn't tell my father that I was leaving and I caught a ride out of
town with a cattle hauler who was a blood enemy of my father's. My dad had a very poor sense of humor and this guy was a
great kidder. He used to kid my dad a lot, and my dad just hated him. My dad would have been angry if he had known
that I took a ride with this guy. I got a ride to Owatonna with him. From there, I went south and he went north. That
was how the trip started.
It was the day after I graduated from high school, and I took off on an
adventure to hitch-hike across the country to San Francisco.
Down in Iowa I was picked up by a fellow who was bumming his way across
the country with a car. He had a young kid with him, younger than me, and they had a little operation where they stopped
traffic and gave a song and dance about being in need of funds to get to a job they had at the next town. They told
people they needed money for gasoline. They got quite a bit of money that way. I thought it was wrong, yet I was kind
of frightened being away from home and it was a means of getting by, so I joined in with them.
We got to a town in Wyoming where we stopped for gas one night, then we went
outside of the town and parked and slept for the night. As usual, we got up in the morning and started flagging the cars.
It just so happened that we flagged down a fellow who was in the station when we filled up with gas, so he knew our story
was phony. He called the sheriff. The sheriff came out and frisked us for weapons, and this fellow, our leader, had a switchblade
in his boot. The sheriff confiscated it and told us to get out of town and stay out of the area. So we got out of there.
That frightened me. These two fellows were from someplace in Kentucky, and the older one had been a guard in a prison down
south. He was a tough operator. So when a car came along, and I was doing the soliciting, I described the situation I
was in and asked the driver if he would take me with him to the next town. He agreed to do it, and I went back and got
my grip and said goodbye. I was afraid of them, really. So that was the end of that.
I hitchhiked as far as Salt Lake City and stayed there overnight. When
I got into town towards evening, I went to the police and asked them if I could stay in the jail. I don't know where I got
that idea, but I think I might have heard it from some of the drivers. The police were obliging, so they put me in the
jail and I slept there. When I saw the bed, I was afraid of all the vermin that might be in it, so I laid on the concrete
floor and slept there. I didn't get much sleep.
One time I was hitchhiking and a lady stopped. She said, "I passed you
so many times and wanted to pick you up, but I promised my husband I wouldn't do that when I left on this trip. But I've
got some groceries left over that I want to give you." So she gave me a bunch of stuff. I remember there was some
pickle relish that I used as a sandwich spread. I never went to a restaurant to eat. I had a little money, but I always
went to the grocery store, and I'd buy a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk, and that was my lunch or dinner or breakfast.
When I got into Nevada, hitchhiking became very slow, so I decided to hop a
freight train. There were a lot of people riding the rails during the Depression, drifters going from one place to another.
They'd get kicked off and jump right back on again as soon as the train would move.
In Nevada, there were no open cars, so we sat up on top. There was
always a danger of falling off if you went to sleep up there, so I took my belt and ran it through one of the slats on the
walkway on top of the car. I buckled myself to the slat, so in case I fell asleep, I wouldn't roll off the train. Later
I got on a car of farm machinery with tractors and that sort of thing. I climbed up on a tractor seat where I could sit and relax.
That evening I started to doze off, but I work up hearing the steam engine puffing and could tell we were going up a grade
by the sound. I could smell the fresh air after crossing the desert in Nevada. It was a treat after so long to smell it so
fresh and nice. As the night went on, I could sense we were in the mountains. When day broke, I saw we were in a canyon.
It was the Feather River Canyon in California. The air was so fresh and beautiful and the mountains were so gorgeous, it
was like waking up in a kind of paradise. A big dream. As we went along in this canyon, we could see fellows with sluice
boxes panning for gold in the river.
It was quite a feeling for this country kid from the sticks who had never
been away from home to come into a place as beautiful as California. The things that impressed me first were the palm
trees. I thought I was really in the tropics when I saw a palm tree! We went through Sacramento, and ended up on the
train that went to Oakland. This train went on a ferry across San Francisco Bay. In San Francisco, I jumped
off and went to find my sister Frances' home. She and George Windhurst
were newly married and they were living in an apartment on Franklin Avenue in the Fisherman's Wharf area. I appeared at
Frances' house all black as the ace of spades. I must have looked like the bum I was, so dirty and black. I surprised her
when I came in. I took a bath immediately.
I tried to find work in San Francisco, but in 1933, that was nearly
impossible. Everybody was out of work. I'd go out and answer the ads. At the Shell Oil Company, for instance, there was a line
at least three blocks long in answer to one ad. I did get in for an interview occasionally, but never landed a job.
Then some friends of Frances and her husband, who were from our home town, but who lived in San Francisco, gave me a
job for awhile. We did floor tiling in office buildings, and I commuted across the bay to a job site in Oakland. I made
a few dollars, but that didn't last too long. I felt a little strange about living with my sister and not paying my way,
so I decided to go back home. I lived there for about two months.
When I took off to go home I went by ferry over to Oakland. From there, I
went out on the highway and started hitchhiking. The first person to pick me up was a fellow who was gay. He had a big
fancy car, and I'm sure he had money. He told me he was a hotel owner in Sacramento, and that if I wanted to go to Sacramento
with him, I could get a job there. My sister had filled me in on what the gays were like because there were quite a few out in
that area. He started getting overly friendly, rubbing my leg and so forth, and I moved over in the car as far as I could.
He frightened me. Then he said he was going on a side trip of the highway someplace to look at some property he was going
to buy, and he'd take me on a lot further, if I'd go on this side trip with him. I told him, "No, just let me out." I
was glad to be free of him.
I had decided to take a circuitous route back home because I wanted to see
more of the country and go up into Washington and Oregon. On another ride, when we got into the mounntains in northern
California, the driver dropped me off, then he took a bridge across the canyon in the opposite direction. I thought it was kind of
nuts of him to leave me stranded like that. Here I was in the mountains and it was cold up there. I walked up the road but
there wasn't any traffic at all. Eventually, I came to an old motel with a row of cabins. This was in 1933. I don't know
how those cabins happened to be so old, but they were abandoned. I asked someone who came along if it would be all right if
I slept in one of them. He said, "Sure, go ahead." So I bunked in a cabin overnight which was alongside a rapid stream.
There were torrential rapids and they made a lot of noise, but I found the noise soothing and it put me to sleep. It was
quite an unusual atmosphere. I managed to get out of that remote area and get into Oregon.
When I came to the Columbia River, there was a rapids where the Indians
were spearing salmon. That was quite a thrilling sight to see. The Indians were out in the middle of the rapids where the
water spread over a large area so it was shallow. They would stand out on the rocks in the middle and spear fish as they
went by. The fellow I was riding with wanted to buy a salmon from them, so we went into the shack where they were smoking
the salmon. They had a fire in the middle of the dirt floor and a hole in the middle of the roof where some of the smoke went
out. The rest of it stayed inside. They hung the salmon in the top of their cabin and smoked it that way. Seeing all this was
an outstanding experience for me. Later on, I think they dammed that river they had to put in ladders, little shoots for the fish to
swim up.
After that, hitchhiking became slow again, and I took a railroad car out of
Washington. One time I ended up in Pendleton, Oregon. It was during the Pendleton Roundup, which is a big celebration. I
didn't get to see much of it, but I saw some of the people walking around town. Leaving Pendleton, I was on a carload of
lumber. I was sitting on one end of the car and an old hobo came along. He said, "Sonny, I wouldn't sit in there. That
lumber will shift and it will push you off." So I took his advice and got out of there. Lucky for me, because I watched
that car later, and sure enough, the lumber had shifted and it would have been a disaster.
I went through Glacial National Park on a load of gravel. There were an
awful lot of bums on the car which had the only available space. One guy fell asleep sprawled out on the gravel and another
guy got a couple of pieces of lath boards and made a cross by this guy's head. He was a big joker.
When we got up in the mountains, another bum got on the car. He started talking
about a place down the line where you could get free food. One of the fellows who apparently had a chip on his shoulder about
not being employed took exception to this fellow insinuating that he should solicit free food. So he took this guy and threw
him off the train. The last I saw of him, he was rolling down the mountain.
Later on, we had been traveling for about 48 hours and I hadn't had anything
to eat. The train finally stopped in a little town and I went into the first café I saw -- which seemed to cater to the bums --
and I had pork hocks and cabbage. I remember it was "25 cents -- all you could eat." Holy smokes, I did justice to that!
Ever since then, I've liked pork hocks and cabbage.
The trip through Glacier Park was beautiful. I had a camera with me but I
didn't take many pictures. It was a box comera. There wasn't time to take many pictures from the cattle trains. If you got
on one, you could be sure of getting somewhere in a hurry. They didn't make many stops because they were anxious to get the cattle
to their destination before they lost any weight. The last train I got on buzzed right through the Dakotas to Minneapolis and
St. Paul. I got off at Minneapolis near the depot and caught a streetcar to my sister Martha's
house. Again, I was black and dirty and in terrible shape. When I arrived, nobody was home. I was familiar with the house
so I climbed in through an open window. In those days they had a side-arm heater in the basement and you had to light the
heater to take a bath. So I heated the water and took a bath and was all set by the time they got home. They were so
surprised to find me when they arrived. That was the end of my adventuresome trip.
When I got back home, I worked in the blacksmith shop for awhile and at home
and then I heard there was state aid available to go to college. I applied for state aid and was accepted at St. Mary's
College in Winona. So during the mid-term, I got enrolled there. That was my first real experience in living away from
home. I was a little bit lonesome at school and probably a little bit naive and dumb, too. I was the object of a lot of
kidding and they pulled a lot of tricks on me. Looking back on it now, I know I ws naive and easy to fool. But that didn't
last too long.
I got used to hitching rides on trains on my trip to California. When I was
in college at Winona, on the weekends I'd hop on the passenger train. (I wasn't satisfied to go on a freight train; I wanted the
passenger train.) I would jump on behind what they called a tender. It was a space just behind where they stored the coal
on the engine -- sort of a slanting spot you could climb into. I'd jump on there and ride to Claremont. The train stopped
for water there. So I was able to get free rides back and forth. It used to hurt me to pay for transportation after I got
used to riding the trains and hitchhiking.
I had to sweep the halls for my board and room. Occasionally I swept some of
the rooms in the dorm where the other students lived. Just to be a good guy, I guess. But it got to be a big chore. It
was a large place. One thing that made the job so hard was that this was in the middle of the big dust storms the country was
experiencing. The dust bowl of the 30's was a terrible event. People today don't realize what a tragedy it was and how it
affected the whole country. The air was so full of dust it was like a bad fog. You could close a house up, and the dust
would seep in. It seeped into the public buildings, too, of course, and I had to sweep that up. That was quite a chore. It
didn't affect the soil here in Minnesota as much as it did in Kansas, Oklahome and Missouri, but the dust was in the air clear
from Kansas to Minnesota, so it was a pretty bad thing. The reason for the dust was the drought. People weren't so
conscious of the environment then. I used to work for a farmer in the summertime and his corn was stunted because of no rain,
so he cut it and fed it to the cattle. It was real tough for farmers. The drought was country wide but it seemed to affect
Oklahoma and Kansas the most. It destroyed everything. They were completely wiped out in Oklahoma. That was the story of
Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.
I was only at St. Mary's for one term. For some reason or other, the
money from state aid didn't come through for me. I found out later that if I had stuck to my guns, I could have gotten it.
But I was timid and didn't push to get it. I wrote my brother Ed and asked if he could
help me. He was in Milwaukee at the time. He wrote back, "Forget about St. Mary's College, and come down here and
work for me." So I did that, and my formal education ended there.
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