Riding The Rails - Hardcover

Uys, Errol Lincoln

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1575000377 ISBN 13: 9781575000374

Publisher: TV Books, 1999

Synopsis

Through letters and photographs, profiles teenagers who hopped the freight trains during the Great Depression in order to find adventure, seek employment, or escape poverty.

About this title

Reviews

This erratic account of the 250,000 "boxcar boys and girls" who traversed the country during the Great Depression amounts to an oral history of the seldom-studied lives of teenage hoboes. Using material gathered for a documentary film of the same title (made by Michael Uys and Lexy Lovell, the author's son and daughter-in-law), Uys draws on interviews, letters and other fragments from thousands of former rail-riders who answered an announcement in Modern Maturity magazine seeking reminiscences about their lives. A number of anecdotes offer insight into the desperation that led teens to leave impoverished homes. A sign at a Louisiana cafe, for example, stated succinctly: "Dishwasher WantedAonly college graduates need apply." Jobs were so scarce that one 18-year-old climbed eagerly on a locomotive in Ohio after hearing there might be work at a Los Angeles hotdog stand. The poignancy of such moments is diminished, however, because the various episodes are hitched together like random cars on a freight train and the text takes on the aimless movement of its young subjects as they drift in search of a hot meal. The most accomplished passages frame the vicissitudes of hobo life within the larger context of Depression-era politics. For many former hoboes, New Deal programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps offered the only alternative to hunger, jail and degrading hardship. Most remarkably, perhaps, this book shows how the occasional generosities encountered on the road instilled in these wanderers a lifelong ethos of humility and compassion toward others. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

When Uys's son and daughter-in-law solicited reminiscences for a documentary film on teenagers' lives on the rails between 1929 and 1941, some 3000 people replied, often at length. Many looked back fondly on a time when they truly felt free: "There is no feeling in the world like sitting in a side-door Pullman and watching the world go by, listening to the clickety-clack of the wheels, hearing that old steam whistle blowing for crossings and towns." Yet the overall tone of their memories is somber. "You were always with people on the trains but...everyone on the road... was lonely." "Kids on the road didn't know how to play....We never thought about being teenagers. All we thought about was surviving." This is an elegantly presented and quietly moving collection of firsthand reminiscences, capturing a unique moment in American history. Uys, a veteran writer and editor, is the author of the historical novel Brazil. Enthusiastically recommended for all public libraries.ADavid Keymer, California State Univ., Stanislaus
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

JOHN FAWCETT -- 1936

John Fawcett's journey began on a freezing night in February, riding the blinds of a passenger train. It was to change the 16-year-old's life forever. The son of a prosperous ophthalmologist in Wheeling, West Virginia, Fawcett lit out partly for adventure, partly to rebel against the forced conformity of Linsly College, a boys-only military institute that he attended at Wheeling. His first road trip lasted one weekend. At the school year's end, Fawcett and a friend struck out through the heartland to Texas. His experience among the homeless and poverty-stricken in June and July 1936 made him a life-long fighter for the underdog and the oppressed.

"I hardly knew there was such a thing as the Great Depression, because we never had it hard. At Christmas my mom would take us kids down to a local settlement house, with baskets of food for the poor and their families. My Dad would send my older brother to do collections for overdue fees on Saturdays. Other than that, I'd no idea of what was going on in the country. We still had two automobiles. We went on summer vacations to the Eastern shore of Maryland. We lived the good life.

I went to public school for four years. Then my Dad sent my two brothers and me to military college. That's where he and his brother went. Fawcett boys attended Linsly and that was that. We got to wear a uniform, which was a big thing for the first year. Afterwards it got to be a bloody nuisance. By the time I reached high school, I hated the discipline.

Mom and Dad were good, loving parents, so I certainly didn't run away because of my home life. Why do boys run away? For adventure, I guess, because it's exciting and dangerous.

I ran away from home three different times. I always left a note on my Dad's desk, telling him not to worry. I can only imagine what my mother felt.

At about 11 o'clock that February night, I walked into the waiting room of the B&O passenger station. I walked onto the lighted platform, where people were standing around, and sauntered toward the front of Train Number 77. It originated in Pittsburgh and made a stop at Wheeling, then followed the Ohio River south to Huntington, West Virginia, 180 miles distant. I had a friend, who'd moved to Huntington the year before and wanted to visit him. Beyond that, I'd no idea where I would go or what I would do. I took a quick look at the blind behind the engine tender of Number 77. It would be an easy place to ride, with my back against the baggage car door.

I walked about 50 feet ahead of the engine and ducked behind a small building. I could see the railroad tracks in the glare of the locomotive headlight. I heard a hoot from the engine whistle and saw her big driving wheels begin to turn.

As the huge locomotive chuffed past me, I stepped from my shelter onto the snow-covered roadbed. I caught the grab-iron on the back of the tender with my gloved hand. My foot was in the stirrup and I was on my way!"

John's weekend dash for freedom ended at Huntington, when his friend's parents contacted the Fawcetts and arranged for him to be shipped home "riding the cushions." In June 1936, when John and his friend, Mick McKinley, 15, ran away, they planned to ride the rails to the Texas Centennial Exposition and afterwards find work as cowboys.

"Around midnight our train pulled into the big passenger station in Parkersburg, West Virginia. The train hadn't stopped, and there was a gun and a flashlight in my face. A B&O bull told us to climb down, took us one on each arm and marched us down the platform, between the people getting on and off the train. I don't ever remember being so humiliated. The bull took us to the Wood County Jail. In ten minutes, we were behind bars.

My first impression was the awful stink of confined humanity and stale urine. I hadn't known what the inside of a jail was like, but sure found out over the next four days. We had a cell-mate, Nick, a petty thief who had a good deal of street sense. He warned us to keep our mouths shut and not smart off to anybody. He told us about "The Brute," a prisoner who ran the jail. "He holds the Kangaroo Court," said our cell-mate. The Kangaroo Court was an informal procedure run by the inmates, the Brute acting as judge. "He'll have you over to his cell tomorrow."

At 7.30 a.m., a guard did the rounds with a kitchen worker, bringing a cart with breakfast. "Dreadful" is the best word I can think of for the food: a bowl of cold oatmeal, a slice of bread, a cup of bitter black fluid, which Nick told us was chicory. At noon, we would be fed lukewarm, tasteless soup, another slice of bread and a cup of chicory. The evening's fare was a half stew-half soup "slumgullion," as Nick called it.

At 10 o'clock that morning, the Brute's henchman came across the bullpen. "You take any money from these kids?" he asked Nick, who replied respectfully, "No, sir." The pug looked at Mick. "He get anything from you guys?" Mick's response was, "We didn't have nuthin' to take." With a surly look at both of us, he said, "We'll see about that. Kangaroo Court is on. Come with me."

The Brute was sitting on a wooden chair in his cell. Nick had told us that he was doing a year in jail for killing a man in a barroom brawl. "How much money did the jailer get from you last night?" the Brute asked. The jailer-judge who admitted us had "fined" us ten or ten days in jail. Mick and I had each produced three dollars and were told we would have to serve out the rest of our fine.

"How much you got left?" asked the Brute. "Three dollars," I replied. He asked Mick. "A dollar, maybe more," he said. "Take off your shoes and let's have it."

What a deflating experience! Mick and I had thought we were so damned clever hiding stuff in our shoes. The Kangaroo Court took all the money I had left: $3.79. There was yet one brief scene to play out. The Brute told us to strip to prove we had no money belts. Satisfied we had nothing more, we were dismissed and sent back to our cells.

Sunday evening brought an experience that lowered my spirits even further. About 7:30, the guards admitted eight or ten evangelistic church folk, who sang and prayed and extolled us to salvation before the fires of hell consumed us. I didn't need that. I just wanted something to eat.

Mick and I were in our cell on Tuesday afternoon when we heard the now-familiar clang of jail doors opening and closing. A voice reverberated through the hallway: "Kendall and Murphy coming out!"

We were lying on our bunks in silence, until Mick suddenly yelled, "John, that's us!" We identified ourselves and were told we were to be released.

Let out that afternoon, Mick and I both had fair success in knocking at doors and asking for food. Mick was the winner, bringing a chunk of sausage wrapped in a piece of oily newspaper. We went down to the west end of the B&O freight yards. A crossing guard pointed out the next train to Cincinnati. It was a hot shot, a fast freight, which we caught, reclining on the top of a box car as the train rumbled over the Ohio River. Mick and I smiled and shook hands, hearing the bark from the exhaust stacks and the wail of the steam whistle. We were free of the confines of Wood County Jail.

That evening I learned one thing for certain. When you are on the road away from friends and home, it is comforting and reassuring to be acknowledged and recognized by people along the way -- strangers though they may be. I saw people wave at us from their fields and from their porches and backyards as we went rattling past. There were so many unemployed and destitute people that I think they felt a kinship. We arrived at Chillicothe, Ohio about midnight. A large freight yard, we saw several figures in the dark, carrying flashlights or lanterns. Mick and I had met two West Virginia lads on the freight. We started running around the cars to avoid getting caught and lost Mick in the dark. The two lads and I spent an hour looking for him. It didn't seem like a good idea to go around calling his name, so we gave up. We found an unlocked caboose on a side track and spent a comfortable night inside, sleeping on the bunks. The sun was up when we rolled out and started walking up a street away from the yards. We'd gone a couple of blocks, when I saw two railroad men coming toward us. Walking beside them, smiling and talking jovially, was old Mick McKinley, who greeted us nonchalantly as you please. The railroad men invited all of us to coffee and pancakes! We loafed around the Chillicothe yards for a couple of hours, before a B&O fast freight came storming out of the yards. We leaped aboard and climbed to the tops for a scenic ride in the morning sunshine. Later, we arrived at the Mill Creek marshaling yards at Cincinnati. Wed lucked out again. We walked to an area close to the yards and spent an hour or two on what would become a never-ending quest for "a little work in exchange for something to eat." You always hoped a woman would answer the door, as women were more sympathetic to someone in bad straits.

It's hard at first for a 16-year-old to ask for food, especially coming from the perfectly safe environment that I'd always known. But you learn it in a bloody hurry, when you're hungry and haven't eaten for 24 or 36 hours. I never learned to panhandle --it was better to offer to work. "Is there something I can do? Got any errands? Chop some wood?" You don't feel that you're getting something for nothing. That's the way I justified it. Probably half the time you made that offer there was no work, but you got something to eat anyway. Later, we learned how to "put the bum" on restaurants. You walk back and forth in front of a restaurant and look for a man on a stool at a counter. Preferably, two men with an empty stool in between. You buzz right in there, plop down next to them, and speak right up to the waitress. "Have you got any work to do? I haven't eaten since day before yesterday."

Sometimes a waitress would slip a cup of coffee in front of you. The kicker is that if you get turned down, there's a good chance one of the people beside you will pipe up and say, "It's OK lady, give the man his breakfast. I'll pay for it." And then you're home free. It got easier every time. You knew what to say and not to be crushed if you were refused.

Another way to get food was bumming bakeries for two- or three day- old dinner rolls or donuts called "toppings." You get a sack of toppings and you've got a meal -- not a balanced meal, but it lasts you for a few hours.

I never felt I was treated with disgust by people when I put the bum on them. Sympathy, pity maybe, but never "Why don't you go to work?" Everybody in the country knew there was no damn work.

Some nights on the road, we slept in boxcars. It's quick and easy to find an empty boxcar in a railroad yard. Some nights we spent in hobo jungles. There'd often be old jungle buzzards, who lived there for weeks or months at a time. You'd ask permission if you want to do something: "Hey, I want to wash my clothes. Is that OK?" And the 'bo would say, "Yeah, well, go downtown and bring us back some cabbage and you can do whatever you want."

I remember sitting around the jungles sometimes all day long. When you miss a train there wasn't another until that night. Most of the people we saw were in their 20's and 30's, some older than that. There were probably more women than we recognized, because they didn't wear women's clothes. We saw Okie families dispossessed from their farms, heading west to California. Some were awful looking, in real terrible condition, and dreadfully near starvation. Many lacked the courage to go up to somebody and ask for something.

Every freight train had dozens, sometimes hundreds of people on the cars. It didn't matter which direction the train was traveling, it would be loaded with guys going east and going west and going south. "No use going back East to Minneapolis. I just came from there and there's nothing," a guy would say in the jungle. When the train came, people would get on and go to Minneapolis anyway. Anything was better than sitting in the jungle, complaining and getting hungry.

People usually referred to us as "kid", "Hey, kid, get moving there; you're going to get your leg cut off;" "Hey, kid, chop some wood for the fire." -- They called us kids and that's what we were. It didn't bother us. I think it made it easier, not rougher, because people respond to young children. We took advantage of that.

This is not to romanticize being on the road. Riding the blinds of a speeding passenger train is the quickest way to get killed in the world aside from being a fighter pilot. It is awful and dangerous. I was hungry all the time and I wasn't used to hunger. Sometimes two to three days without anything to eat. When you're active and moving, your hunger hurts physically."

John and Mick rode freight trains from Cincinnati southwest to Gosport, Indiana, where Mick met a young man whose father offered him a few days' work. The same individual told the boys his uncle owned a sawmill in Marshall, Arkansas, where they could find summer jobs. Their plan to attend the Texas Centennial Exposition temporarily shelved, John rode on ahead to Marshall. Only a week after leaving home, he crossed the Mississippi River at Thebes, Illinois. He made his way into Arkansas on the Missouri Pacific Railroad. He remembered the night he arrived at Little Rock, Arkansas, the night Joe Louis became heavyweight champion of the world. The next day, John traveled to Marshall, Arkansas.

"Marshall was a small Ozark mountain town with a population of maybe a thousand. A typical small American country town. A block away and you're out in the country again.

I checked at the post office, the general store and the barbershop. No one had ever heard of a sawmill near Marshall. There was nothing for me to do but to wait until Mick arrived.

My next move was to "apply for employment" at the barbershop. The barber was a kind old gent who gave me a dime for sweeping out the place. I spent my wages on a generous bowl of chili and crackers. After dark, I walked down to the railroad station, where I found an old baggage wagon. I climbed onto it and curled up for the night.

The romance of adventure was rapidly dwindling. I didn't like being all alone out in the country. When I was with other people on the trains or in the jungles, I didn't feel lonely or threatened. I felt excited at being part of something unique, even frightening, that was taking place in our country. What I was experiencing was the human tragedy of the Great Depression, of which I'd learned practically nothing at home.

The next morning I circled the town to see if I'd missed anything. What I really needed was to be around people. I spent that hot summer's day hanging around the town square. At any given time, 20 to 40 men, singly or in small groups, sat on their haunches or stood with their backs against the buildings, quietly talking or just putting in time. Most wore faded overalls and bore the dry, wizened look of men who spent their lives on hard-scrabble farms.

I listened to people on the real edge of grievous poverty and unemployment, talking about how tough life was. They weren't seeking sympathy. They were just talking to each other, sharing their ideas. There seemed to be a quiet desperation in their concern for the future.

Once or twice during the day, I was included in a conversation. "Where are you from kid?" When they found out I was wandering around the country, they asked me what things were like on the road. "Are the folks in the cities as bad off as we hear tell?"

I was hearing about conditions in the country from the people themselves, not from the guys disconnected from society like hoboes. These people lived in one place and had homes and children; they were talking about the way things are. This made more impression on me than anything else on that trip.

A man in the square suggested that I go to a camp meeting at a local church -- they served cookies and lemonade. The church was a block away and easy to find from the hymn singing and hallelujahs. I walked in and sat near the back. A girl about my age in a print dress came down the aisle and got right down on her knees facing me. I felt horribly embarrassed and self-conscious and, seeing no tables of food, I left as soon as I could.

It was beginning to rain as I walked down to the railway station. I found shelter on the old baggage wagon, which stood under an overhanging roof. I remember hearing the rain on the roof and being in a quandary of despair that so much was going on in life that I'd never learned about at home or in school.

It was still raining when I woke in the morning and pulled on my shoes, my hat and my jacket. I stood awhile under the roof with my hands in my pockets, looking down the tracks, and feeling sorry for myself. Mick might never come, and it's a cinch I'd starve if I stayed here. I decided I must leave Marshall and go to Texas alone.

Just then I heard a locomotive whistle echoing through the Ozark hills. My transportation was on its way! It seemed ages before the engine finally came chuffing out of the woods. Four cars back, a boxcar moved slowly toward me with a tattered gangly hobo hanging from the ladder, ready to hit the ground. It was none other than young Mick McKinley.

Standing in the rain, it took less than a minute to convince Mick that there was no sawmill and no jobs. This was starvation city and we must get right back on the train and keep moving. And we did.

At Eureka Springs, Arkansas, we caught a westbound freight, climbing into a boxcar with 15 to 20 people, including an Okie family with a baby that cried all the time. Hours passed before we clanked to a stop in the yards at Seligman, Missouri. A fellow went with the family to try and find a doctor for the child.

The same guy was in our car at 2 a.m., when we caught a freight headed for Fayetteville. The baby had diphtheria and had been taken to a hospital. There was much concern among those of us who'd been in the same boxcar. "Ain't a helluva lot we can do about it now," said the man. We all lay down to sleep as we rattled along in the dark.

When John and Mick reached Dennison, Texas, the two boys went up town to beg for food. They became separated and wouldn't see each other again until they were back in West Virginia. After looking unsuccessfully for Mick in the Dennison yards, John hopped a passenger train and rode the blinds to Dallas. He arrived at 6:30 on a Sunday morning. He walked out to the Centennial fair and climbed a chain-link fence to get inside the grounds.

I remember a feeling of exultation: "By God, I did it!" After three hard weeks of beating the road, I'd reached the fair. Hunger however, spoiled my visit. I had one hot dog all day, wolfing it down and feeling hungrier than before.

By the time I'd seen the fair, all I wanted to do was to go home and get my feet under the dinner table again. Having witnessed the masses wandering the country, it finally dawned on me that finding jobs as cowboys -- or any other kind of work -- was an impossible dream.

I sat on a bench at a bus stop in downtown Dallas. I had blank paper and an envelope which a lady had given me in Poteau a few days before. I wrote a letter to my mother telling her I was on my way home.

That evening, I walked over to the freight yards and caught a train to Greenville. I jumped off and got a timetable at the station. The "Katy Flyer," was due out of Greenville in an hour.

I waited at a lighted intersection. The barrier gates came down, with blinking red lights and ringing bell. I could see the engine of the Katy Flyer a hundred yards away. As the locomotive came by, I ran inside the crossing gates. I leaped for the ladder and swung up into the second blind. Homeward bound!

That was the longest ride I would ever have on the blinds of a passenger train: seven hours and 280 miles, as the Katy Flyer made its dash up into northeastern Oklahoma. It wasn't my hunger but the fear of falling asleep and tumbling between the cars that was my biggest problem. I stood up most of that long night in order to stay awake.

I was detected after daylight, just as the train was pulling out of Muskogee, Oklahoma. Suddenly, the door of the baggage car swung wide open. A surprised U.S. Mail agent stood looking down at me. It took him about one tenth of a second to unlimber his .45 and push it right in my teeth.

"Outta here, 'bo. Hit the dirt. Now!"

I stepped quickly to the corner of the car, grabbed the handrail and swung down. Minutes later, I was standing on a street in Muskogee. I felt faint from hunger and lack of sleep. I walked aimlessly along, until I saw a pawn shop and went inside.

I took my goggles out of my jacket pocket and laid them on the counter in front of an old man. I made a pitiful appeal, saying that I was trying to get home and hadn't eaten for two days. What would he give me for my goggles? I wore the goggles when riding the tops or in the blinds, but needed food more than protection from cinders.

The pawnbroker took the goggles, turned them over slowly in his hand. "I know times are hard, young man, but I can't give you more than twenty cents."

I could've jumped over the counter and hugged him, but I just said, "Yeah, well, that's O.K." I took the two dimes and scurried out the door.

Within minutes, I was in a caf spending my 20 cents on ham and eggs, potatoes, toast and coffee! I can still see half a dozen meals I had on that trip, because of what they meant to me at the time. That breakfast in Muskogee stands above them all because of its life-restoring quality. After eating, I found an empty boxcar just beyond the station, crawled in and fell asleep as soon as my head touched the floor.

About noon, I awoke to hear two switchmen arguing about the Yankees and Dodgers. An hour later, we were rattling through the Oklahoma countryside, arriving in Parsons, Kansas about four that afternoon. I walked up the main street and bummed a sit-down meal at a caf plus a sack of Bull Durham. Two meals and tobacco in one day. This was more like it!

In another hour, I was on a fast freight bound for Kansas City, where we arrived at one in the morning. At daylight, I walked across the Missouri River bridge to the Argentine yards. I was sitting on a pile of railroad ties, meditating on life, when an old gent came sauntering up to me. He had a bindle on his back and looked the part so I knew he was a brother of the road. We talked awhile, before he said he going to buy lunch. Did I want to come along? I said that I was "on the nut," meaning that I'd no money.

"That's O.K., kid. I'll spring this time."

That afternoon, my generous friend and I caught a freight headed east across central Missouri to Moberly. We arrived at six in the evening and went out on the town. I walked along the streets in a residential area a few blocks from the tracks. Looking in the window of one house, I saw a man sitting in his armchair reading the evening paper, and a couple of kids playing on the floor. Across the street, a woman was busy in her lighted kitchen, a man pushing a lawn mower in the front yard. I thought of my parents worrying about me.

It was getting dark when I went to look for my traveling partner, but didn't find him. A big locomotive came snorting by, leading a string of boxcars, and I climbed aboard.

The next day, I reached Decatur, where I grabbed a B&O hot shot headed east. It was a long ride but I had the satisfaction of being headed in the right direction. In the Indianapolis yards, the sun was well up, when I boarded a Pennsylvania train, but I was kicked off in the little jerkwater town of Bradford, Ohio. I went out on the highway and hitchhiked into Springfield. I'd been 24 hours without food and was glad to "score" dinner at a restaurant. I found a jungle under an overpass east of the freight yards. Three or four guys were lying on the ground with newspapers wrapped around their bodies. I followed their example, and collecting some "Hoover blankets," I managed to get a fair night's sleep.

I was 130 miles from home. I was homesick as hell! I finally leaped up onto a freight train around four oclock in the afternoon.

On through the night, we charged through the hills of eastern Ohio. No fear of my sleeping that night! At two o'clock in the morning we rumbled slowly across the Ohio River bridge to the Benwood yards at Wheeling.

I got in stride for the seven-mile hike to my home in Woodsdale. When I finally stepped up onto the front porch, I lay down in our squeaky old glider swing and fell asleep.

Mary, a maid who'd been with our family for years, came downstairs to begin her daily routine. That 4th of July morning in 1936, Mary got one helluva shock. Her yell woke me, as she leaned down to pick up the paper and saw a soot-covered fellow lying on the swing.

Mary went upstairs to mother. "You'd better come down and see who's here to see you," she said. She told mother that she didn't recognize me until I smiled. After my dad got up and shaved, he came to me. He put out his hand and said: "Well, son, you're kinda down to ring weight, aren't you?"

That's all my dad said, and I loved him for it. My parents never gave me hell. Maybe they should have, I don't know, but that wouldn't have changed me.

A phone call to the McKinleys revealed that Mick had gotten back the day before. Fate had been kind to us both.

When I returned to school that fall, my senior year was a troubled one. I was asking questions that embarrassed my teachers. I was hearing them say things that made me want to go up and knock them in the face. "I'm not here to talk about things like that," one teacher told me. "I'm here to teach you geometry." You couldn't ask a social question or talk about people lying in the street in your home town.

My parents wanted me to attend college after high school, but I received their permission to go to sea for a year or two. When I finally shipped out in an old tramp steamer, I found going to sea more of a drug than freight trains. You're in it every day, 24 hours a day, months on end. I realized I wasn't going off to college to be a doctor or lawyer. I didn't know what I was going to do, but fortunately I didn't have to make the decision right then.

In 1942, John Fawcett enlisted in the Army Air Corps as a private soldier. A year later, the boy who shivered on the blinds of a Baltimore and Ohio express, was piloting Spitfires over Tunisia, Sicily and Italy. He flew 182 missions and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1944.

After the war, Fawcett went to the University of Washington under the GI Bill, earning a degree in transportation -- a career he followed until 1965. In that year, he resigned his job and went to Mississippi, where he spent four months organizing voter registration classes. Fawcett participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery march led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In recognition of his volunteer work in Mississippi, he was awarded the Community Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

John returned to a second career at sea, serving for 14 years aboard Puget Sound ferries until his retirement. His life-long passion, which was shared by his wife, Ellen, was the human rights struggle. He'd joined the American Civil Liberties Union in 1953. He took part in anti-war activity, women's rights struggles and gay rights struggles. A Seattle delegate to the World Peace Congress in Moscow in 1973, Fawcett never wavered in his belief in the working class a call to arms a boxcar boy once heard on a journey that awakened his conscience.

"It isn't an exaggeration to say that my trip on the road in 1936 changed my life and the way I view the world I live in. I had a quick and fast education about how hard life was for millions of homeless and destitute people. I kept asking myself questions. "Is it like this all over?" "Why does it have to be this way when the goddamn guys on Wall Street have millions of dollars?"

I didn't see the suffering until I ran away from home. It would be a cold and unfeeling person who wouldn't be stunned and angered at the squalor of the streets and migrant camps. No one who hadn't been there could possibly know the damage to one's self worth, having to beg for food and work.

I thought that these conditions were a product of the Great Depression, but I learned that they are an integral part of the economic system of our country. A person has to get out into the world to find out how things really are.

How do we change the world? When I was 40 years old I thought I had all the answers. I knew exactly what the word "love" meant and how the world was going to be saved. I don't know anymore.

Edition details

• Publisher: TV Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1575000377
• ISBN 13: 9781575000374
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336