At the height of the Great Depression, 250,000 teenage hobos were riding the rails and roaming America. Some left home out of desperation and went looking for work and a better life, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles on the rumour of a job waiting farther down the line. Others left out of boredom; still others with a wanderlust and romantic idea of life on the road. The restless youth of these boxcar boys and girls, many who went from "middle-class gentility to scrabble-ass poor" overnight, is recaptured in "Riding the Rails". Based on an award-winning documentary, this book dispels the myths of a hobo existence and reveals the hard stories of a daring generation of American teenagers - forgotten heroes - who survived some of the hardest times in America's history.
Table of Contents
Introduction An Army of Children on the Loose Rugged Individualists When School Was Out "I Knew I'd Made a Mistake" The Wrong Side of the Tracks In Harm's Way Bitter Harvest A New Deal for Youth Catching Out Camelot Crashed and Burned There Was Never Any Money Go Fend for Yourself Scenery Bums Boxcar Girls Hopping Their First Freight The Interviews John Fawcett, 1936 Arvel Pearson, 1930-42 Phoebe Eaton DeHart, 1938 Hard Travelin' Face into the Wind Fellow Travelers Danger Ahead "See America First-Travel by Rail" Black Road Kids The Bulls The Interviews Rene Champion, 1937-41 Clarence Lee, 1929-31 Tiny Boland, 1934 Hitting the Stem Hoover's Prodigal Children Hungry Times "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum" The Kindness of Strangers Have Pity on the Boy A Good Place for a Handout Mean Streets In the Jailhouse Bughouse Hotel The Jungle The Interviews James San Jule, 1930-32 Jan van Hee, 1937-38 Clydia Williams, 1932-35 The Way Out Looking for work Fire Fighters Keep on Moving For Richer, for Poorer Vagrant Ambition Harvest Tramps Cotton Pickers The Tree Army The Last Ride End of an Era A Rite of Passage Lessons of the Road The Interviews Charley Bull, 1930 Jim Mitchell, 1933 Robert Symmonds, 1934-42
Errol Lincoln Uys is a renowned writer and editor. He was the editor-in-chief of Reader's Digest in South Africa and collaborated with James A. Michener on his South African novel The Covenant. Uys is also the author of the well-received novel, Brazil. He lives in Cambridge, Massachussetts.