Why did you take off, were you just wanting to run around or were there just no jobs?

No jobs or anything. This was before the Depression. My father knew the master mechanic on the railroad, so 1929 sometime he took me up to see him and get me a job. He said, "Yeah,"—he liked my father—he said, "I'll give him a job working fireman on a locomotive in the yards making up trains, see. And we'll keep him there six months and then we'll put him as a fireman out on the long runs." But he says, "There won't be an opening for a couple of months when a guy retires." Well, during that two months that Depression hit. And that ended my railroad career.

They had locomotive engineers on the passenger trains that had thirty-five years, thirty and thirty-five years of experience, that was laid off. No money to pay them.

Was there much, I don't know, violence or thievery among the bums?

Well, there wasn't too much violence. Everybody was broke, and was in the same condition. And I noticed even among the civilian people who were, you know, part of the land, who had roots—even they were closer. Seemed like the Depression made the people closer to each other. There wasn't near as much stealing, then. People was too proud to steal, most of them. And the ones that did, they went to jail, you know, and that got rid of them. But no, there wasn't much violence. Not too much. Not near like it was later, and of course today is something else.