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Show BY "SIDEDOOR PULLMAN" OR OTHERWISE Chapter VI Father bustled about, happy as a sagehen building a new nest. The spring and the New Venture on the Escalante frontier were in his blood. He-and all of us were starting afresh on virgin land. He contracted with the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake for an "immigrant car." This was an empty boxcar, what a hobo used to call a "sidedoor pullman." He bought a bay gelding named Frank, a tall sweet-tempered hard-working boy who pulled our new surrey but could double as a saddle horse. Father added a yellow-brown Jersey cow with one twisted horn. She gave rich milk in abundance. Father named her Tripsy because, he insisted, sometimes when he'd finished milking her she'd thrust out a hind leg and trip him with his foaming bucket of milk. He built rough stalls for Frank and Tripsy in the immigrant car. Also he had piles of baled hay stowed away in the car with two barrels for water for the animals. He bought tools and implements and he had these hauled with our furniture to the car. He set up two camp cots, then spread them with bedding, one for him and one for me, because he counted on my going along to help care for the livestock and do other small tasks. He'd had heard that homesteaders customarily took one or two of their youngsters along in the car, for their assistance and to save on railroad fares. What he hadn't understood was that the railroad regarded this as illegal taking of stowaways. We learned later that the custom was to hide the stowaways in empty piano boxes or other places of concealment. Nails that appeared to secure the top or side boards would not be driven into the wood below but would be bent over, so that the "door" could be opened from inside or outside after the train got underway. The stowaways would hurry into the hideaway whenever a stop was made, and "local |
