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Show freights" made frequent stops to take on or unload freight or received attention from the "car knockers" at division points. Father would never attempt anything illegal, customary though it might be. So when a switch engine was assembling a train to include our car, I sat out in the open doorway on a bale of hay innocently in plain view. Father was finishing some business about the trip and ordering necessaries sent to the store. I enjoyed the ride to and fro in the freight yards, even the jolting halts and the uncoupling or adding of cars. Consequently a "railroad dick" or detective had numerous opportunities to see me. At one pause he accosted me thus: "You can't travel that way!" When Father finally joined me the detective gave him the same warning but more forcibly. So Father had tcfcnake a sudden unexpected trip to a Los Angeles suburb to the cottage of my Aunt Nettie where Mother and El Vera were staying until the time came for the journey via passenger train to Nada. He hurried back for fear the freight might pull out before he climbed aboard our immigrant car. Father later recounted how he milked Tripsy and watered her and Frank at every division point, Victorville and Las Vegas and Caliente, if I remember aright. And I missed all the fun, including my share of the boxes of delicious lunch Mother'd prepared. Instead I slept on a pallet in my aunt's house and become a nuisance to them all. Mother had to take me downtown on the trolley to buy clothes more suitable for life in the city and on the passenger train than the rough garb I'd donned for the freight train trip. Those immigrant cars!-I heard exciting tales from boyhood friends even some girls, who'd saved fares by stowing away in the cars on the ride to Nada. They told how they'd eluded the detectives in close shaves during the ride, how they'd enjoyed the food packed for them by their mothers, how they'd been lulled to sleep each night by the lilt of the wheels clicking over the rail joints. |