This story has haunted me many years. I do not recall where I first read or heard it. I do not know whether it is true or fiction or who wrote it.
They lived in a small frame house, unpainted, close beside the railroad track. They were black. The father was a feed-mill hand in the nearest town. He unloaded sacks of unground grain from farmers’ mule-drawn wagons and trucks, loaded sacks of ground and mixed feed back on them, and did whatever else the mill owner asked him to do. He walked along the track to and from work six days a week, three miles each way. Neither the father nor the mother could read or write but the son could. He was a diligent student.
The son was the oldest of the four children, the others were girls. He was coming twelve soon. The mother took in washing and ironing.
The son watched the passing trains. More and more the freights bore hobos, their shins and feet hanging out the open doors of boxcars or they rode perched on top of cars. Some smiled at him and waived, others just stared with gaunt faces, mostly sad, but not all. Those who waived bore smiles. None were fat.
The year was 1933, the month September.
The boy’s birthday fell on a Saturday. The father had thought long and hard about what he would say to the boy on his birthday. He dreaded the coming of the day, but he was certain what he would say was best for the boy and the rest of the family.
The birthday arrived. The mother fed the boy hoecakes topped with molasses given her by a laundry customer for his breakfast. As he was finishing, his father said, “Come outside with me, I need to talk with you.”
They walked to the shade of a large old white oak, from a bottom limb of which hung a car tire by a rope, used by the children as a swing. They sat on stumps the children sat on as they waited their turns on the tire-swing. The son enjoyed swinging his sisters, watching them laugh.
“Son, it is time for you to leave home, find your own way through your life. You should walk to the top of the grade, climb aboard a north-bound freight. My only advice is, go north or west” (they were In Mississippi).
“I am sorry, but I believe this is best for you, and for your mother and sisters.”
He did not say, “and for me,” but he thought it.
The son knew his father believed what he said was true, and he also believed it to be true. He was not frightened by what he faced, but he was saddened by thoughts of not being with his mother, sisters and, yes, his father as well. But for a year he had been dreaming of riding the rails out of Mississippi.
He placed his second pair of jeans, underpants and shirt made by his mother from a feed sack in another feed sack, threw it over his shoulder, kissed his sisters and mother, shook his father’s hand with a strong grip as he had been taught, looking him in the eyes, and struck out on foot up the track. He did not look back.