As I’ve probably said before “I was never a teenager”. My only escapade I suppose was when a group of us teenagers decided to some ‘hobo-ing’. It was on Easter and in April l938. We jumped into a box car when the wayfreight train had stopped at New Denmark Station, and we went as far as Juniper, N. B. where some of our older fellows were working. We didn’t have too much food, so we thought if we got really hungry, they could help us.
Juniper was a lumbering town, it had a large saw mill and employed a lot of men. They were working two shifts, and they had a big boarding house, or dining room area.
The fellows who were on the night shift would bring in their lunch paios, and have their breakfast, then when they went to bed the cooks would fill their lunch pail so that they would be ready for the night shift.
Some of our friends would give us their lunch, and they say that the other cook of the day shift forgot to make their lunch…then the cooks would fill their pails again, and that’s how we managed to get enough to keep us from starving.
I had a good place to sleep…it was on a sawdust chip pile, above the boiler room. It was nice and warm and there and there were no light there, so not too many people knew we were even there. I think we hung around there for about three days…and during the daytime, we would watch the sawyers saw the logs and all kinds of different work. But, when one of the supervisors caught us, and asked us what we were waiting for in this little used small building, one of the group piped up “we’re waiting for hot beans and sundown…that didn’t go over very big with him. This was in the morning about 10 a.m., and he said “look, the sun has already gone down on you guys and the beans aren’t ready, so get the h…. out of here!” Well, we had to walk about a half mile to the train station, and near the station, we were lucky enough to find a small horse stable. It was empty. At least we were out of the cold!
April was still cold that year, but it wasn’t too bad in this small stable, so we waited for about an hour, and then the train came to the station and stopped. This train didn’t have any empty box cars. All of the cars were refrigerator cars. They were keeping the fresh vegetables and other perishable foods from freezing. As each car was heated by charcoal heaters at each end of the car….so there we were!
There was only one hope that we might be able to get up on the locomotive’s hotwater tank. So, Guy Johannsen, who was with me, said “Doug, go and ask the engineer if it would be o.k. to do that?”…the engineer said: “young fellow, I’m blind, I can’t see a thing”. He was oiling some parts of the locomotive with a big oil can at the time..
I went back to the stable where Guy was waiting…and he asked me: “What did he say”…”he said he was blind and can’t see a thing”….then Guy said “then he won’t see us when we get on that water tank”. When the train was ready to leave, the engineer blew the whistle two or three times, that was when we made a dash for the locomotive. Well, the tank was nice and warm, but not too comfortable…and also it was dusty from the coal bin which was ahead of the water tank. We had to get close together and hung onto one another, as it was quite rough..and the tank had railings on each side, so we were safe enough, as the locomotive was really working hard.
Well, we were quite warm on our side(s) and back, but we found it was difficult to sit up, as we had nothing to keep the heat in…well, the fireman saw us an he could see we were really cold and shivering….(lucky again). He threw us a dirty old canvas which was large enough to cover us, and then we felt better.
The train stopped at a place called Longley, where we asked the fireman if they were going to stop at the New Denmark station…’No”, but he would slow down before we got there so we could jump off, which we did. We were close to Guy’s home then, so we went there, and I’m telling you, we were just about starved, as we hadn’t had anything to eat for breakfast, and it was about 3 o’clock in the afternoon.
I had to walk about a mile to our house…my mother was so glad to see me back, my dad was working in the saw mill at Veneer Siding, N. B., which was near to St. Leonard, N.B. So, he didn’t know about this: I guess mother never told him, because he would have blamed her for letting me go o such a trip!!
I actually went on another trip to the same place later on in the summer, but Irvin and Willie Larsen and Philip Hendricksen and another young fellow from home were on that trip and we took enough canned food for about three days!
