A Boy's Christmas in the Great Depression

"Tears ran down my cheeks as I remembered a Christmas Day when I was the age of those children."

Born on a farm in Nebraska in 1916, Donald Newhouser was one of 250,000 American boys and girls who left their homes and rode the rails during the Great Depression.

Donald hopped freights from 1935 to 1938, following the harvests through the West, the hay fields in Colorado, potato picking in Idaho, apples in Washington, hops in Oregon.

"I was one of the few farm boys who got through grade school and high school. I got the only job I could find on a cattle ranch. It paid $10 a month and my room and board.

"After a few months I realized that such a job would get me nowhere fast. I resorted to the only means of transportation I could afford and that was riding the rails.

"I learned the tricks of the road. How to grab a boxcar doing 30 miles per hour, how to walk on top of a train doing 50, what not to ride on, and never, never get friendly with anyone.

"I've been shot at, held up and dumped off on the 'great divide" in zero weather but managed to catch the last car and survive.

"The one thing I enjoyed was the beautiful scenery, the mountain streams, waterfalls and trees. It helped me take my mind off the dangers and troubles I continually faced.

"I was sitting on a railroad track, somewhere in Montana, waiting for a freight train. I was nineteen years old. It was getting dark, and as I looked down at a village below, I saw a Christmas tree lit up in a window and children playing around it. Tears ran down my cheeks as I remembered a Christmas Day when I was the age of those children."

Donald's story is one of 500 interviews in Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression by Errol Lincoln Uys, the poignant record of the children who lived the hobo life in the wake of the Crash of 1929.

Visit the website:  Riding the Rails