My grandfather should’ve been playing catch in the backyard with his father when he was fourteen years old, or swimming in the town quarry with his friends. A fourteen year-old, no matter the time period, should be thinking about girls, sports, anything else besides day-to-day survival. But my grandfather, Bernard by name but simply Bern to his family and friends, was born in 1918, which determined that he would spend some of the most important growing years of his life away from home, working to support himself in the midst of the Great Depression. His story, recounted to me by the same body that experienced the worst depression in our nation’s history, made the things I had learned about the time come to life and lose their surreal quality. My grandfather grew up in Connecticut with two loving parents and three siblings: an older brother, Tom, and two younger sisters, Emily and Marilyn. The age gap between my grandfather and his brother was significant; by the time my grandfather had fourteen years under his belt, Tom was already a junior in college, making the family proud on a full scholarship to Columbia in New York. Bern felt as if he was constantly standing in the shadow of his brother since the day he became lucid of his brother’s intuitive intelligence and tendency to impress everyone around him. His sisters were only five and six years old, but Bern could only imagine the ways that they would make him look like the family slacker as soon as they grew up. Although his parents loved all their children equally, Bern put the weight of the family on his own shoulders and felt an unavoidable responsibility to help his parents support themselves. The day after his fourteenth birthday party, Bernard left his home. He faked sick to stay home from school, and after his father left for work and his mother took his sisters out to the grocery store, he wrote his parents a note. When he finished writing all he could think to say, he placed the note on the kitchen countertop table next to the bread, where he knew his mother would find it. Bern stared at the little sheet of white paper with granite-grey scribbles appearing as blemishes on the pure white; his handwriting never had been very neat. His mind raced thinking about the heavy implications that this weightless piece of paper carried. He imagined his parents reading it, reading about how he was leaving because it was best for the family; his mother crying, his father going up to his study and staying there for hours, his sisters still wonderfully ignorant and confused at their parents’ distress. As hard as it was for Bern to leave his family, he knew that his departure would make life easier for everyone. The salary his father made as a clerk at the country store downtown was barely enough to support all three kids at home and his brother in college; if Tom hadn’t gotten a full scholarship, he would most likely be sweeping the floor at the country store with his father. There would be one less mouth to feed, one less body to clothe, one less student to buy books for. His brother was the star of the family; Tom could carry on their family name better than Bern could. He took a deep breath and put the note down, shoving his hand in his pocket to make sure that the five dollars he scraped together hadn’t abandoned him like he was about to abandon his family. A bag with an extra pair of pants, socks, underwear, and an extra shirt adorned his shoulder. It was almost ten o’ clock, and Bern wanted to leave before his mother got home; he couldn’t handle confronting her. Bern’s hometown wasn’t too far from Hartford, the biggest city in Connecticut. He walked out his front door, down the steps he had walked up nearly every day for fourteen years of his life, and onto the sidewalk. Turning around, he looked at the small, one-floor house for the last time; he would never forget it. Bern found it ironic that while the sky was blue and cloudless and the weather was perfect for spring, his mind felt congested with clouds and storms. He went over his plan repeatedly in his head: walk the five or so miles to Hartford, find a quick job as a bus-boy or dish-cleaner at a town restaurant, make enough money to support himself for a few months, and buy a train ticket to go down south so that by the time winter came, he wouldn’t have to suffer through a harsh Connecticut winter without a home. Idealistically, the plan was perfect. However, Bern never heard that most teens who were forced to leave home ended up riding the railroad cars because they couldn’t pay for tickets. Along with this, he was completely unaware that most businesses were barely staying alive, let alone hiring kids his age for menial jobs that could be done by people already employed. These petty concerns failed to matter to him, and so his journey began. An hour later, Bern was in Hartford. Naturally, he gravitated toward the strip of shops and diners that he and his family always browsed through on Sunday mornings. He walked up and down the sidewalk, looking through the windows of the various stores and searching for the rare “now hiring” sign. After two hours of inquiring at the counter of nearly every shop on the strip, accompanied by a number of variations of “sorry kid”, Bern gave up. He slouched down against the display window of a vacant store and opened his bag; on the verge of tears, Bern ate the quarter-loaf of bread he had packed before he left home. He could buy a new loaf at any of the surrounding food stores for less than five cents, but there was barely any room left in his bag and he thought that conserving his money was his best option. Bern looked around at the people in the city; he wondered about every face’s childhood, their dreams and aspirations. On the ground next to him, Bern found and smoothed out a crumpled front page of the day’s newspaper. Below “Hartford Herald: May 26th 1932”, headlines of the devastation of economic disaster and national panic plagued the text. There were stories that began with the repercussions of the “stock market crash”, but Bern wasn’t sure what the stock market was or why it crashed. Turning the page over, he saw a small excerpt of a story about youths riding railroad cars instead of buying tickets for the train as he meant to. Bern’s head shifted to the right and he looked down the street; the railroad tracks that led out of Hartford and went south through New York and then along the coast of New Jersey sat just beyond the street. Bern looked back down at the newspaper and saw a picture accompanying the article: it showed a black-and-white policeman escorting a black-and-white teen, who looked a little older than Bern, in handcuffs off of some black-and-white tracks somewhere. The picture didn’t worry him much; Bern had friends in his town with an annoying tendency to shoplift, and he picked up police-avoiding techniques as a result. Considering his options, Bern looked towards the railroad again. He knew it was a crime to ride the train without a ticket, but he also knew that the train would take him right down into Virginia and then the Carolinas if he stayed on it for long enough. He thought about warm winters, seasons free of frostbite and hypothermia and suffering, and persuaded himself to make an executive decision. The tracks were protected on both sides by a chain-link fence that spanned towards the ends of the universe on either side. The station was only a two-minute walk backwards in the direction that Bern came, but he avoided it when he passed. Checking all directions that he could, Bern mounted the fence and climbed to the top. The view from the top of the fence might as well have been the view from the apex of the world. Once he descended from the top of the fence unto the other side, he couldn’t turn back. A tear fell from his cheek and onto the ground below him as he looked past Hartford and imagined his neighborhood: the narrow suburban street, colored bikes on the lawn of every house, the occasional makeshift lemonade stand with girls his sisters’ age selling cool glasses of the stuff for a penny. The nostalgic images flooded and cycled through his mind as he grabbed the top of the fence and maneuvered down onto the other side of the tracks, propelling himself into a new and volatile part of his life. By the time night fell on the first day, Bern’s legs seared and ached with every step. With every foot walked he looked around, looked for somewhere to rest for the night. The thought of being caught by “rail bulls”, as he heard them called by a pair of runaways that he met earlier in the day on the tracks, wasn’t what caused his apprehension; Bern was more worried about being robbed or attacked in his sleep by bigger, older teenagers. Nonetheless, as Bern walked past a gradual curve in the tracks, he spotted a small grove of trees that partially hung over the railroad and created the coziest area that Bern had seen all day. He looked ahead, over his shoulder, and in every other direction he could think of, and then succumbed to his sleep-driven temptation and walked to the grove. The moon, nearly full, made for a relatively bright night, which increased Bern’s worries about being spotted even more. All he wanted to do was to sleep through the night and continue the next morning. His bag hit the ground and his body followed, the extra pair of pants he packed acting as his pillow. His parents’ faces popped up in his head as soon as his eyelids closed shut; he saw them in their bed, silent. Bern couldn’t decide if they were silent out of contemplation or silent because they had fought over the issue of him leaving. All he hoped was that his departure would make things easier for them, the only people that ever treated him with unconditional love. Sleep came while the future, and largely the present, remained unsure. A bright light woke Bern from his troubled sleep. His first feeling was relief; he had survived the night and the sun signified the start of another day. The realization that it was still dark and the drawing back of the light accompanied by a raspy voice dashed his hopes and dropped a pit in his stomach. “C’mon kid, time to go,” the officer said. He towered above Bern, still on the ground, with his fake sun now surveying the area around the trees. Bern looked around and saw the officer’s cruiser parked in the distance around the curve of the tracks that he originally saw the grove from. The officer walked around the trees to check the other side for other hobos, and Bern took the opportunity. He hastily grabbed his bag and sprinted in the opposite direction of the officer and his cruiser. “HEY! STOP!” But Bern ran and ran, ran until his sides hurt, until his lungs burned, until tears formed in his brown eyes. He never looked back to check if the officer followed him on foot or pursued him in the car. Losing energy quickly because of how little he had eaten in the past day, Bern ducked into the woods that mirrored the tracks and continued to run, staying parallel with the tracks so that he could eventually follow them again. Finally, he stopped running. He crouched down and looked out at the tracks; there were no officers, no hobos, just the tracks and their stark silence. Confident that he had escaped, he walked a bit further in the woods and caught a glance of a light in the distance, partially concealed but flickering through the trees. Curious and with nothing else to lose, he shuffled quietly through the brush to the edge of the tree-line and peered through: three boys that looked a bit older than him sat around a fire, eating some kind of stew out of wooden bowls and passing around a small loaf of bread. A branch cracked under Bern’s foot as he stepped to get a better view; the boys immediately spun around and looked in his direction. “Come out!” the biggest one shouted, “We won’t hurt you.” Bern could tell by his voice that the boys were atleast a few years older than him. He considered running again but figured that three older boys could catch him easily. Looking down at the ground, he stepped out of the trees and into the light of the fire. “What‘re ya doin’ out here boy? Ya don’t look older than fifteen,” said one of the boys. “I’m just trying to find someplace safe to sleep, I don’t mean any trouble,” replied Bern. “Don’t worry kid, we’re all tryin’ to make it out here. You leave your family too?” Bern could tell by his speech that the biggest boy of the three was the most educated and seemingly the leader of the group. “Yup,” Bern replied, still not sure whether to trust them. “C’mon, grab a seat by the fire and have some stew. Ever had mulligan?” Uneasily, Bern sat down with the three and ate what they called mulligan stew, which tasted even worse than the name sounded, and stale bread. Bern told the boys about his journey so far and they told Bern of their individual stories and how they came to meet. The cathartic exchange served to put Bern at ease; seeing other teenagers, even though they were older, going through the same trials as him was comforting. “So,” said the leader after a momentary silence, “what’s your plan for tomorrow?” The question gravely reminded Bern that the calm he was experiencing was purely temporary. And the truth was, he had no idea where to go from there. “Uh, I’m not sure. All I know is that I want to get down south before winter comes,” he replied. “Well ain’t that funny, that’s where we’re goin’ too!” exclaimed one of the other boys. Bern wasn’t sure whether to take the remark as an invitation to join their group or purely as sarcasm. “It’s true. Why don’t you travel with us? Safety in numbers, right?” asked the leader. Bern hesitated for a moment. On one hand, Bern thought that traveling with a group would only attract more police officers. However, Bern’s inclusion in the boys’ group provided him with a sense of belonging that he hadn’t felt since he left his family and thought he would never feel again. “If you’re all sure you wouldn’t mind, I’d be glad to join. I can help find food,” assured Bern. “Well that settles it, we start up again tomorrow,” declared the leader. After some more eating and conversation about aspirations and the families they had left for the greater good, the boys put out the fire and went to sleep. From there, Bern stayed with the group of boys for the majority of his journey down south. By the end of June, he was an expert on catching trains and getting where he needed to go. Although he had no idea what his family was going through at the time, all he could do was hope that his decision was as beneficial for them as he planned it to be. In the back of his mind, he knew that they would be proud of him, and he planned to see them again someday. Miraculously, Bern arrived in North Carolina by train in July of the same year. Now fifteen, as his birthday passed in June, he searched for and found a job, menial as it was, sweeping floors for a general store in Raleigh. The older couple that owned the store maintained their sweetness and generosity even while their business was on the edge of the cliff that thousands of other small businesses in the nation had fallen off of at the time. After telling the couple his story, they offered him a room and a warm bed in their home in exchange for his work at the store. Simply happy to be cemented in a single place for the first time in months, Bern graciously accepted the offer. He would return to Connecticut and see his family again later in his life, but the older couple was a godsend for Bern, and they allowed him to accomplish what he meant to by leaving home: independence and self-sufficiency for a boy in the Great Depression who made the ultimate sacrifice to make life easier for his family.
THE JOURNEY OF BERN (COLBY)
My grandfather should’ve been playing catch in the backyard with his father when he was fourteen years old, or swimming in the town quarry with his friends. A fourteen year-old, no matter the time period, should be thinking about girls, sports, anything else besides day-to-day survival. But my grandfather, Bernard by name but simply Bern to his family and friends, was born in 1918, which determined that he would spend some of the most important growing years of his life away from home, working to support himself in the midst of the Great Depression. His story, recounted to me by the same body that experienced the worst depression in our nation’s history, made the things I had learned about the time come to life and lose their surreal quality.
My grandfather grew up in Connecticut with two loving parents and three siblings: an older brother, Tom, and two younger sisters, Emily and Marilyn. The age gap between my grandfather and his brother was significant; by the time my grandfather had fourteen years under his belt, Tom was already a junior in college, making the family proud on a full scholarship to Columbia in New York. Bern felt as if he was constantly standing in the shadow of his brother since the day he became lucid of his brother’s intuitive intelligence and tendency to impress everyone around him. His sisters were only five and six years old, but Bern could only imagine the ways that they would make him look like the family slacker as soon as they grew up. Although his parents loved all their children equally, Bern put the weight of the family on his own shoulders and felt an unavoidable responsibility to help his parents support themselves.
The day after his fourteenth birthday party, Bernard left his home. He faked sick to stay home from school, and after his father left for work and his mother took his sisters out to the grocery store, he wrote his parents a note. When he finished writing all he could think to say, he placed the note on the kitchen countertop table next to the bread, where he knew his mother would find it. Bern stared at the little sheet of white paper with granite-grey scribbles appearing as blemishes on the pure white; his handwriting never had been very neat. His mind raced thinking about the heavy implications that this weightless piece of paper carried. He imagined his parents reading it, reading about how he was leaving because it was best for the family; his mother crying, his father going up to his study and staying there for hours, his sisters still wonderfully ignorant and confused at their parents’ distress. As hard as it was for Bern to leave his family, he knew that his departure would make life easier for everyone. The salary his father made as a clerk at the country store downtown was barely enough to support all three kids at home and his brother in college; if Tom hadn’t gotten a full scholarship, he would most likely be sweeping the floor at the country store with his father. There would be one less mouth to feed, one less body to clothe, one less student to buy books for. His brother was the star of the family; Tom could carry on their family name better than Bern could. He took a deep breath and put the note down, shoving his hand in his pocket to make sure that the five dollars he scraped together hadn’t abandoned him like he was about to abandon his family. A bag with an extra pair of pants, socks, underwear, and an extra shirt adorned his shoulder. It was almost ten o’ clock, and Bern wanted to leave before his mother got home; he couldn’t handle confronting her.
Bern’s hometown wasn’t too far from Hartford, the biggest city in Connecticut. He walked out his front door, down the steps he had walked up nearly every day for fourteen years of his life, and onto the sidewalk. Turning around, he looked at the small, one-floor house for the last time; he would never forget it. Bern found it ironic that while the sky was blue and cloudless and the weather was perfect for spring, his mind felt congested with clouds and storms. He went over his plan repeatedly in his head: walk the five or so miles to Hartford, find a quick job as a bus-boy or dish-cleaner at a town restaurant, make enough money to support himself for a few months, and buy a train ticket to go down south so that by the time winter came, he wouldn’t have to suffer through a harsh Connecticut winter without a home. Idealistically, the plan was perfect. However, Bern never heard that most teens who were forced to leave home ended up riding the railroad cars because they couldn’t pay for tickets. Along with this, he was completely unaware that most businesses were barely staying alive, let alone hiring kids his age for menial jobs that could be done by people already employed. These petty concerns failed to matter to him, and so his journey began.
An hour later, Bern was in Hartford. Naturally, he gravitated toward the strip of shops and diners that he and his family always browsed through on Sunday mornings. He walked up and down the sidewalk, looking through the windows of the various stores and searching for the rare “now hiring” sign. After two hours of inquiring at the counter of nearly every shop on the strip, accompanied by a number of variations of “sorry kid”, Bern gave up. He slouched down against the display window of a vacant store and opened his bag; on the verge of tears, Bern ate the quarter-loaf of bread he had packed before he left home. He could buy a new loaf at any of the surrounding food stores for less than five cents, but there was barely any room left in his bag and he thought that conserving his money was his best option. Bern looked around at the people in the city; he wondered about every face’s childhood, their dreams and aspirations. On the ground next to him, Bern found and smoothed out a crumpled front page of the day’s newspaper. Below “Hartford Herald: May 26th 1932”, headlines of the devastation of economic disaster and national panic plagued the text. There were stories that began with the repercussions of the “stock market crash”, but Bern wasn’t sure what the stock market was or why it crashed. Turning the page over, he saw a small excerpt of a story about youths riding railroad cars instead of buying tickets for the train as he meant to. Bern’s head shifted to the right and he looked down the street; the railroad tracks that led out of Hartford and went south through New York and then along the coast of New Jersey sat just beyond the street. Bern looked back down at the newspaper and saw a picture accompanying the article: it showed a black-and-white policeman escorting a black-and-white teen, who looked a little older than Bern, in handcuffs off of some black-and-white tracks somewhere. The picture didn’t worry him much; Bern had friends in his town with an annoying tendency to shoplift, and he picked up police-avoiding techniques as a result. Considering his options, Bern looked towards the railroad again. He knew it was a crime to ride the train without a ticket, but he also knew that the train would take him right down into Virginia and then the Carolinas if he stayed on it for long enough. He thought about warm winters, seasons free of frostbite and hypothermia and suffering, and persuaded himself to make an executive decision.
The tracks were protected on both sides by a chain-link fence that spanned towards the ends of the universe on either side. The station was only a two-minute walk backwards in the direction that Bern came, but he avoided it when he passed. Checking all directions that he could, Bern mounted the fence and climbed to the top. The view from the top of the fence might as well have been the view from the apex of the world. Once he descended from the top of the fence unto the other side, he couldn’t turn back. A tear fell from his cheek and onto the ground below him as he looked past Hartford and imagined his neighborhood: the narrow suburban street, colored bikes on the lawn of every house, the occasional makeshift lemonade stand with girls his sisters’ age selling cool glasses of the stuff for a penny. The nostalgic images flooded and cycled through his mind as he grabbed the top of the fence and maneuvered down onto the other side of the tracks, propelling himself into a new and volatile part of his life.
By the time night fell on the first day, Bern’s legs seared and ached with every step. With every foot walked he looked around, looked for somewhere to rest for the night. The thought of being caught by “rail bulls”, as he heard them called by a pair of runaways that he met earlier in the day on the tracks, wasn’t what caused his apprehension; Bern was more worried about being robbed or attacked in his sleep by bigger, older teenagers. Nonetheless, as Bern walked past a gradual curve in the tracks, he spotted a small grove of trees that partially hung over the railroad and created the coziest area that Bern had seen all day. He looked ahead, over his shoulder, and in every other direction he could think of, and then succumbed to his sleep-driven temptation and walked to the grove. The moon, nearly full, made for a relatively bright night, which increased Bern’s worries about being spotted even more. All he wanted to do was to sleep through the night and continue the next morning. His bag hit the ground and his body followed, the extra pair of pants he packed acting as his pillow. His parents’ faces popped up in his head as soon as his eyelids closed shut; he saw them in their bed, silent. Bern couldn’t decide if they were silent out of contemplation or silent because they had fought over the issue of him leaving. All he hoped was that his departure would make things easier for them, the only people that ever treated him with unconditional love. Sleep came while the future, and largely the present, remained unsure.
A bright light woke Bern from his troubled sleep. His first feeling was relief; he had survived the night and the sun signified the start of another day. The realization that it was still dark and the drawing back of the light accompanied by a raspy voice dashed his hopes and dropped a pit in his stomach.
“C’mon kid, time to go,” the officer said.
He towered above Bern, still on the ground, with his fake sun now surveying the area around the trees. Bern looked around and saw the officer’s cruiser parked in the distance around the curve of the tracks that he originally saw the grove from. The officer walked around the trees to check the other side for other hobos, and Bern took the opportunity. He hastily grabbed his bag and sprinted in the opposite direction of the officer and his cruiser.
“HEY! STOP!”
But Bern ran and ran, ran until his sides hurt, until his lungs burned, until tears formed in his brown eyes. He never looked back to check if the officer followed him on foot or pursued him in the car. Losing energy quickly because of how little he had eaten in the past day, Bern ducked into the woods that mirrored the tracks and continued to run, staying parallel with the tracks so that he could eventually follow them again. Finally, he stopped running. He crouched down and looked out at the tracks; there were no officers, no hobos, just the tracks and their stark silence. Confident that he had escaped, he walked a bit further in the woods and caught a glance of a light in the distance, partially concealed but flickering through the trees. Curious and with nothing else to lose, he shuffled quietly through the brush to the edge of the tree-line and peered through: three boys that looked a bit older than him sat around a fire, eating some kind of stew out of wooden bowls and passing around a small loaf of bread. A branch cracked under Bern’s foot as he stepped to get a better view; the boys immediately spun around and looked in his direction.
“Come out!” the biggest one shouted, “We won’t hurt you.”
Bern could tell by his voice that the boys were atleast a few years older than him. He considered running again but figured that three older boys could catch him easily. Looking down at the ground, he stepped out of the trees and into the light of the fire.
“What‘re ya doin’ out here boy? Ya don’t look older than fifteen,” said one of the boys.
“I’m just trying to find someplace safe to sleep, I don’t mean any trouble,” replied Bern.
“Don’t worry kid, we’re all tryin’ to make it out here. You leave your family too?”
Bern could tell by his speech that the biggest boy of the three was the most educated and seemingly the leader of the group.
“Yup,” Bern replied, still not sure whether to trust them.
“C’mon, grab a seat by the fire and have some stew. Ever had mulligan?”
Uneasily, Bern sat down with the three and ate what they called mulligan stew, which tasted even worse than the name sounded, and stale bread. Bern told the boys about his journey so far and they told Bern of their individual stories and how they came to meet. The cathartic exchange served to put Bern at ease; seeing other teenagers, even though they were older, going through the same trials as him was comforting.
“So,” said the leader after a momentary silence, “what’s your plan for tomorrow?”
The question gravely reminded Bern that the calm he was experiencing was purely temporary. And the truth was, he had no idea where to go from there.
“Uh, I’m not sure. All I know is that I want to get down south before winter comes,” he replied.
“Well ain’t that funny, that’s where we’re goin’ too!” exclaimed one of the other boys.
Bern wasn’t sure whether to take the remark as an invitation to join their group or purely as sarcasm.
“It’s true. Why don’t you travel with us? Safety in numbers, right?” asked the leader.
Bern hesitated for a moment. On one hand, Bern thought that traveling with a group would only attract more police officers. However, Bern’s inclusion in the boys’ group provided him with a sense of belonging that he hadn’t felt since he left his family and thought he would never feel again.
“If you’re all sure you wouldn’t mind, I’d be glad to join. I can help find food,” assured Bern.
“Well that settles it, we start up again tomorrow,” declared the leader.
After some more eating and conversation about aspirations and the families they had left for the greater good, the boys put out the fire and went to sleep.
From there, Bern stayed with the group of boys for the majority of his journey down south. By the end of June, he was an expert on catching trains and getting where he needed to go. Although he had no idea what his family was going through at the time, all he could do was hope that his decision was as beneficial for them as he planned it to be. In the back of his mind, he knew that they would be proud of him, and he planned to see them again someday.
Miraculously, Bern arrived in North Carolina by train in July of the same year. Now fifteen, as his birthday passed in June, he searched for and found a job, menial as it was, sweeping floors for a general store in Raleigh. The older couple that owned the store maintained their sweetness and generosity even while their business was on the edge of the cliff that thousands of other small businesses in the nation had fallen off of at the time. After telling the couple his story, they offered him a room and a warm bed in their home in exchange for his work at the store. Simply happy to be cemented in a single place for the first time in months, Bern graciously accepted the offer. He would return to Connecticut and see his family again later in his life, but the older couple was a godsend for Bern, and they allowed him to accomplish what he meant to by leaving home: independence and self-sufficiency for a boy in the Great Depression who made the ultimate sacrifice to make life easier for his family.