[Granville-Hough] 3 Jul 2009 - Hoboes Coley and Dueward
Trustees for Granville W. Hough
gwhough-trust at oakapple.net
Mon Jul 3 06:10:43 PDT 2017
Date: Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:21:50 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Hoboes Coley and Dueward - 3 July 2009
DESPERATE SEARCH FOR JOBS--RIDING THE RAILS DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION.
It was probably in 1933 when Uncle Coley Richardson and Brother
Dueward Hough decided to join the hoboes and go west from Smith County,
MS, looking for jobs. They walked the mile down to the railroad, and as
a train slowly climbed the Ware Cut, they grabbed the first boxcar and
were on their way. For those unfamiliar with the term hobo, it
originally meant a migratory worker. In the Great Depression, it came
to mean a vagrant on the rail cars, usually penniless. Coley and
Dueward joined more than 20,000 others who were riding the rails, going
from town to town, looking for that elusive job that was out there
somewhere. They rode in the boxcars, on the tops of the boxcars, or on
the network of pipes and rods underneath the cars. It was hazardous,
but cheap. The railway system fought the hoboes and hired "bulls"
(railroad police) to keep the hoboes off the trains. It was a losing
battle for the railroads, just as it was for the hoboes.
Neither Coley nor Dueward ever talked much about their experience
that summer or winter, whichever it was. It is my general belief that
they got from Mississippi to California, found Uncle Martin Richardson
in California , picked some cotton for him, then could find no more
work. On their way back, they had to pass through the El Paso
Railyards, where the meanist bull in the country was in charge. Unlike
more humane bulls, he would force the hoboes to jump from a moving
train. The engineers who knew the plight of the hoboes, would move out
slowly, giving the bulls time to clear the cars before they picked up
speed. At five or ten miles per hour, you could generally jump safely,
but beyond that speed, you got broken legs, ankles, arms or other
injuries. The El Paso bull started clearing the boxcars, and by the
time he got to the car where Coley and Dueward were, the train was
moving too fast to jump. But jump they had to do. The bull was waving
his loaded pistol, giving warning shots hither and yon.
Coley jumped and put his sack of clothes and bedding out in front as
he hit the ground and fell forward. The rocks on the railroad base cut
up his bag pretty badly, but he was only shook up. Dueward was not so
lucky. He put his hand out in front to break his fall and the rocks cut
it up pretty badly. It took weeks to heal after he finally got home.
They had to walk back to the yards with their wounds and wounded
comrades and came out that night under cover of darkness. They got home
and were very quiet about their hobo experience. I think it had
dreadful memories for both of them. In fact, I never found any ex-hobo
who wanted to talk or write about his experiences
It was Jimmie Rodgers, an unemployed brakeman, who sang sad songs
about the hoboes. Before he died in 1933 of TB, he had recorded all
sorts of country songs in which he introduced yodeling and other
innovations. In the YouTube rendition of his songs, there are scenes of
the hoboes in their hopeless plight. It was these scenes which reminded
me of Dueward and Coley's adventure in riding the rails in the Great
Depression.
"Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields
which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometime greater than
illustrious heroes." Victor Hugo, /Les Miserables./.
More information about the Granville-Hough
mailing list