Ch. 2, Leaving The Farm

King’s Uncle Victor took Paul, King and Mark to the train depot where they were shipped to Eureka South Dakota. It was August 1927. Once in Eureka, three separate families of the church, who were referred to as “saints,” took the children in to care for them. Paul went home with the “Schrenk” family, King went with Adam and Rose Straub, and Mark had the misfortune of being selected by Emanuel Straub and his wife Albina. King worked on the Straub farm for five years.

Excluding the boy who is in front of everybody else, King is in the front row, second from the left.

He learned to speak German during this time, and rarely saw his brothers Mark and Paul. King lived with Adam and Rose for five years, but in August 1933, when the Great Depression was in full swing and the infamous Dust Bowl was ravaging much of the Midwest, King left the Straub farm for one of his many hitchhiking/boxcar hopping trips to the West Coast. King was not quite 15 years old at the time and he hopped a ride to Renton Washington on the back of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad. He continued on to Portland Oregon, where he stayed at the YMCA and worked in a saddle shop owned by Mr. Oscar Keller. The following is an account of that first trip as told to me by King when he was 83 years old:

"I Left Adam Straub’s farm to take a sick horse to a veterinarian/farmer, who lived about halfway between the Straub farm and the small town of Eureka. I made up my mind that day not to go back to Adam Straub’s home, and decided that I could be in Eureka in the same amount of time it would take to get back to Adam’s Straub’s place. I also knew that, if I hurried, the regularly scheduled passenger/freight train would still be there when I arrived.
I tied my pony in the barn of a family that owned the local creamery business in Eureka. The farmer’s wife thought it was strange for me to do that until I lied and told her I was going to visit Adam’s mother (from Russia), who did not have a barn.
Just as I closed her gate the train whistle blew at the railroad station. I hurried to the opposite side of the railroad tracks and walked towards the Depot. I caught the boxcar ladder as the train was still trying to gain speed and when it got about a mile out of town I climbed to the top of the boxcar and rode it to the town of Roscoe, where it intersected with the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific main rail line. There, I stayed in a small building that lodged the railway employees. It was heated by a coal-burning stove.
Early the next morning the Milwaukee freight train going west, stopped to pick up more boxcars. It then headed west for the town of Mobridge on the west side of the Missouri River, where it spent most of that day changing box cars and passenger cars.
Having not eaten for 2 days I went to a small café and asked the owner if I could do some work for him for something to eat. I washed all his dirty dishes, swept the floor, and helped him to get ready for railroad employees who came there to eat. He then gave me a good-sized breakfast. While the railroad employees were eating I went to the rail yards and found a nice empty boxcar and settled in. I was soon on my way to the southwest corner of North Dakota and into Montana to the town of Miles City, near where Custer made his last stand. “He became the first American General to wear an Arrow Shirt. He didn’t want to, but the Indians ‘stuck’ him with it anyway” (my favorite joke about Custer).
People riding freight trains, in those days, could go to any jail, where the sheriff or policeman would take you to a restaurant and get you something to eat, at the U.S. Governments expense. They could also let you stay in their jails (as far as I know) as long as you wanted to. Most of those jails had no prisoners in those days, and they were warm and dry.
Crossing Montana from Miles City, I remember short times in the towns of Billings, Livingston, Bozeman, and Butte, where they had (near the railroad) a Horse Meat Packing House named Hansen’s Meat Packing Company. From Butte, I went to Anaconda, where a smelting factory had the tallest smoke chimney west of the Mississippi River. From there I continued north to Deer Lodge, where Montana’s State Prison is located, and then on to Missoula, and then into Idaho, following what is today, interstate 90 through Kellogg, passing through Wallace, Mullen, Silverton, Osburn and Pinehurst, all gold mining towns and most with whore houses and hotels.
Continuing through Idaho the train went to the town of Coeur d’ Alene, north of a large famous lake of the same name, and from there to the large town of Spokane, Washington, where I stayed for a few days. I continued my western trip through Moses Lake, Ellensburg and Renton, just east of Seattle, where the Boeing Aircraft Company is headquartered.
I stayed in Renton for a day and a night, finding out there wasn’t a “ through train” from there to Vancouver, so I took the same route back to Spokane, sleeping in empty box cars both ways. Spokane had horse stables for race horses and I slept in mangers a couple of nights, then took a freight train south through the small town of Plymouth (on the Washington side of the Columbia River) and all the way to Vancouver, and then north from there to the towns of Aberdeen, and Hoquiam for a few days. I then went back to Vancouver and across the bridge over the Columbia River to Portland, Oregon.
The YMCA, on the corner of 6th and Taylor Streets, had arrangements with the government to house and feed teenagers, and that’s where I went. Finally, for the first time since leaving our home in Omaha, I was able to take a hot shower; wash my clothes in a large sink with hot and cold water; and sleep in a real bed, without straw filled mattresses and with real sheets and covers not made of grain sacks or throw-away rags.
I had free use of a large indoor swimming pool; free use of a basketball court and indoor gymnasium; free meals, 3 times a day; and could sleep in a warm room instead of an attic bedroom where you could wake up and find 2 or 3 inches of snow on your blanket. I thought I was in heaven, I did not have to go to a cold barn to milk 6 or 8 cows, then feed them and the horses by going into the hayloft where the hay was packed to throw it into the feeding rack. I did not have to hurry and get ready to walk 2 miles, through snow-covered pastures, to get to school. I was free.
Shortly before Christmas, I was put on a passenger train to Omaha with a small package of food, supposedly to last me the 2 to 3 days it took the train to get there. Starting in Portland, the train followed the south side of the Columbia River to Hermiston and then southeast to Payette, Idaho and through Boise, Idaho, and other towns east to Colorado’s northeast border, then to the Nebraska border to Scottsbluff, and from there following the North Platte River to Omaha’s new passenger building. End of that journey. Omaha my birthplace, and hometown."

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