***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

 … he had to laugh, laugh out loud although the deathly rattling of the freight car that he was just then riding, riding as a non-paying customer, would drown that laughter from any ears, if there were any ears open among his fellow “passengers” strewn about the bare wooded floor of their “room.” The reason for his witless fit of laughter was the knowledge that last year, the year of our Lord 1933, he had had money, plenty of money, for a Pullman sleeper to ride west in. And had done just exactly that on one business trip (and spent plenty, treating rounds too at the dining car bar).

Now here he was a little more than a year later, all credit used up, all checks bounced, all flophouses fled without room -rent payment, all Sally soup-lines unwelcomed to him. All job opportunities lost to him since the world was filled, no, over-filled, with ex-stockbrokers, take a number, brother, all sweethearts moved on to the next still employed stockbroker and he heading west, ever west on the floor of this damn freight train. As he rolled up a vagrant newspaper to serve as a make-shift pillow for his tired head he held to a glimmer of hope that his luck would change once he hit the Pacific, or whatever west he was destined for. Held too to that notion that maybe next year he could join the Mayfair swells, the businessmen, and just plain tourists on one of those comfortable Pullman sleepers…