Arvel
Pearson
You
leave home with good intentions and tell your folks you're going
to come back a millionaire. You return with your head between
your arms.You're broke and dirty and they see right away that
you didn't make it. I'd stay a day or two and hit the road again.
I was never so desperate that I wanted to commit suicide but
I often felt put down. I realized it would take a while to change
things. "I'm going to keep going," I said. "I
may not end up a millionaire but someday I will be able to face
people I used to beg for food." If I hadn't had hope I
would have starved to death by the time I was seventeen.
There
were nights I'd get homesick waiting for a train with nobody
to talk to, sitting alone on a pile of ties under a water tank
out in the middle of nowhere. You're only a kid and you get
to dreaming about that warm bed back home and seeing the folks.
Arvel
Pearson, quoted in Errol Lincoln Uys, Riding the Rails,
85, 88
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