many separations and she would return home. I would make pledges and a sincere effort and then my top would blow off again. I began here to take sanitarium treatments to satisfy my wife and my folks.
I had a great capacity for drink and work. With the help of turkish baths, bromo-seltzer and aspirin, I held to the job. I became top-notcher in the entire sales force of the country. I was assigned to more special territory and finally into the market of keenest competition. I was top rate in salary, won bonus awards and was bringing in the volume. But there was always the drawback my excessive drinking made at times. I was called in once, twice, and warned. Finally I wasn’t to be tolerated any longer, although I was doing a good job. I had lasted five and a half years.
I lost my wife along with my job and fine income. This was a terrible jolt. I tried for a hook-up, but I had a black eye marring a good record. I became discouraged and depressed. I sought relief with booze. There began the four black years of my life.
I had returned home to the community where I had been so prominent. These were dry days still and I hung out at the clubs with bars. I got so I would last on a job but a few days, just until I could get an advance for drinks. I began to get entangled with the law—arrested for driving while intoxicated and drunken and disorderly conduct.
My folks heard of the cure at the State Hospital. I was picked up drunk and sent there by the Probate Court. I was administered paraldehyde and came to in a receiving ward among lunatics. I was transferred to another ward of less violent cases and I found a little group of alcoholics and “junkers” (dope addicts). I learned from them the seriousness of being a ward of the Probate Court. I felt then if I ever got released the old devil alcohol would never get me in a jam like this again. In times of great distress such as this, I would pray to God for help.
I was fortunate and was released after eleven days and nights barred up in the laughing academy—“bug-house.” That was enough. I wanted no more of it. I took a job as manager of a club and put myself to the old acid test. I was going to really assert my will power. I even tended bar part of the time, but never imbibed a bit. This lasted about three months.
I went to an annual convention of my overseas division and came to locked up in a cheap hotel room, new shoes, suit coat, hat and purse missing. I must have slipped badly.
Then followed much drinking and trouble. After a few arrests for intoxication, the law decided another sojourn to the State Hospital would tame me. They jumped the stay this time from eleven days to eleven weeks. It was getting tough for me. I came out in good physical condition and held a fear of getting probated again, thinking the siege might be eleven months. I got another job and stayed dry for about two months and off to the races again.
I became terribly weak—couldn’t eat and tried to get nourishment from booze and mostly only bootleg at that. One time, I just made it into a hospital and another time a police patrol took me to the hospital instead of the jail. I suffered badly from insomnia. As many as three shots in the arm had no effect.
I would get in shape and back at it again. I was going to battle to the finish. The time came when I was to be paid my soldier’s bonus. I had the limit or maximum coming. Friends advised my folks to send me to a Veterans Hospital before I got this money in my hands. I was probated again, held in a county jail for two weeks and sent again to the asylum. This was my summer resort for three months. I was on the waiting list for the Veterans Hospital but I got into such wonderful physical condition from eating and working out of doors that I was released.
I reached home full of resentment against my folks for their having my money tied up under a guardianship. I went out and got saturated and landed in jail—I had been free from the asylum for about eight hours. Behind the bars again so soon—this was bad. However, I was freed again the next day and this was my last confinement with the law. I began to use my head, I continued to drink but kept under cover or hid in the “jungles” with the bums.
In a few months an old friend came along. He located me a few times in saloons. We had been drinking pals in the early days, particularly at the club houses. He had heard of my predicament. He himself had quit drinking and looked fine. He encouraged me to visit him in a nearby city.
I wanted to quit drinking, but hadn’t much faith in ever getting away from it. I agreed to go into a hospital as a patient of a doctor who had been an alcoholic for many years and was now a new man.
It is almost uncanny—in just eight days I left there a different person. This doctor in plain words was a wonderful guy—he spent many hours with me telling me his experience with alcohol. Others of his band, which was then small, visited me—told me their stories. They were all strangers to me, but treated me as a friend. I was impressed with their interest and fellowship. I learned the secret. They had a religious experience. I was willing, and renewed my acquaintance with God and acknowledged Him as a reality.
I found it easy. I came to life and have been free now for two years. I hope never to take another drink. I am building up a reputation again and nearly every day am complimented on my appearance.
I have a new outlook on life. I look forward to each day with happiness because of the real enjoyment it is to me to be sane, sober, and respectable. I was existing really from one drink until the next, with no perception about circumstances, conditions, or even nature’s elements. My acquaintance with God—lost and forgotten when I was a young man—is renewed. God is all-loving and all-forgiving. The memories of my past are being dimmed by the life I now aspire to.
Riding the Rods
Fourteen years old and strong, I was ready—an American Whittington who knew a better way to get places than by walking. The “clear the way” whistle of a fast freight thundering over the crossing on the tracks a mile away was a siren call. Sneaking away from my farm home one night, I made my way to the distant yards. Ducking along a lane between two made-up trains that seemed endless, I made my way to the edge of the yards. Here and there I passed a silent, waiting figure. Then a little group talking among themselves. Edging in, I listened eagerly. I had met my first hoboes. They talked of places I had never heard of. This town was good. A fellow could get by on the Bowery all winter if he knew the ropes; that other town was “hostile”; thirty days for “vag” awaited you in another if you didn’t hit the cinders before the road “bulls” fine-combed the train.
Then they noticed me. Somehow a new kid is always an object of interest to the adventurers of the rails. “Where ya makin’ for, kid?”
I had heard one of them mention “Dee-troit” and it seemed as good an answer as any. I had no plans, just wanted to get away—anywhere—just away!
“The Michigan Manifest will be along any minute now; I think she’s moving.” The tall hobo who had spoken grabbed me by the arm. “Come on, kid. We’ll help you.”
Suddenly I felt big. I had gotten away! The two hoboes talked, the tall one about getting work in Detroit, the other arguing for staying on the road. Then the one who had boosted me up began to quiz me. I told him I had run away from the farm. In a sort of halting way he told me not to get the train habit or it would get me until I would always want to be moving. The rocking motion of the car as the train increased speed became a cradle song in my ears. I fell asleep.
It was way past dawn when I awoke. My two companions were already sitting up and talking. The day wore on. We passed through small towns. Soon the train was threading its way between factories and huge warehouses, crossing tracks with brisk clatter, coming into a railway yard. Brakes went on. They helped me off. We were in Detroit.
My hobo friends parted at a street corner. The tall one took me along right into town and got a room for both of us with
