Riding the Rails During the Great Depression

Well, I’ve been waiting for a notification from WordPress that I’ve reached my one year anniversary blogging. Oops! It never arrived. I knew it was January but didn’t remember the date. So, silly me, I went and looked and I missed it! But that’s okay. I thought what I would do is repost my very first ever blog entry. When I first started my blog, I was just going write about my family history. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the information I had was not much at all! So, I decided to branch out and started adding bits of life in general. As many things often do, I find it is branching again as I have now added my new hobby of photography. Enjoy!

LIVING WITH MY ANCESTORS

In 1931, at the age of 20, my Dad and 7 of his friends left their homes in Kentucky and headed West on the rails during the Great Depression. Dad kept a little diary of the trip in a small notebook written in pencil.

Following are a few excerpts from his travel diary (written in blue italics) with some of my own comments inserted in regular text:

The date is Wednesday, April 22, 1931.  It’s raining and snowing.  I have a one-way ticket to Portland, Ore. We catch train No. 1 bound for Cincinnati and bid Ashland goodbye at 8:55 a.m. There are eight of us. All nice fellows to be sure. Their names are Charles E. Ball, Bennet Tussey, Sam Elsworth and myself of Ashland. Paul A. Vaughan of Ironton, O. Charles R. “Buzz” Waldron of Russell, Ky. Kenneth Ames of Catlettsburg, Ky. And Louis E. Hannon of Maysville…

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