Berkeley

“Now stopping into Chicago!” A voice that woke me up called. “Chicago, right ahead.”

Now awake, and completely clueless of where I was, I finally got out of the box car. I wasn’t able to see anything for a while because there was a lot of smoke from the train blocking my view. But I kept on walking through the thick smoke. When I finally was able to see, I knew something was different. The first thing I noticed was that their air smelled of train smoke. When it finally cleared, the sun shone into my eyes.

I walked through more smoke trying to find my way out of it. I finally found a clear sanctuary where I saw men loading and unloading the box cars. I didn’t want to talk to them because I was scared of them. They were all muscular. And they were all wearing red vest with light blue jeans that had holes in them, and they all had hair and tattoos on their arms and chest. I felt that I couldn’t trust them. I had already been scared to death by the Mexican men, and I still was.

One of the men taking a big bag off the train noticed me standing there. He looked nice to me. He wasn’t as buff as all the other men were, and he was wearing a shirt and badge pants.

“Hey little fella.” the man said. “Where did you came from.

I was still a little shaky but I answered.

“I came from the trouble.” I answered.

“What trouble?” he asked.

“The trouble in Calloway.”

His looked seemed to freeze upon me. I avoided eye contact with him like I would normally do with people I first meet. He went to one of his buddies and said something to him that I didn’t catch, because there was a lot of noise going on. The man’s friend walked towards me and bent down.

“Are you hungry.” he said.

“Yes.” I answered. I was actually starving. There was at the time a big difference between “hungry” and “starving” because I hadn’t ever eaten since that morning. The man gently lifted me up into his arms. I was a bit nervous being touched by him for reasons which became well known later on in my life, but I didn’t care; it meant sanctuary and food. He took me to a place called “Stop and Eat” that men came in to rest. He put me down and told me to take a seat. I sat down to a square table that smelled funny by a window. He came back with a first aid kit and took a seat next to me and fixed me up.