| Notes |
- Recorded October 16, 1995 by Sandra Joy McKay Coulter:
"While visiting Aunt Julia and Uncle Rufus at their Appletree Lane home in Tyler, Uncle Rufus told me about his hobo days during the depressions. This was about five years before he married Aunt Julia (Kennedy). He was not finding work in Lindale that paid more than 10 cents a day. He hopped a train to California, where he picked fruit. When that work was done, he went to Oregon and Washington (State). He picked apples and worked the wheat fields in Washington. The wheat was planted on the mountain side. The terrain was too steep for a tractor, but they had a special combine pulled by 16 horses. The wheat was planted in a circle around the mountain.
"Uncle Rufus came back to Lindale to visit a couple of times. Once when he came back, his two brothers, Horace and Perkins, went back with him.
"In California, Uncle Rufus worked for a lady. She had bought her son a truck, but all the son did was haul kids back and forth to town. She decided to use the truck to make money and hired Uncle Rufus to drive it for her. (I didn't ask, but I suppose it was to haul fruit.)
"During the depression in California, he helped dig up peach trees for farmers who couldn't afford the water bill for watering the orchards.
"When he first hopped a train to California, his brother took him to an engineer that he knew and told him Uncle Rufus would be on it. The man said for him to just stay out of sight. The engineer was asked to pass on the information when the train crew changed in El Paso. Uncle Rufus rode on the landing between the engine and the next car.
"Once, when he and his brothers had saved $800 a piece, they were hopping trains. They rolled bills up very small to stick in the small, deep pockets of their overalls. Then they put a pencil in the pocket.
"Uncle Rufus said he tried art for a while in California. He painted shirts. On the back of one, he wrote 'Want to monkey around.' The girls would get up close to read it, walk off and come back again to follow him.
"He also painted a yellow rain slicker to look like a man's feet sticking out the bottom of a coverlet and his hands and head sticking out the other. I can't remember what he wrote on it, but something that ended with 'chicks.'
"Aunt Julia was listening to these stories and just sat there shaking her head."
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1908 - 1998 (90 years)
