The Lonesome
Whistle's Call is a gripping true story of a teenage runaway who
rode the rails in the 1930's. This was a time in railroad history which
found many homeless hoboes riding the coal-burning trains looking for
work or a better life. Stella Burns has sugar-coated nothing in this
book's gritty honesty of her husband's adventures, good and bad, that
kept him on the move for two years. Looking back on the 30's, some tend
to glamorize riding the rails. In truth, unrecorded hundreds of tramps
fell to their death beneath the moving wheels of the freights they were
riding. Others were shot or beaten with billy sticks by railroad bulls
whose job it was to constantly roam the rail yards, protect the cargo
and to remove hoboes and bums from the boxcars and other hiding places.
Women and children rode the rails either with their family or, if alone,
disguising themselves by bobbing their hair and dressing like men.
"Along the way, he meets
an assortment of characters that the author draws with precision.
Perhaps the most memorable is Mama Sal, a buxom female who rides the
rails with this obsequious companion named Elmer..." From South
County Independent review
Thirty-three illustrations and
photos help the reader to picture the scene or better understand what
the boxcars, coal hoppers and flatbeds looked like. Also illustrated are
drawings of some of the characters met along the way. This definitely is
an exciting, fast-paced story that is written well by Stella Burns and
illustrated professionally by Evelyn Kenyon of Matunuck, RI.
This 288-page paperback book
has built up incident upon incident like a train chugging along at
break-neck speed. The ultimate conclusion brings Scottie Burns face to
face with the very thing he feared the most and had run from in the
first place. |
