Riding on Top

Download or read book Riding on Top written by Gordon McLean and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 1999 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the thirty-two years that Gordon McLean taught high school none of his colleagues or students suspected that, beginning at age fifteen, he had survived seven seasons of hoboing. A bank manager's son, the young McLean was driven only by boredom and a lust for adventure. Hoboing was a colorful way of life that is gone forever and there are only a diminishing few survivors who can explode the myths and tell us what it was really like. McLean is one such survivor. His experiences varied from audacious, hilarious, heart-stopping, thoughtful, spiritual, and almost mystical. Now at age eighty the ex-hobo still dreams of riding freights and has vivid memory flashbacks. He has decided to share these memories with his "very numerous, very dear progeny". Non-relatives are welcome to kibitz. Readers, in addition to being highly entertained, amused, and moved, will learn little-known, startling details about life and attitudes in out of the way places during the Depression that will amaze even old-timers who lived through that era. The young hobo was a keen, sensitive observer and the octogenarian has been able to vividly recapture and communicate what the young "bo" experienced.