Viewing page 108 of 141

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

84

car filled with steel bars while he was dodging two railroad "dicks." In Ft.Wayne Cooke was arrested for stealing rides and sentenced to six days in jail. The judge gave the black kitten a six-day sentence also, so he was well-fed and housed and Cooke got him again when he got out of jail. He'd always push the kitten around into the back of his shirt when hopping a train to avoid the kitten being injured as he slapped up against the side of a car when hopping aboard. Cooke remarked of the west as contrasted with the east, "Why, Craton, it's all the difference between living indoors and outdoors to me. Here, for instance, we can look out and the farthest we can see is perhaps over here to these little low hills to the south. Out there a day never passed that in the course of my work, I wouldn't have occasion to look away at the mountains which lay a hundred miles away." Again, he said, "An experience like that is valuable to a man because it shows him the real values of life, the things that are worthwhile, worth living for, and the things that are all rot. Never a night passes that I lay down in that good bed of mine and draw the covers up around my chin, that I don't think of nights spent out on top of a boxcar somewhere in the icy wind, sleeping strapped to the footboard, cold, hungry many times, and I realize how damned fortunate I am to have so much. And yet that experience has left its mark on me, made me a sort of bum. Everywhere I go, people notice that I'm a bit crude; maybe I've outgrown that now to some extent." I should like to write a book about Cooke. 
We went outdoors about 9 to go to Louis's for some pie and were greeted by the most marvelous display of Northern Lights I've ever seen, the whole northern sky flaming with phosphorescent splendor and great streamers running to the zenith, coming and going. It was an awe-inspiring sight. 

Erie, Pa.,
Saturday, October 16, 1926.

Took our air distribution this morning and put all in readiness for Mr. Katté Monday. Wrote some letters this afternoon and had dinner with the gang at the Tavern. Afterward, we all went out to Fouse's to play cards. I got into a rather spiritless bridge session with Smythe, Fouse and Clingerman while Mott-Smith, Miller, Greene, Bryant and Irabarren started a "5¢ limit" poker game which lasted until 4 a.m. so I'm told. I left at 1 a.m. after having been frightfully tempted to get into the poker game but finally was strong enough not to and went home and to bed. Forgot to mention that last Wednesday, had a letter from A.L.Nelson, Mr. Woodward's assistant, saying that they would be glad to consider my application for a job as soon as sufficient work came into sight to warrant their taking on more men, but just when that would be was hard to say, all of which, as far as the immediate present is concerned, meant very little. But I refused to be blue and thought of Mr. Hanna and his job. Today Mr. Nelson was over and had quite 

Transcription Notes:
Changed wast to east.