Hobo Trip to Loma Linda and Back to the Planet Earth

By G. Marvin Stephens

Marcellus Box is restless, and he does not know how to find what he is missing most in his life. He was raised-up in the deep woods of the Big Thicket, which is northeast of Houston, Texas. In August of 1926, he receives a mysterious postcard from his cousin, Estella, begging him to come to Loma Linda, California, immediately.

Now, Estella has always held a special place in Marcelluss heart. They have always watched out for each other, and when she and her family left Texas for California, he was desolate! He asks for time off from work and then begins his quest across the country as a hobo to join Estella, his Dulcinea. Marcelluss trip to California is also a quest to find the deeper meaning in his life, his destiny.

What drives Marcellus to look deeper into his understanding of life and search for true happiness? We follow him as he travels the rails through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and then into California. He meets fascinating people along the way who stretch his mind. He learns new concepts about the earths origin; and he experiences a new energy inside himself; which lift s him up to a higher existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450217606

G. Marvin Stephens

G. MARVIN STEPHENS left Beaumont, Texas, on his own, at fifteen to attend a boarding academy in Colorado. After that he received his BA and MBA in accounting and is a CPA. As a young seventy-six year old guy, and a proud grand-pa, he has written his first novel, Hobo Trip to Loma Linda and Back to the Planet Earth.

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Hobo Trip to Loma Linda

and Back to the Planet Earth

G. Marvin Stephens

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

Hobo Trip to Loma Linda and Back to the Planet Earth

Copyright © 2010 by G. Marvin Stephens

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-1759-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-1761-3 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-1760-6 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010910202

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 06/27/2011

Contents

Chapter One

Estella’s Postcard

Chapter Two

Hitchhiking from Dallas to Amarillo

Chapter Three

Riding the Freights from Amarillo, Texas, to Gallup, New Mexico

Chapter Four

Going broke on the road from Gallup, New Mexico, to Oatman, Arizona

Chapter Five

Oatman, Arizona, to San Bernardino, California: the Final Leg to Berdoo

Chapter Six

The Family Visiting and Remembering in the Fireplace Room

Chapter Seven

The Epiphany Underneath the Manzanita Tree

Chapter Eight

Fate—Trying to Understand

and Accept Fate

Chapter Nine

Starting the Journey Back Home,

Going West to Dallas

Chapter Ten

Meeting Professor Greenwood at the L.A. Freight Yards

Chapter Eleven

Enuma Elish and Ex Nihilo; the Professor’s Midnight Lecture

Chapter Twelve

Clovis, New Mexico, to Fort Worth, Texas; Riding the Rods and Getting Robbed

Chapter Thirteen

Returning to a Humble Boarding House, but from a Point Further Out Than California

Chapter One

Estella’s Postcard

My name is Marcellus Box. A mere eighteen days ago, in late August, 1926, in a mental rush, I was impelled by an unknown force of logic to beg for time off from my work and started off on an uncharted trip toward California. Becoming a hobo was not the only change made in me along the way; on the highways and inside the freight trains, my life was like a rollercoaster. I was taken down to the abyss and up again to sublimity.

To understand my plight, you need to know something about my past. I was raised up in Tyler County, in the Big Thicket part of the county. If you look for that spot on the map, it’s in the southeastern portion of Texas, northeast of Houston. Out there, the deep woods are so thick with trees, vines, and undergrowth that you can’t walk through it without a machete. That’s why they call it the Big Thicket. The creeks come right up out of the ground and flow downstream from there. There’s good fishing and wild deer and things you can eat growing wild, such as huckleberries and blackberries. In some parts of the woods, there are groves of dogwood trees full of white flowers, and there are magnolia trees with orchid-like flowers. In the fall the leaves of the tall pin-oak trees turn smoke red. They look majestic standing erect and stately, alongside the evergreen, long-needle pine trees.

I have an extended family that still lives there in the Big Thicket. My papa, William T.S. Box, is the schoolmaster for that part of the county. As I was growing up, he taught me a lot and not all of it from books. He taught me how to work and learn as I have a go at almost anything. He taught me how to play the fiddle and to play such songs as Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair and Camptown Races. Papa had a big log house built out there, with a breezeway open through the center of it. My mother, Mary Box, planted her favorite flowers—cake jasmine lilies and wild phlox—all around the house and yard. We had fruit trees of all kinds planted along the fencerows of the farm. Before I left home, my two older sisters and their husbands worked the land Papa bought out there, and my younger brothers and I helped with the farming. My uncle and his wife, Frank and Bertha Chambers, lived near our homestead, and we had close family ties with them. Uncle Frank was a mechanic, and everybody needed his help. Cousin Estella and Cousin Jerry completed the Chambers family. We had a good life, taking care of that place. It was sort of like a small plantation. Other settlers had already started small farms out there. You can grow anything in the fertile soil of the Big Thicket.

I had everything I needed for an idyllic life, there with my family and friends. I was eighteen years old and in good health. Some would even say I was handsome with my dark hair, green eyes, and rugged build. I could find work there, and I could have found a life that was stable and fine there in Tyler County.

So, why did I feel so restless when I turned eighteen? Part of this urge was that I wanted to see other parts of the world with my own eyes. But above that urge, there was a deep instinct in me to become my own person, to cross over the bar to the next phase of my life. But I was not a whole man yet; there were voids in my mind that kept me from being complete. I knew that I could only fill these voids if I ventured further out into the wider world, even if this venture was temporary.

I would sometimes envy the hoboes who came out there and camped by the streamside, built campfires, fished, and trapped rabbits to survive. Sometimes I talked to them while they cooked fish in their banjo. That is what they called a frying pan. They kept busy and alert thinking of their next move to survive, never talking about their past. That is, the part of their past when they had been rejected or had a broken heart. They found work anywhere they could and helped during harvest time for a little bit of cash pay. They traveled and migrated a lot, following the flags and paper signs stuck on trees put there by other hoboes, telling them where to find water and which of the farm families are kind and will give them food. I think they lived a lot like the local Caddo Indians who inhabited this remote forest for thousands of years before the white man came to destroy them and take their land.

These reflections remained in my mind, but the time had come for me to try my wings. I had learned from wayfarers who came by our place that Dallas was an up-and-coming place, so to get started toward Dallas I hitched a ride to Beaumont with one of the farmers taking tomatoes to the market. From there, I bought a ticket on a Northland bus to Dallas. Soon enough, I was living in a boardinghouse in Dallas, and had found a construction labor job.

I became a wage slave. I, unfortunately, was not able to save any money. It was the Roaring 1920s, and with this fast-paced life—going to the tracks and betting on the horses, partying and trying to do the jitterbug, going to the movies with friends, and other stuff—I never had more than ten or fifteen dollars from one week to another. Most of the time, I was in debt to the landlady for room and board, or I had to borrow money from friends. I was working for a contractor, putting in sewer and water systems and doing concrete work. This was hard work and got really monotonous.

Sometimes, living alone in Dallas, I remembered that beautiful forest and the good food and laughter we had in our family and the freedom of spirit. The truth is I felt lonely, like I had pulled myself away from my roots. But I couldn’t give up and go back home. I was still searching for meanings to fill the voids that I felt inside my head. It felt like there was a resonance of emptiness in me. There was something lacking in my life. There had to be more to life than the monotonous work, day after day, and getting my kicks with fair-weather friends. But what?

Then, one hot, late-summer afternoon, I wiped the sweat off my forehead, went to the post office, and found a postcard from my cousin, Estella. I knew Estella and her family had moved to Loma Linda, California, about a year back, in 1925. I assumed everything was all right with them. My mother knew my address in Dallas and must have passed it on to them.

Estella was four years younger than me, but we’d always been very close and constantly looked out for each other. Pretty little Estella; even her handwriting on the postcard was delicate and hesitant, but her message was not: It said, Marcellus, I need you. Please come quickly.

Estella was a skinny little girl with long blonde hair. Even as a little girl, she had a beguiling smile. In our close-knit family she was always there by my side. Yeah, even as a growing boy, I knew there was a special bond going on with Estella and me. I always felt secure when she was close to me.

When I read the card, I narrowed my eyes and studied the far horizon. The postcard sounded urgent and cryptic—almost desperate. Was Estella in some kind of trouble? What did she need from me? But in my soul I knew that, whatever it was, I could not let her down.

Suddenly, my mind was made up. I would go to her. The uneasy fog of the last two years began to lift; I would find Estella and help her. The bond between Estella and me had never been broken. Instinctively, I thought I would need to be there for her, and try to help her, before I could continue to build my own life. It was like a bridge that needed to be crossed. It felt like a force inside of me was thrusting me forward and had removed all of the fears and doubts about going out into the cold like that.

Before leaving my work on that Friday, August 27, 1926, I asked my foreman if I could take time off from work. He saw my determined eyes and understood the stress in my voice.

Then