Rudy Rides the Rails: A Depression Era Story by Dani Daley Mackall is another good story in the Tales of Young Americans. The theme is inherently sad, but the story is well told and very interesting.
“You gotta look out for you and yours, and nobody else.” That is what Rudy’s Pa has taught him. But, ever since Pa lost his job, he can’t do that for himself or his family. Instead, Ma sneaks out to the relief line while Rudy’s little sisters wait at soup kitchens.
Like hundreds of teens, Rudy decides to go West in hope of work so he can send money home. Like many hobos, he hops the B&O train line out of Akron, Ohio. Along the way, he meets experienced hoboes and learns the secret culture of life on the rails. He learns the coded messages they leave on trees and fence posts signaling to other travelers which houses are safe and which ones are best skipped over.
When he gets to California, he realizes that “there were more hoboes than grains of sand in California. And all of them were looking for work.”
Rudy starts working his way back East, looking for smiling cats (sign of a friendly home) but there aren’t any in the Arizona desert. Along the way, he “painted a church… washed windows, unloaded fruit, and chopped wood.” Everywhere, he looks for the smiling cat and even finds a woman in one town who “wasn’t just looking out for herself.”
By the time that he gets back home, he has saved five dollars. And after being reunited with his family, he decides that his Pa was dead wrong. And, instead, he carves a smiling cat on the porch post so that other travelers will know that his house of people who aren’t just looking out for themselves.
The story is well-told and very interesting. The illustration is moody and dream-like – very appropriate to the story. Throughout the pages of the story, the story is decorated with hobo markings. The back of the book includes a hobo glossary.