Jack Black · 1926 · rail
Jack Black's 1926 memoir of thirty years in the hobo and criminal underworld of the American and Canadian West, a book that shaped William Burroughs and the Beats. Leaving home as a boy, Black rode the freights from town to town, falling in with safe-crackers and thieves, drifting through hop joints, jails and hobo jungles from the prairies to the Pacific, before he finally went straight in San Francisco and set it all down. The route follows his wandering years across the West.
- 1Missouri
A restless boy leaves his father's house in Missouri and takes to the road, falling in among drifters and learning the thief's trade.
- 2Pocatello
He rides the freights west, living in the hobo jungles that cluster around the great rail junctions like Pocatello, and is initiated into the brotherhood of yeggs and safe-crackers.
- 3New Westminster
His capers and his sentences carry him north across the line into the Canadian West, through its towns and its penitentiaries.
- 4San Francisco
At last, opium-worn and tired of the life, he comes to rest in San Francisco, where amid the hop joints of Chinatown he goes straight and writes the story of it all.