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THIRTEEN MEN
- University of Iowa Press
- Chapter
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Thirteen Men One fall while my parents and sister were living in the CB&Q depot in Murphy, an early blizzard swept across the Great Plains, driving all but the foolish or unlucky indoors. The sound of a freight train taking on corn at the grain elevator woke my father late one night. Murphy stood on the main line, so this was a common occurrence. Trains stopped or sped past at all hours of the day or night. Pete went back to sleep as the train pulled away. But another sound soon woke him again. Someone was knocking at the waiting-room door, which was definitely not a common occurrence in little Murphy at that hour. My father put on his clothes, woke my mother, and told her what was happening. Then he walked out of the living quarters, through the office, and across the waiting room to see who could have business to transact at that unlikely hour. He stopped at the door and looked out the window. In the glare from the light above the brick platform, he saw a group of men huddled together against the cold. The bravest of the lot, a black man, stood near the door while the others kept their distance. From the way they were dressed, my father instantly realized what kind of men they were and how they had come to be there. They all wore overalls, work shoes, short heavy coats, thick cloth gloves, and winter caps with the flaps turned down to protect their ears. Pete turned on the waiting-room light, unlocked the door, and swung it open. “What are you fellows doing out here in this cold?” he asked the black man. He already knew the answer, but it would have been rude to show that he knew. “The conductor put us off the train,” the man said. “How many of you are there?” Pete asked. “There’s eleven here and two more down there trying to get into a boxcar,” the man said, pointing at a boxcar sitting on a sidetrack. “Oh, somebody better tell them not to do that,” Pete said. “That car is sealed to go out in the morning. They could get in trouble doing that. Get everybody to come back here and I’ll build up the fire in the wait- ing room.” The seal he referred to was nothing more than a strip of paper printed with dire warnings and attached to both the door and the body of the boxcar. To open the door, you had to break the seal. Anyone could break it, but to do so without permission was against the law and could result in a prison sentence. The man ran back to the group on the platform, and a few of them ran to get the other two before they, in their innocence, violated a federal law. All thirteen soon crowded into the waiting room, where Pete was shaking down the spent ashes in the coal stove. “Find a place to lie down,” he said. “I’ll get this fire going and you can get some sleep.” The men quickly accepted his invitation and lay down on the bare wooden floor wherever they could. Most of them were white. A few were black. The Great Depression excluded no one on the basis of race. “Where you fellows been?” Pete said after adding more coal and closing the door of the stove. “We were working in the beet fields,” one of the men said, referring to sugar beets, “but the blizzard ruined the crop and they put us out.” “Without pay,” another man said with a touch of resentment. “Where you from?” Pete said. The men told him. All were from farms and towns in Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois. Like millions of other desperate men during the Depression, they had left their families in search of work. Any kind of work. Now they were trying to get back home with little or no money to show for their trouble. The fire in the stove heated up, and Pete set the draft for the night. By then the men were snoring peacefully. He left as quietly as he could, and soon he, my mother, and little Janey were sleeping, too. My parents awoke early the next morning, as they always did. Pete got dressed and walked out of the bedroom and through the small parlor to the office, which also served as the kitchen. Many people would...