by Lee Gomer
About November 1, 1938, Orville, Herb Schriner and I were sitting on the bank of whatever river flows through Portola, California. We were en route from the middle of Kansas – Marquette – to Sacramento, California. I don’t remember why we were between freights, but we were at loose ends, for the moment, in this Northern California town.
We had walked to a grocery store, bought a loaf of white bread for ten cents and some bologna, and were enjoying sandwiches, and I felt as alone as I’ve ever been in my life. On the walk to the store, we had passed people hurrying off to their lives for the day: kids hurrying -- probably reluctantly -- to school; mothers pushing baby carriages; men in suits rushing to important meetings, no doubt. They all looked so necessary, so important. They all amounted to something. What were we? We were excess baggage, completely worthless, unnecessary souls, headed for an uncertain future. If we disappeared into the river, what would the world have lost? I felt completely outside-looking-in!
One other time in my life, I had had a like feeling. It was September, 1935, the fall after my graduation from high school. I was loading the Prune Wagon, the Model-T Ford delivery truck for Kumli’s Market. Passing me on their way to school were students, laughing and cavorting, carefree as I had been a short time before. Now I was no longer a part of that world. Nor, it seemed, a part of any world. Depression days ahead. No chance in sight of anything but a $1-a-day job delivering ice and groceries. I wasn’t a part of the business world nor the school world. Between two worlds, it seemed.
How I could have used a peek at the future!
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