A long way from home — Story, Setting & Ideas

hat was an extraordinary order, after a long and tiring trip. But in those days of 1918, life was universally extraordinary and we railroad men were having our share of it. The government was operating the railroads, and Mr. McAdoo was Director-General. The lines were taxed to their capacity and the trains were running in a different way. Coaches and dining cars of one line were hitched up indiscriminately to the engines of another. Even we waiters were all mixed up on the same level! Seniority didn't count any more; efficiency was enough. There were no special crews for the crack trains; new men replaced the old-timers, expertly swinging trays to the rocking of the train and feeding lawmakers to the amazement of the old élite of the crews. The regular schedules were obsolete, for the dining cars were always getting out of line, there were so many special assignments. One day our dining car would be detailed to serve a group of Allied officers going on a secret rendezvous. Another day it had to cater to a foreign mission traveling to Washington. And other days there was the feeding of detachment upon detachment of hungry soldiers.

"Why should a doubling-out be wished on us?" one waiter growled. "Ask Mr. McAdoo, it's his business," another hilariously replied. In my disappointment (for now I had no time to see the editor) I cursed my luck and wished we were again working under the old régime. But that was merely a momentary reaction, for under the new system we were getting better wages and pay for overtime.

I telephoned the editor that I was obliged to work and could not keep the appointment. He answered graciously: "Whenever you are free, telephone me, and I'll see that we get together." And he gave me his private telephone number and address.

That night our crew slept in Harrisburg. The next afternoon we were in Pittsburgh, and free until the following morning. We went to the sleeping quarters in Wylie Avenue and checked in for our beds, after which the crew split up. A good distance from Wylie Avenue the colored folk had managed to maintain a café and cabaret on the edge of a section of the white district downtown. I decided to go there.

I wish I were one of those persons who have a sense of premonition, so that I might have stuck to quarters that afternoon. But I had a desire to be away from my fellows and off by myself, even if it were in a crowd. My mind was full of the rendezvous with that editor in New York. And as I couldn't talk to any of the fellows about it, it was better to find elsewhere excitement that would keep me from thinking too much.

I found the café in a hectic state. The police had just combed it, rounding up draft dodgers and vagrants. I learned that there was a police net thrown around Pittsburgh that day, and many men who were not slackers at all, but who had left their papers at home, had been picked up. I had no papers, for I had lost my registration card, so I decided to get back right away to the cover and protection of the crew's quarters.

I hurried off, but two blocks away from the café a black man and a white came across the street and straight at me. Bulls! Immediately I was aware. As I had no papers, the detectives arrested me and started for the jail. My protest that I was importantly employed on the railroad was of no avail. The detectives wrote down my name, appearing very wise and knowing, and I wondered if I had been listed as a draft dodger. I had moved from the address from which I had registered and had never received any notification.

At the jail I tried to get permission to telephone to the steward of our dining car. But the perplexed officials had no time to give to the personal requests of the host of prisoners. The police had corralled more than they could handle. The jails were overcrowded, with more men being brought in every minute and no place to accommodate them. Some of the local prisoners had their papers at home. Relatives, learning of their plight, brought them the papers and they were discharged. But all the non-residents were held. Three of us, two colored, one white, were put into a cell which was actually a water closet with an old-fashioned fetid hole. It was stinking, suffocating. I tried to overcome the stench by breathing through my mind all the fragrant verse I could find in the range of my memory.