I had been bumming around the country since I graduated from high school. No steady job. No car. Just riding freight trains wherever they would take me. That all worked out well until one night I was asleep in an empty boxcar when the train stopped out in the middle of nowhere. All I knew was that we were someplace in Wyoming.

The next thing that happened was that the railroad dicks started going from boxcar to boxcar, chasing the hobos, like me, off the train. I grabbed my backpack, jumped off, and ran into the bushes to hide. Some weren’t so lucky and got a dose of the railroad dick’s billy clubs before they got away.

The train ambled off and left me stranded.

Luckily, I found a road paralleling the tracks and started walking. At least with a road, I knew I was headed ‘somewhere’.

I found a comfy spot alongside the road, laid down, and went to sleep. I figured I’d start hitchhiking in the morning.

Come the morning and a pickup truck stopped. The driver was a black guy, a little older than me; his name was Monte. He said he was headed to the ranch where he worked and I was welcome to ride that far. He also said his boss was always looking for hands and I might get a job.

When we got there, we were still nowhere near a town, but the ranch complex was huge. Monte took me to the office and, as we walked, it became obvious that I might be the only white guy on the spread. The foreman’s name was Hector. He looked to be about 50, but had muscles on top of his muscles. I guessed he had done hard work for his whole life.

Hector welcomed me and said, “Sure. If you don’t mind working hard, the pay is $20 an hour and we work 12 hours a day”. He also said that I should expect to catch some crap from the other hands, me being ‘white and all’.

I told him not to worry. In my traveling, I had been around people of all races and got along fine with everyone.

When I got to the bunk house, I found out that Hector was sure right, not another white man in sight. There were about ten black men, rough looking black men.

“Ooh, lookee here. The boss found us a white boy.”

I thought it odd that they referred to be as a ‘boy’ but decided not to push the issue.

“Yeah, that was sure friendly of him.”

I tried to tell them my name several times, but they never used it. To them, I was just the ‘white boy’.

“You want to drink with us, white boy”? And, he handed me a mason jar full of clear liquid. One sniff told me it was moonshine, and strong moonshine at that.

Not wanting to offend anyone, I took at large drink. And that’s the last thing I remember.