Wheels

        I have a fuzzy memory of my dad talking about “riding the rails” with his oldest brother Roy when they were young. He told this tale when I was a teenager, in the late 1960’s. This memory has been taunting me lately, wondering when he did this and where they went.  But I never had any real hope of solving this puzzle. I have asked both of my brothers too. Did they have any memory of Dad talking about this? My brother Jim did not remember hearing this story, but my brother Bob did. So at least I proved to myself that I hadn’t totally imagined it. But Bob remembered no details other that his brother Roy was with him.

Last month I was doing a name search on newspapers.com. for my dad’s name from his high school days through his college days (1930’s decade) in Tennessee. And wow did I strike gold.

For one thing, I found that the University of Tennessee in Memphis was not the first college he had attended. Prior to that he had attended William Jennings Bryan College in Dayton, TN for one year. And I found a couple of front page articles about my dad and others being kicked out of that school for drinking an alcoholic beverage out of a jug. There was more to the story though, and they were later reinstated, as more came out about the entire incident. But this foray at a nearby college for a year explained the year gap between high school and attending Univ of TN. 

I kept digging for any article about my dad or his brothers. And I finally found a clue.  This article below was in the Knoxville Journal Aug 26, 1934. This could be it. This could be the rail trip they took, along with another person, Tom Swafford, who lived in their area. 

Aug 26, 1934 Knoxville newspaper clipping

        Then I started looking online for information about this Tom Swafford. There were quite a few Tom Swaffords in the area, but I found one that made sense. He was born in 1907 in the same area, two years after Roy, and four years before my dad. So the age fit. And this Tom Swafford’s middle initial was C. It turned out this Tom C. Swafford also attended University of TN in Memphis. And he was studying pharmacy. Aha! In September of 1934, just a month after they returned from their trip, my dad enrolled in the Univ. of TN Memphis in the school of pharmacy. So it all made sense. 

I know we family history researchers are always looking for connections, and want to find answers to our questions. Sometimes we draw conclusions because it makes everything fit. My point is that I cannot be positive that this particular trip my dad took with his brother and their friend was his “ride the rails” trip. There were certainly other time gaps where this trip might have happened. But I know it must have occurred sometime between 1931 and 1934.  Because after that his brother Roy was living in Ohio, earning his teaching diploma and teaching school. 

My dad (left) and two other pharmacy students at Univ of TN Memphis

I have one other document among my dad’s things which shed a little light on this trip. He was taking an Education 202 class in college, and part of this was a Master Ability Analysis. There were no dates on these documents, but one part of it was to analyze his own abilities.  In the section of Experiential Background, subsection Travel, he wrote: “have had quite a bit of travel, have seen several large cities. Familiar with the “hobo’s life (nothing desirable about it)”. I am assuming this is referring to his “ride the rails” experience! How fascinating!!

Dad's Master Ability Anaylsis - section on Travel

One other thing that I never expected to learn, was a possible reason of why he went into the field of pharmacy. It could very well be that Tom Swafford, who he travelled with in the summer of 1934, could have been instrumental in Dad's decision to enter into pharmacy school. Roscoe graduated from the University of TN Memphis in June 1938, and after WWII, where he served in the Army Medical Corps., he worked as a pharmacist and as a sales representative for a major pharmaceutical company. 

Dad's diploma B.S. in Pharmacy 1938