Riding on Top

Book excerpt: During the thirty-two years that Gordon McLean taught high school none of his colleagues or students suspected that, beginning at age fifteen, he had survived seven seasons of hoboing. A bank manager's son, the young McLean was driven only by boredom and a lust for adventure. Hoboing was a colorful way of life that is gone forever and there are only a diminishing few survivors who can explode the myths and tell us what it was really like. McLean is one such survivor. His experiences varied from audacious, hilarious, heart-stopping, thoughtful, spiritual, and almost mystical. Now at age eighty the ex-hobo still dreams of riding freights and has vivid memory flashbacks. He has decided to share these memories with his "very numerous, very dear progeny". Non-relatives are welcome to kibitz. Readers, in addition to being highly entertained, amused, and moved, will learn little-known, startling details about life and attitudes in out of the way places during the Depression that will amaze even old-timers who lived through that era. The young hobo was a keen, sensitive observer and the octogenarian has been able to vividly recapture and communicate what the young "bo" experienced.