#freight trains

hi guys i doodled starlight expressians 😲😲😲

Ninety years ago today.

Doreene Peterson is a 21-year-old orphan who has worked as a waitress, stenographer and practical nurse; however, when she travelled to San Francisco she was unable to find work, which prompted her to jump trains back to Los Angeles where she was arrested by police for evading fare.

Doreene Peterson leans against the bars of a jail cell, wearing a pair of dirty men's trousers cinched with a belt. She smiles with her hands in her pockets.

Handwritten on negative: Doreene Peterson 11-28-35

Text from newspaper caption: Doreene Peterson, who prefers train bums to men motorists.

Text from negative sleeve: 4289 - Doreene Peterson 11-28-35 (21 y.o. orphan, unemployed) Riding on Freight Train [stamped:] Dec 31 1935

Photograph appears with the article, "Girl "Hobo" Seeks Work," Los Angeles Times, 29 Dec 1935: A22.

Scrappy girl. The Great Depression started in 1929 when she was just 15 years old. Unemployment peaked in 1933 at 24.9%. In 1935 it had dropped to 20.1%. Jobs for women generally paid less and were hard to find. I imagine that hitch hiking was filled inherent problems just as jumping on freight train did back then as well. Hobos rode the freight trains in quests for work. The train’s hired their own security, known as bulls. Bulls were often violent.

Emperor of the North Pole is a 1973 film starring Lee Marvin as "A-No.-1" top hobo, Ernest Borgnine as Shack the Engineer/Bull, Keith Carradine as “Cigaret” the hobo protege. Great film about hobos riding the rails. I imagine young Doreene Peterson encountered some interesting characters in her time.

"Heavy Hauling"

digital collage & digital painting by Mick Mather