After his birth in 1912, my father Clarence Bernard Propes grew up in Nickerson, Kansas, where his father ran a general store. The death of his father and older half brother Robert to the Spanish Flu destroyed the family's economic base. The Great Depression finished any chance of a regular future for this boy, who had already been forced to quit school in the 8th grade. In the 1930s, my father rode the rails and wrote about it. In 1939 or so, he ended up in Berkeley, met and married my mother, Aileen Williams, who was attending the University of California. All illustrations by Clarence B. Propes except for cover, which is by Aileen W. Propes