Full Speed Ahead: My Journey with Kit

I tell Kit I’m not her Cousin Lucille. Kit looks puzzled, then softens with sympathy: she understands, I’m a hobo. Before I can correct her, a slender, pretty woman interrupts, distressed at the sight of me. Kit tells her my name is Lulu and this is my dog, Buddy, before I can explain otherwise. Kit’s mother says we must be hot and thirsty from the walk up from the train yard, tells Kit to fetch us water from the garden spigot, and says she’ll bring food. Kit asks if we can come inside, but her mother firmly says no. I’m the third hobo this week, and I’ll eat and move on.

Kit nods sadly and her mother leaves. They’re calling me Lulu now, fine, but the hobo assumption bugs me. Where am I? Buddy dances at my feet with a newspaper in his mouth. I take it and catch the date: September 1, 1933.

I’m shocked. Has the camera sent me back in time? The headline mentions President Franklin Roosevelt, who I know was president during World War II from a movie, and whose wife, Eleanor, helped poor people.

I ask Kit if it’s really September 1, 1933. Kit says yes, school starts next week. She takes the newspaper inside and tells me to go around to the back of the house, where they’ll meet me.

I say okay as Kit leaves, my brain whirling. I’ve traveled back in time, and I’m homeless, too. Thanks a lot, camera. I look down at my old coat, cut-off jeans, and plaid shirt, trendy in the twenty-first century but tattered-looking to 1930s folk. I wish I’d landed as an explorer or a movie star instead of a hobo.

Nervous but curious, I click the camera. I’m back in my apartment, quiet, cold, and lonely, same as always. Kit intrigues me though, and at least as Lulu I have Buddy, a roly-poly puppy of my own. But a hobo? Surely the camera can do better.

I click the camera again and I’m back in Kit’s front yard. No time has passed. So that’s how it works. The camera is sure I’m meant to be with Kit. I’m not disappointed, Kit seems nice and Buddy is the dog I’ve always wanted. We walk to the back of the house, where Kit waits by a spigot near the garage, beside a vegetable garden, and I think I hear chickens despite the city suburb setting.

I tell Kit it’s a nice garden, but I’m no gardener. I’ve never even watered the balcony plants, but Camp Mosquito covered composting and growing vegetables. Kit asks if I grew up on a farm; I’ve never been to one, so I tell her I’m more of an indoorsy, city person. Kit asks if I work in a factory. Kids my age worked in factories? I tell her I’m more a student.

Kit’s face goes red, embarrassed, and she whispers to ask if my family was like hers before the Depression. Her dad lost his job, there’s no money to send her brother Charlie to college, and they rent rooms to boarders, struggling to make the twenty-dollar mortgage each month, close to losing the house. I clarify that’s not my case, Mother has a job and is home, I just left unexpectedly. Kit’s eyes widen. So I ran away so my family didn’t have to feed me. She nods and mentions a hobo boy named Will she met last month who did the same.

This depression stuff sounds horrible, always on the brink of losing your home or running away so your family doesn’t starve. Kit’s mother appears with a plate of sandwiches and a cloth sack, nods toward the spigot, and tells me to wash up with the soap and rough cloth there. She hands me the plate and apologizes that they can’t spare more. The sack is lumpy with potatoes; I’m not sure what to do with raw ones, but I thank her anyway.

Kit’s mom smiles and leaves. As I eat, Kit says her mother wishes she could do more, but so many hoboes come from the train that the kind-lady symbol must be on the fence again, a cat chalked on one of the boards, hobo code for a kind-hearted woman who gives hoboes food as a handout or for chores. Kit wonders if they could find chores for me, so Mother might let me and Buddy stay a while.