An Interview with Katie Nolan, Author of Confessions of a Hobo's Daughter

Deborah Woodard: Congratulations on the publication of your memoir, Confessions of a Hobo’s Daughter, Katie. This is such a multilayered remembrance, and it’s a real page turner! It features family secrets, tales—some of them hair raising—of riding the rails during the Great Depression, an ongoing query into how to live one’s own love story, and even phone calls to your writing teacher. How did you come to write Hobo's Daughter?  Was there a moment when the book clicked into place for you?

Katie Nolan: I carried my father's hobo stories, both written and in my memory, for years. So the idea that I ought to write them in a book form was there as well. Some of the stories were poignant, like the one where my parents, after retirement, were traveling with my nephew. My father gestured to the town jail as they traveled through and exclaimed, “I was jailed there once.”  My mother immediately said, “Don't say that in front of your grandson!”  There was always this tension in the family as to whether his story should be told, or not. I felt that telling his story completely would vindicate him, create empathy for his plight, and that of many others, of being forced into a life on the rails due to the Great Depression.

DW: You tell the parallel stories of Bud and Katie, father and daughter. Both of them ride the rails, but in different ways. Bud never buys a ticket, for instance. Did you ride the rails to prepare for writing the book?  If so, what stood out for you as illuminating moments?  Did this journey make you feel closer to Bud?

KN: I rode the rails along the same routes that I knew my father took; I was in search of my father, someone who had always seemed bigger than life and heroic to me, in the way that he sacrificed, first for his parents by helping them with his meager earnings, then for our family of five, as he worked full time as a logger along with his second job as a dairy farmer. All of this labor and he was still able to spend lots of time with us on camping trips. I think what dominated my thoughts during my thirty-day train trip was how amazing it was that my father was able to be the most optimistic person I'd ever known in spite of hardships that would turn another person despondent. By his hobo stories and his everyday joviality, he taught me perhaps the most valuable lesson of my life—how to be positive and optimistic in the face of darkness. His joviality took the form of singing silly songs on his way to the woodshed every morning, and of tickling the feet of his children to wake them up. My childhood friend, who often stayed with me, remembers the latter and the memory always makes us laugh. I have always felt very close to my father, but the journey and my writing of the book brought insights into him as an exploited human being. My admiration of him took on a new form, a new understanding, beyond those early memories of daughter and father.

DW: You write a lot about the Great Depression in your memoir. Were anecdotes of those years passed down to you by your parents and grandparents, or did you rely on research. Or both?

KN: My parents and grandparents did often speak of living through the Great Depression. To this day, I learn some new stories from cousins who had their father, and my father's brothers, tell them similar tales. Each of the brothers, except for the youngest, was told that they “better get on the road and find work, so that they could feed the girls.”  From my earliest memories, my grandparents lived in the schoolhouse that they had bought at auction when they arrived in the northwest. We visited there often, as they lived less than a mile down the road from where I grew up. My grandparents came as many others did after being blown out from the dust storm. They lost all they had in the dust bowl, except for the few things they could tie onto their old jalopy. I recall the wood cook-stove that they brought with them, which looked huge and imposing to me as a child, and the story was told that grandpa didn't want the burden of bringing the stove along, but grandma insisted. Walls and rooms were built into the schoolhouse over time, but they never changed the porch where students had hung their coats on their way into the schoolroom. In bold red paint it said “Play Ball!”  Because my grandparents spoke often about coming to the northwest, I definitely felt the history they described. I did some research, including verifying that Nebraska also suffered from the dust bowl, something that is not always mentioned in the history books. I also researched the resistance of workers to the injustices of that time, including the famous “hunger marches” of the unemployed. On March 6, 1930 there were hunger marches all across the country, including the one mentioned in my book at Union Square in New York City. Hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers marched in major cities throughout the United States, demanding relief from joblessness and hunger. Marchers were generally met with brutal repression; however, after the marches public sympathy for the plight of the workers increased. Unemployment insurance eventually followed.

DW: Despite the hard times that Bud endures, the book is full of moments of keenly-felt joy and companionship. I'm thinking in particular of some of the scenes in the hobo camps, for instance when Bud scores a chicken and they all make hobo stew. And also of Bud's friendship with Harry, his fellow former convict, which is every bit as satisfying as Thelma and Louise. Do you feel that extreme circumstances can give rise to joy?  If so, what characterizes this joy?

KN: There is joy and companionship in hard times. Perhaps there is a relationship between extreme circumstances and tight bonds between human beings. Relationships deepen when you see that you can trust someone with your life. This is revealed when you face life threatening circumstances together. But I'd like to believe that we can experience the same deeply trusting relationships without going through starvation or war.

DW: I understand that you are a former philosophy professor. Can you share a bit from a philosopher you find more relevant?

KN: One of my readers stated that I had “bared my soul” in the book and that was part of what she liked about it. Well, opening one's soul can leave one feeling both embarrassed and vulnerable. But my embarrassment is also related to a recent epiphany that I, as the daughter, perfectly exemplify the Buddhist philosophy of grasping, aversion, and delusion, otherwise known as the wheel of samsara (basic and universal human suffering). I see myself as this very confused, deluded person grasping for love in all the wrong ways, then expressing an aversion to the project of love. It should make me blush, and does, that I was so blind.

There is a great deal of depth to the concept of delusion that I am not addressing here. Nonetheless, the basic idea that delusion, as it is related to reality, ontologically and epistemologically, and as it drives our grasping and our aversions, seems to be something I totally missed when grappling with my failed romantic relationships. This perhaps adds substance to the opinion that we do have to deal with our emotional blind spots, use psychological tools such as counseling if needed, before we can successfully embark on a spiritual path that promises to remove suffering. I can only hope that my epiphany will help me install a bit more wisdom into my next book!

DW: That’s fascinating! More love stories should be written by philosophers. I just have a couple more questions for you. Katie reminisces about her past relationships while on the train. Without giving away the revelation at the end of the book, could you draw any parallels between what Bud and Katie experience and come to learn?

KN: Since I was raised poor, perhaps I have an inherent understanding of how economic injustice creates barriers to healthy intimate relationships. In this country, propaganda has convinced many that being poor means you are a flawed human being, perhaps lazy or stupid. I found that many potential partners I met were either true believers in this myth—this was always painful when I realized their view—or subconsciously, perhaps, judged me as inferior somehow. I couldn't help but take it personally.

DW: We may be facing another Great Recession. What lessons can we learn from Bud's story?

KN: Dad's life is an example of economic and social injustice. With minimal research it becomes evident that very few wealthy people go to prison. Or in street talk “We get the best justice we can buy.”  Bud was put on a chain gang because he had less than a dollar in his pocket—at that time this was the result of a vagrancy law. Massive imprisonment of the poor seems to me to coincide with economic instability and its creation of the poor, the majority of whom are women and children. It is still true that approximately 80% of the world's poor is composed of women and children, while women continue to do 80% of the world's work!  This creation of the poor, which increases with each recession, is also complicated by institutional racism.

Laws and policies are intimately connected to the specter of another recession. Laws favored the banks when my grandparents experienced the loss of the family homestead in Nebraska. During the Great Recession of 2007 onward, policies favored the banks and the 1% of the wealthiest. Or as a friend put it when I lost my house and life savings in the 2007 recession, “You didn't lose your house and savings. That money is in someone’s pocket.” 

Unless we strengthen democratic institutions, history will repeat itself.