Only half joking.
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For later reading.
My Step-Father was one of those boxcar kids. Left home at 14 because his parents were giving up his younger siblings for lack of food. Rode the rails from SoCal to NyCity. He found a job in a Jewish Bakery carring bags of flour to the third floor.
The bakery owners though in finding that he was a Catholic literally took him by the ear and enrolled him in a Catholic HS. He didn’t want school, he wanted to work and help the family back home. They told him that the only way to survive in the world was to be educated. They let him study, then work. After he graduated they encouraged him to get some college education.
Eventually, he joined the Army in 1939 so that h could have a regular meal and a place to sleep. Because of the college he was invited to enroll in OCS in 1942. The Army completed his education and he retired in 1969. He always
thanked the Jewish couple that saved a poor kid from California, He would sometimes hint at the kids he saw on the streets who ended up dead or abused.
Married after the war and other than the house and the occasional new car; never wanted much for himself. Insisted that if there were no leftovers at meal time then not enough food had been prepared.
Spoiled sis and I rotten rarely denying either of us any reasonable request.
Unless you lived through the ten or so years of the depression followed by the five war years; one can not understand what those individuals endured and accomplished.
My Dad quit school in 1929, at 14 years of age to work, in order to help support the family.
He started all kinds of little businesses.
My Mom's family lived in a small town, by the railroad tracks in Northern Saskatchewan, and Mom told me of the men who used to come into the back yard asking for morsels of food.
She said Grandma always found something for them, even if it was just a couple of peroigi.
Once, she asked Grandma why she was feeding these people when there wasn't enough for their own family (of 11).
Grandma told her that those people are someones children, and that if any of her children were ever hungry, she hoped that someone would feed them too.
my Dad was born in 1912 and was 17 in 1929. his Father was a tugboat Capitan running up and down the Hudson River/Erie Canal and owned a restaurant/bar here in town that my Grandmother and Father ran with his brother and two sisters helping out so i guess they did OK.
my Mom was born in 1914 and was 15 in 1929 and her Father owned a shoe store that had to let the hired help go in order to stay open, butt, i guess he made enough since he adopted a semi abandoned kid off the streets and raised his as his own along with his own three kids.
i remember many stories of hardship but not as bad as others.
Here's the deal: Find a big yard, and find some riders in the nearby jungle that know the ropes. Can even ask a brakeman or switchman about when and where a train is making up, if careful and nonthreatening. But avoid the bulls (RR police).
Use the missions in the yard towns for food and info, and accept the sermons.
Be sure the boxcar door is chocked, so as not to close up on you.
Boxcars are best, but hoppers or piggybacks will do in a pinch. There might be an open vehicle on a carrier.
Stay south in cold season.
Highly recommended for spoiled jerks in the colleges today.