Good afternoon everyone,

How is your day going? Well, I hope. I've been reading a book about teenagers, and didn't know that just riding the railroads was a big teenage activity during the Great Depression. Obviously that culture also included women, so let's have a look at some of the women who hit the road in the early twentieth century.

Let's start with Ethel Lynn, who was an incredibly accomplished woman – a doctor – who decided to hit the road (on a tandem!) when she was diagnosed with the early stages of TB. She wrote an autobiography about it, and if you are a fan of survival or even just making do, you might enjoy building this rocket stove based on her instructions:

Not to be defeated, (after all, how many female physicians were there in her day), she trades her only remaining prized possession, an opera cloak, for a green tandem bicycle. With a hell of a lot more “nerve and grit” than her whiney husband, Dan, she declares they’re riding the bike from Chicago to California. Which they do, with their portable “cooking stove outfit”. […] we can find out how the story ends while we sip on a bit of thin hobo stew that we’re going to make on our home-made tin can rocket stove. Grab your green tandem bike and let’s go!

http://logcabincooking.com/hobo-tin-can-portable-rocket-stove-class/

You can read the book yourself here:

Oh, my beautiful, my California! The whistle of the quail on the open benches is calling me; the mating songs of the mocking birds vibrate in my heart. Up the wide valley the warm wind sweeps, heavy with the fragrance of blossoming trees; on the uplands brilliant masses of flaming poppies and the silvery blue of slender lupines spread a feast of colour for my weary eyes; oranges blaze out in golden glory against the dark green foliage of the thrifty groves; the deep blue of the cloudless sky seems infinite in depth; and in the purple distance the white-capped peaks of San Bernardino and Grayback rear their lofty heads.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62971

Alas Project Gutenberg does not have Barbara Starke's autobiography, Born In Captivity, sounds like she spent a lot of the experience a bit stressed about where the next bar of soap was coming from which I can understand:

In the 1920s, Barbara Starke (a pseudonym) was on a free-ranging runaway trip at 17, wearing ‘corduroys’ and carrying very little. Despite the clear signal that she was on the road and living rough, she made frequent references to her efforts to stay ‘clean’, to wash her clothes or herself in a stream, or in a host’s bath, whenever the opportunity arose.

https://biblio.co.uk/book/born-captivity-story-girls-escape-starke/d/1045476117

Lots of love,

Alex.