Legs: An Authentic Story of Life on the Road

By Oscar D. Brooks

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1550132873
• ISBN13: 9781550132878
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Key Porter Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A fantastic peice of our history and an all around good read

He went by the nickname "Legs" A tall tough-minded teenager, He had done a man's work without pay untill he jumped a boxcar and fled from his home in Saskatchewan. In the following years he road the rails across the length and breadth of the continent and lived by his wits and brawn. This is a story of wanderlust in the great American "On the Road" tradition. Oscar Brooks draws on his memories of a time when young men with ambition, but little money, lived separate,allmost self-contained world. This world was inhabited by hobos, bindel stiffs, and jungle buzzards, By hoggers, Yard Bulls and gandy dancers. It was a harsh life, where steady jobs were hard to come by, especially for a kid with no family or home. Legs survived by doing any job. He husled pool, Panhandled, worked as a diswasher, labourer and farmhand. he was hels in an Ameican jail when caught crossing the border illeagally, and busted out. He made love to the wife of a traveling salesman, made war with belligerent drunks in a pool hall, and once, in a restaurant, watched as the waiter coolly shot a at with a .22 calibre pistol before serving customers. This is an exuberant account of a forgotten way of life.