Charles Brown (1879-19??) worked as a railroad boomer from 1900-1913. Boomers were the Kelly temps of the day. Every railroad of the period had its cadre of regular employees who could handle the work load for periods of time in the course of a year, however, most of those railroads had one or more periods of time during a year when demands for their services were above and beyond the norm -seasonal crops, rapid expansion/construction to meet sudden changes in traffic, etc. When these conditions arose the boomer was the individual who was hired to help meet the demand. Most boomers, like Brown, were ordinary people. The big difference between Brown and his co-workers is that he took the time to write about his experience.
His original book was self published on the eve of the Great Depression. As far as is known only 3 copies of the work survived. Roger Grant discovered the book while researching railroad history of the west. Using official records Grant was able to trace Brown's movements after his career as a boomer was cut short by a railroad accident, and he was also able to confirm much of what Brown wrote (locations, places, events, etc.) The level of detail in his book is such that it is evident Brown either possessed a fantastic memory or he kept a detailed journal of his experiences which he used as a reference when he wrote his book. As the editor for this release of Brown's work Grant has provided annotations and footnotes to highlight the facts Brown cites.
Brown's wrote probably the way he spoke. His style takes a little getting used to but once you have the "cadence" of his narrative the book gives you the sense that you are sitting in his living room listening to him tell his story.
For example Brown states: "When you read in a newspaper about an engineer dying at his post with his hand on the throttle in a train wreck, about nine times out of ten it is a lotta bunk, for most any railroad man will tell you that these so called brave engineers that sticks to his post and dies with his hand on the throttle when he had a chance to jump would sure be an awful sap, and the truth of the matter in most cases where a poor unfortunate engineer is caught in a wreck and gets killed, is because that things happened so quick and fast that the poor fellow did not have a ghost of a show to jump or get out, and save himself before the crash came. For dear readers I want to tell you that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred when train wrecks happen they always happen without warning to the train crew or anybody else, and they happen so quick and fast that nobody hardly knows what has happened until they have stopped piling up and it is all over but the cleaning up the wreckage..." (pp.158-159)
His story is ordinary only in the sense that what he did was once typical. Today his story is extraordinary and it provides a glimpse of the way things once were. I think it is an outstanding autobiography and I would recommend it to anyone who might be interested in reading about how things were back when. (Text Length - 230 pages, Total Length - 259 pages, includes index.) ( )