Legs: An Authentic Story of Life on the Road

Jere D. Turner is Adult Collections Co-ordinator, Regina Public Library.

This is an autobiographical account of three years in the life of Oscar
Dexter “Legs” Brooks. Leaving his home in Saskatchewan at age 15,
Brooks traveled and worked at numerous jobs in the United States. His
principal mode of transportation was freight train, and his homes were
hobo jungles and flophouses. He found employment typical for an
itinerant worker—farm hand, railroad laborer, and the like.

This first-hand account of a near-extinct lifestyle includes numerous
conversations, which lend an immediacy to the story. But they’re not
enough to bring to life a book that is little more than reportage, a
book whose characters, with few exceptions, are one-dimensional.
Nevertheless, readers who supply a little imagination of their own will
be rewarded with an insight into the lives of the young men in the 1920s
and 1930s who chose to ride the freight trains.