Gandydancer'S Children: A Railroad Memoir

The late Frank Wendell Call is very much alive in these pages as he relates the fascinating tale of the rich, adventuresome existence he lived as a child in the Nevada desert along the Southern Pacific railroad line. In November 1928, Frank E. Call, a successful salesman, moved his young family from a comfortable home in Ogden, Utah, to a tiny two-room shanty in an isolated railroad station in northeastern Nevada. He went to work as a "gandydancer," a track laborer, and planned to become a section foreman. The first part of Frank's plan worked very well, but, the stock market crash in October 1929 and the Great Depression that followed upset his timetable.

Meanwhile, Frank and Johanne Call's six lively children adapted to living alongside the tracks in primitive houses without electricity or indoor plumbing. The colorful narrative by the family's oldest includes commentaries on railroading and the railroaders' language and describes social conditions and customs existing in tiny-town Nevada in the early twentieth century, told from the viewpoint of the children themselves.