TBT: My Great-Great-Uncle Austin

My Aunt Cathy has been a wonderful source of information when it comes to Family History - not just names and dates, but great stories too.  That side of my family is from Southern Virginia and it seems there was always something going on.  The following is an excerpt from an email Cathy sent me about my Grandpa's uncle, Austin (1902-1979).

Austin

Dad called him the "free spirit" of the family - always did what he pleased.  Dad also liked to point out that he was left-handed.  Before I came along, apparently he was the only left-handed person in either Dad's or Mom's families.

He didn't get much schooling - Dad thought he didn't go beyond 5 years at school, and the 1940 Census backs this up, recording that he only had up to 4th grade level of school - but Dad said that he loved to read - always had a paper-back book folded up in his back pocket - and so he taught himself a lot that way.  He especially loved Westerns.  He also loved baseball, and could quote you any and all baseball statistics for the teams he was interested in.  He desperately wanted to join the Uniformed Services in some way when World War I came along, but he was rejected, supposedly because of his hearing

The 20s and 30s were a time of extensive use of trains for travelling, you know, and it was also the time of "hobos" and people jumping on board trains to "ride the rails".

Southern Railway Company, early 1900s (possibly 1920s) at Danville, VA
source

One of Dad's favorite stories about Austin:  one day he walked into his mama's house totally black with soot  - skin, clothes, everything covered, and not a speck of white skin showing through.  He announced that he had ridden a train all the way from Washington, D.C. to Danville on the top of the train!

He finally got a job (my guess is that it was in the early 40s) as a security guard at the Pentagon.  He liked that job, and was well liked by the people he worked for.  He was laid off in the 50s, though, because he wasn't a veteran (World War II veterans were being given priority for jobs of this type over non-veterans).

But then he got a job, which he kept until retirement age, at the Hay-Adams Hotel - a very upscale place, located on Lafayette Square, practically across the street from the White House.  Dad says he was a sort of door greeter/guard, and he was given a room and board there, and again he was well-liked and very happy there.