Boxcar Bertha vs. Boxcar Children

One of the first things I thought of after I started to read about the life of Boxcar Bertha was that series of children’s books called the Boxcar Children. I know it’s kind of stretch, but I couldn’t disassociate Bertha from the children throughout the entire reading. According this fictional account of her life, she has all these fond memories of her childhood with her patchwork of family members and step-fathers, and then she went on to live the oddly happy life of a woman hobo. It wasn’t an easy life, but she seemed content going wherever needed her, attending conventions and working for the creation of Hobo Colleges so that all hobos could live more comfortably, raising her child within a group of fellow rootless travelers. It all just seemed pretty alright—maybe even respectable, almost. And I think the Boxcar Children, besides having a similar name, were kind of in a similar situation.

The first of the series was written years before the Great Depression, in 1924. But then it was reissued in 1942, and over the next sixty-something years the series grew to include over 140 books. But the first 19 were the only one written by the original author, Gertrude Chandler Warner, and none of them were actually written during the Great Depression. But, the first book was centered on this group of children—the oldest was 14—who ran away from an orphanage after their parents died to avoid the cruelty of the grown-up world. They settled in this abandoned boxcar they found in the woods, and lived mostly happily among themselves as kind of faux-hobos. They didn’t actually go anywhere, but their attitude about life was similar to that of these rail-riders we read about like Bertha—there was this sense of slightly overwhelming freedom. No one could tell them where to go, what to do, how to live. They all worked together to support themselves without much help from conventional members of society, and when they did need something from someone else, they worked for it. Even living in a boxcar suggests a kind of impermanence to their lives—boxcars have the ability to go all over the country, are meant to go all over the country, and while they are living by themselves away from their cruel grandfather, they have this same kind of freedom.

Of course, it ends up that their grandfather is actually a pretty great guy who loves them all, and they decide to live with him after all and he even moves their boxcar into his backyard for them to use as a playhouse. But it’s after they move in with him that their adventures really begin—the next 140 books or so are about the kids traveling around solving mysteries wherever they can find them (lighthouses, ranches, mountains, malls…).

Gertrude Chandler Warner once said that the books “raised a storm of protest from librarians who thought the children were having too good a time without any parental control! That is exactly why children like it!” And I feel like that’s the best way to describe the similarities between these kids and the travelers like Boxcar Bertha—it may seem weird and objectionable to most people, but to many, it’s a life of freedom.