Exactly 60 years ago this spring, two North Carolina boys were resting at home. They needed it. Because they'd just been through an extraordinary adventure that gave them more than they’d bargained for.

Way more.

There’s an idyllic glow attached to the romantic image of hopping a freight and riding in a boxcar like a carefree hobo to parts unknown.

That image certainly appealed to a pair of Tarheel State youngsters 60 years ago.

It’s difficult to remember now, but in that Paleolithic era before the internet and electronic everything, kids had to devise their own entertainment. Boredom is a child’s archenemy. It is overcome by imagination and enterprise. And 12-year-old David Harvey and his pal, 13-year-old William Waddell, displayed a little too much of both in April 1966.

They were typical boys for their time and place, which happened to be Fayetteville, N.C., home of the Army’s Fort Bragg. Their fathers were military, town life was dull, and the boys were aching for excitement, a little thrill to jazz up life in a drab Southern small town.   

They found it resting on nearby railroad tracks.

There, right before their very eyes, sat the answer. A Schlitz Brewing Company freight car with its loading door wide open.

They raced home, secretly swiped a total of $40 from their parents (about $410 today), and slipped inside the darkened freight car.

Neither had given the lark much thought. The car was an unexpected target of opportunity, after all. It seems their plan was to sit unnoticed in shadows until the train started rolling, enjoy the ride for a while, then jump out and make their way back home. Boredom problem settled!

And they might have succeeded, too. Until the moment a freight yard worker suddenly slammed the door shut and locked it. That possibility, it seems, had never occurred to the pair.

There was a jolt, and then ever so slowly at first, the car began moving. The boys were trapped in utter darkness with no way of getting out, no food or water, no idea where they were heading or how long it would take to get there.

But they did have one thing, and only one thing, to accompany them. Stacks and stacks of kegs and beer bottles. All empty. A local wholesaler, it turned out, was returning his empties.

Back in Fayetteville, darkness fell, and the boys didn’t return home. They had vanished without a trace. The parents understandably went into panic mode. They organized search parties and scoured the countryside for 50 miles in all directions. Nothing.

Young David and William, meanwhile, were adjusting to the clickety-clack of train travel in pitch blackness. But the appeal of riding the rails had vanished the minute the lock had snapped into place. Their attention now turned to survival.

The only thing they found was the few drops of beer (and one shudders to imagine what else) that turned up at the bottom of an occasional bottle. To stay warm, they wrapped themselves in shipping blankets used to protect the bottles in transit.

And they waited. And waited. And waited some more.

When the train finally stopped, they heard a railyard switchman outside and screamed for him to unlock the door. One can only imagine his shock when two boys emerged looking, according to news accounts at the time, “a bit thin and scraggly” and “hungry, tired, dirty, but safe.”

“Thank you, mister,” one boy said to his rescuer. “Thank God you opened that door.”

The stowaways were dumbstruck to learn that they were now 1,000 miles away in, appropriately enough, Milwaukee, Wisc. (Schlitz, after all, advertises itself as “The city that made Milwaukee famous.”)

It had taken them an incredible 13 days to get there. “We’d told stories and jokes during the trip to keep from getting scared in the dark,” David explained. They were rushed to a local hospital, examined, pronounced in good health and treated to a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast and milk, their first food in nearly two weeks.

While they were chowing down, a railroad worked called the Fayetteville Police Department and asked, “You got any missing boys down there? You do? Well, we found them.”

The two were dutifully sent home. “Mrs. Harvey (David’s mom) said she was almost hysterical with fear,” the local newspaper reported. The adventure briefly made national news, with UPI sending an account to papers around the country. But with the Vietnam War heating up, racial unrest rocking cities and teenagers in the grip of Beatlemania, it was quickly forgotten.

And so, the tale abruptly ends, leaving us with so many unanswered questions. What punishment greeted the runaways on their arrival home?  (They must have come from good families, because each sensed trouble in the other boy. “We weren’t even allowed to play together because we always get in trouble,” they had admitted at the hospital.)

Military families are prone to frequent relocation, especially in wartime, and history lost their trail. We don’t know where the boys went, what became of them, or even if they’re still around today. (If a reader knows the details, please share them!)

Yet it’s quite likely that if they had seen a certain classic movie about a young girl who once ran away from home, also went on a long trip (thanks to some help from a twister), and likewise had a terrifying adventure, they didn’t heed her advice at the film’s conclusion.

“After all, there’s no place like home.”

Have comments, questions or suggestions you’d like to share with Mark? Message him at jmp.press@gmail.com.