40 pages • 1 hour read
The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man
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Boy Crusaders
The Boy Crusaders was a Boy Scouts-type summer camp located in the Ozark Mountains. Charlie White attended the camp as a young boy, living in the woods with other kids and teens for a month. Some teen campers later accused the leader of the camp of sexual assault. Von Drehle presents White’s experience at the Boy Crusaders as an early instance of White navigating a complex social situation on his own, foreshadowing the independent and resilient spirit he would show throughout his life.
Prohibition
Prohibition refers to the years of 1920-1933 in which alcohol was prohibited throughout America. During Prohibition, the federal ban on alcohol sales inadvertently created a black market for these goods. Von Drehle describes how Kansas City, Charlie White’s hometown and place of work, had a thriving black market for alcohol.
Bootlegging
Bootlegging entails the illegal making or selling of goods. During the Prohibition era, black market merchants and gangsters bootlegged alcohol to clubs, where it was illegally sold to customers. Von Drehle describes how Kansas City was rife with gangsters trading alcohol during the 1920s. White met some of these bootleggers in his work as a doctor.
Train-hopping
Train-hopping is illegally hitching rides on trains by hopping on and hiding on them. White and his friend Ed Snow train-hopped from California to Missouri by hiding on the roof of passenger cars or the “cowcatcher” in the front of the train. In spite of it being a dangerous and illegal way to travel, White and Snow felt it was their only way to reach home after running out of money as teens in California.
House Call
Early in Charlie White’s career as a doctor in the 1930s, physicians were still expected to make house calls to their patients, visiting them at home to assess them or transport them to the hospital. Von Drehle describes White’s more colorful anecdotes about attending house calls—even though many of his patients were too poor to pay.
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