The American Hobo -SD
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TVTranscript
00:00 [no audio]
00:04 [train chugging]
00:08 [train chugging]
00:12 [train chugging]
00:16 [train chugging]
00:20 [train chugging]
00:24 [train whistle]
00:28 [train whistle]
00:32 [train whistle]
00:36 [train whistle]
00:40 As the drover runs the cattle trail, and the sailor follows billowed sail,
00:44 so the hobo tames the iron trail and longs for places far.
00:50 The open road becomes his home. He can't subdue his urge to roam.
00:54 The headlight and the whistle's moan become his guiding star.
01:00 He works and wanders, also learns, and in his heart,
01:04 he always yearns to see beyond the river's turns, the view from rolling cars.
01:12 [music]
01:21 All around the water tank, waiting for a train.
01:29 A thousand miles away from home, sleeping in the rain.
01:36 I walked up to a brakeman to give him my talk.
01:44 He said, "You've got money, I'll see that you don't walk.
01:52 I haven't got a nickel, not a penny can I show.
02:00 Get off, get off your railroad bum," and he slammed that boxcar door.
02:09 [music]
02:13 You know, when we were kids, we used to walk the railroad tracks
02:18 to see how far we could walk, make bets among ourselves, you know,
02:22 "Oh boy, look at this, look how far he's going."
02:27 And occasionally you'd see a train pass by,
02:31 and you'd see a hobo up there, and you'd wave at him.
02:35 They'd wave back. You wondered where these people were going.
02:43 It was a fascinating adventure in our little lives to look at these fellas
02:49 and realize that they were going somewhere, and on a train.
02:58 I was a real hobo. I did not have a stable home,
03:05 so I was always willing to head out for a new adventure.
03:12 I listened to a lot of those old Jimmy Rogers songs,
03:15 and he talked about riding freight trains and made it sound so enticing
03:19 that I just couldn't stay off of them.
03:21 I like the lifestyle, I like the people I associate with,
03:24 and of course it's a free ride.
03:26 It's like a time machine where you ride along
03:29 and you see so many historical elements of this country.
03:33 I've always been intrigued with travel and adventure.
03:38 It's like kind of recharging your batteries.
03:41 I'm out here seeing things I missed when I was a kid.
03:44 It's an experience that in a lot of ways just escapes an explanation.
03:49 You really have to do it to understand what it's like.
03:52 I think it's the adventure and the thrill and sometimes just the peace
03:56 to watch the country go by, and I always call it National Geographic Live.
04:01 Self-survival, you know.
04:05 Eat when you want to eat, sleep when you want to sleep.
04:10 You don't have to worry about the IRS.
04:13 It's in the blood, I guess. Once you do it, it's in you. You can't quit.
04:19 You call your own shots as you see fit for yourself.
04:25 I don't own a car right now.
04:27 I don't like riding Greyhound buses, man, because I always get lucky.
04:30 I always draw the wild card.
04:32 I get some big old gal sitting next to me who wants to fall asleep
04:34 with her head in my lap, and I can't smoke a cigarette or drink a beer,
04:37 and I can do this in a boxcar.
04:39 I rode freight trains all my life because I just loved to do it.
04:42 [train rumbling]
04:44 Ah, the rhythm of the rails is an enticing song to those who long to be far away.
04:49 Like the Pied Piper, wandering souls have followed the tracks,
04:54 stitched like seams across the country since the Civil War.
04:58 [music]
05:00 Legend has it that Eerie Crip and Philly Pop, two discharged Union soldiers,
05:05 were the founding members of the fraternity of freight-hopping hobos.
05:09 The two men, accustomed to the open-air military lifestyle,
05:13 hitched a ride on a passing freight and rambled over the horizon.
05:18 Other Civil War veterans followed suit and hopped on trains to get back home,
05:23 while the less fortunate soldiers, left homeless by the devastating war,
05:27 rode the rails in search of a new beginning.
05:30 A great number of these early wanderers sought jobs as migrant farm workers
05:35 and carried hoes along with them.
05:38 Therefore, it is thought the nickname "hobo" is derived from being called
05:44 "homeward-bound soldiers" or "ho-boys," both shortened to "hobo."
05:51 As the nation expanded westward, the railroads needed laborers to set ties
05:56 and lay tracks, and the hobos played a vital role in these activities.
06:01 To feed a growing nation, the hobos became the harvesters
06:05 who reaped the crops of Mid-America, often working a route that took them
06:09 from the Texas Panhandle to the Canadian border each season.
06:14 During the prime age of dam construction, the hobos formed the nucleus
06:18 of the hardy traveling workforces who built these massive structures,
06:23 often in remote areas whose only real access was by freight train.
06:28 These restless men continued to follow the developing railroads
06:32 through the Rocky Mountains and became the lumberjacks of the Northwest Woods
06:37 and merchant seamen of the Pacific Ocean.
06:41 [music]
06:51 The Great Depression of the '30s prompted factories to lay off laborers,
06:56 businesses to foreclose, and farms to fall into ruin.
07:00 Banks went broke and millions of people lost their life savings.
07:04 It was a nightmare and created a new surge of hobos
07:08 who took to the rails in search of work.
07:11 In 1934, the U.S. Bureau of Transient Affairs estimated there were
07:16 1 1/2 million men and women riding America's freight trains.
07:22 You could taste the Depression.
07:26 Those were bad years, you know, '30, '31, '32.
07:33 Everything was lean and mean, no jobs.
07:37 You had to start with trying to get everything from a day's work
07:42 to whatever you can get.
07:45 Back then, everybody had a relative, a brother, a son, a father, an uncle,
07:50 who was riding the trains looking for work.
07:54 Ah, that lonesome whistle continues to recruit new visionaries,
07:59 offering passage to where dreams are found.
08:03 I hopped my first freight train back in 1966 in Athens, Alabama.
08:10 A couple of buddies and I wanted to go up to Nashville,
08:14 and we didn't know how to get there except take the bus.
08:18 So we were sitting down the weeds by the college there,
08:21 and this freight train came by and it was going real slow.
08:25 So we said, "Let's do it.
08:27 Next thing you know, we're on our way to Nashville."
08:30 Well, I started riding freight trains as kind of a recreational
08:34 boyish adventure when I was about 15, and I rode pretty hard for several years,
08:40 finally coming to rest at about 21 or 22.
08:43 Well, the first freight train I rode, I was a kid about 15 years old,
08:48 and I wanted to get home from Minnesota down into Iowa,
08:52 and I didn't want to wait for my father to come up there to get me,
08:55 so I rode a freight train.
08:57 The first true hobo trip I ever took was when my brother, Hopalong Chet,
09:03 and I were going back to our grandfather's 90th reunion,
09:07 and we rode from Barstow, California, to the east coast to Boston.
09:12 It took us 8 days and 13 different train connections,
09:16 and from that moment on we were hooked.
09:18 I decided to make a documentary film, and it was mostly--the film started out
09:23 as an excuse for me to figure out how to get on a freight train.
09:27 So when I finally took my first ride, it was everything that I had imagined
09:34 it might be, and it was pretty much an immediate addiction.
09:40 I've been doing this since the age of 13 years old.
09:44 I'm telling you, the real McCoy.
09:47 A friend of mine used to work for Canadian National up in Montreal,
09:51 and he knew I liked trains a lot.
09:53 I'd always liked trains going way back to when I was a little kid.
09:57 And he said, "You know, you might think about jumping on trains to get around.
10:02 I mean, you like to travel around a lot, and you like trains."
10:05 And that was sort of the beginning of it, and I took it from there.
10:10 The first time was an old oil spur up there where I used to live in Oildale,
10:14 but the first long trip I took was from Bakersfield to Fresno on the old SP.
10:20 At the age of 12 or 13, I was living near Philadelphia,
10:28 and with a partner a year older, we bummed our way
10:36 all the way to the Canadian border and all the way south to Florida.
10:43 [train whistle]
10:48 Every year, at a different location alongside a mainline railroad,
10:53 the National Hobo Association sponsors the Hobo Poetry and Music Festival.
10:59 This year's site is charming Marquette, Iowa,
11:02 on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River.
11:05 Oh, and music has always been a central component of hobo life.
11:11 They'd sing of their old homes, their old loves, their work, and their trains.
11:16 They'd play guitars, mandolins, and banjos,
11:19 and simpler instruments like gin whistles, harmonicas, and Jews' hearts.
11:24 [music]
11:41 The boss set me a-drivin' spikes, the sweat was enough to blind me.
11:47 The boss, he didn't like my pace, so I left my job behind me.
11:53 I climbed aboard an old freight train 'round the country travel.
11:58 The mysteries of a hobo's life to me were soon unraveled.
12:03 Yes, and the Jungle Telegraph goes out to hobos and hobos at heart
12:08 in every corner of America, and they come from all nooks and crannies.
12:13 They arrive by various modes of conveyance, many by car, truck, or motorhome,
12:18 and, of course, the freight train.
12:23 Oh, the big rock candy mountain, there's a land so fair and bright,
12:27 where the boxcars all are empty and you sleep out every night,
12:31 where the handouts grow on bushes and the sun shines every day,
12:35 on the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees and the lemonade springs
12:38 where the bluebird sings in the big rock candy mountain.
12:42 [music]
12:59 This fun-filled event brings out the free spirit of the hobo that lives within us all,
13:04 and everyone is encouraged to partake in the wide variety of family activities.
13:15 This retired hobo is being hounded by his alter ego to return to the rails.
13:21 We could hop an extra west and head out toward the coast,
13:24 or maybe take the valley route with the river as our host.
13:27 You always like the scenery on the Colorado Run,
13:29 or the smell of hay as the boxcars wade in the autumn Kansas sun.
13:34 He said, "We never rode the Chesapeake or the seaboard or the Sioux,
13:37 and what about the cotton belt? That promise came from you.
13:40 You said we'd ride the Lehigh and the Wabash Cannonball,
13:43 and you absolutely promised we'd ride New England in the fall."
13:47 How long can I resist the call? I really couldn't say,
13:50 but the inner hobo's argument gets stronger every day.
13:53 Now, I'm not one for idle talk, but I want the world to know
13:57 that if I hear that whistle one more time, I just might up and go.
14:01 [applause]
14:05 Early in the morning and it looked like rain,
14:07 around the bend come a passenger train.
14:09 Under the cab was Casey Jones, a good engineer, but he dead and gone.
14:13 Dead and gone, dead and gone, a good engineer, but he dead and gone.
14:21 Well, Casey Jones was a brave engineer, he told his fireman not to fear.
14:26 [music]
14:38 Trains are marvelous contraptions under any circumstance.
14:42 They are unreal, shimmering steel, creatures that are almost alive,
14:47 fire-breathing monsters with intense, undulating tails.
14:52 So what is it that lures a hobo to mock these beasts again and again?
14:58 I mean, I like to play music, you know,
15:00 there's nothing finer than sort of like the rhythm, you know.
15:03 You're in tune with the rhythm, not only the rails,
15:05 but I get in tune with the rhythm of waters that the trains go by.
15:09 The speed, the power of the train, all those really, they really turn me on.
15:15 The freedom, not, not, getting away from everything,
15:19 not feeling like I've got to be responsible about anything,
15:24 being punctual, being somewhere at an exact time,
15:27 being able to just hang out, go with the train, get somewhere for free.
15:31 I'm getting from point A to point B and I don't have to drive.
15:34 I don't have to deal with inner city traffic
15:37 or anybody who's not going to let me get in my lane.
15:41 A nice day, a good ride.
15:44 I like to get into a terminal too that I haven't seen before and poke around.
15:48 I like to do that.
15:50 You also go through parts of the country, unlike the interstate system,
15:58 that has virtually no signs of any commercial activity.
16:03 No billboards, no exit signs, no neon.
16:06 Seeing America from a boxcar, you see the wild horses,
16:10 you see the ghost towns, you see, you know,
16:14 you see everything about America that's, that's wonderful.
16:18 To be out in the open prairie where there's nothing but beautiful land around me
16:21 and I have all that solitude and all that time to think things out and get creative.
16:26 Seeing different parts of the country, a new, new piece of scenery every day.
16:31 There are places like Idaho and Montana and Wyoming,
16:36 all those western places I love, those mountains are beautiful.
16:40 The sheer excitement of getting to new places and new experiences.
16:47 Just to see what I call priceless wonders,
16:50 those things that drift by you when you're riding a train.
16:53 And the adventure doesn't end when the ride's over.
16:57 Breathtaking landscapes give way to the colorful characters
17:01 who pass through the train yards.
17:04 The friends you meet along the way, it's,
17:07 that's what keeps me going back I think more than anything.
17:10 They're not a 9-to-5 office kind of person,
17:13 and we can sit and tell tall tales and relate to each other.
17:16 I really enjoy those kind of folks.
17:18 We're not caught up in that hustle-bustle, credit card, plastic money,
17:22 car payments, concrete, highways, and going from the office to the,
17:26 to the club to make the scene in other words.
17:28 I use the hobo as a medium for my poetry
17:32 and found that everybody I've met so far has a story
17:36 and it helps me tremendously with my, with my feelings.
17:40 The friendship of the young fellow who took me to Canada
17:45 and to Florida was precious.
17:49 When I started out, I had my own preconceptions about
17:54 who was out riding freight trains,
17:56 and I thought that it was a fairly homogenous group.
18:00 And I think what I've, one of the things I've really learned
18:03 is that there are many different personalities that are out riding the freights.
18:08 And those different personalities rarely divulge their family names,
18:13 adopting unique aliases instead.
18:16 Everybody's road name kind of gives in a nutshell
18:21 who they are and what they represent,
18:23 so I can introduce myself as Jet Set John
18:25 and that kind of tells a little bit of the other side of me
18:28 rather than just being a hobo.
18:31 Some guys that walk along the track, they might call him Track Man, you know.
18:35 And Sidecar Sam, he was riding sidecar on a tanker
18:40 with his feet dangling down alongside the tank.
18:43 That's why I named him Sidecar Sam.
18:46 Then Lowline Larry, he rides from Florida all the way up to Utah
18:50 and he rides that lowline, so I gave him the name of Lowline.
18:54 Everybody has a road name.
18:56 [music]
19:00 I was a stranger passing through your town
19:07 I was a stranger passing through your town
19:14 When I asked you a favor, good girl, you turned me down
19:23 You turned me down
19:30 Most of the time I'm alone because I have my own destination
19:33 and I have my own reason for going somewhere.
19:36 I love solitude.
19:37 I was lonely before I started riding.
19:39 I never got lonely anywhere.
19:41 I told my wife I was going on an 18-day trip.
19:43 She, hopefully, was sorry to see me go.
19:47 My sister and everybody, they get a kick out of telling their friends what I do.
19:50 My brother has been with me one time, but he doesn't want to do it again,
19:54 but he kind of likes the concept, you know what I mean?
19:57 My mother looks a little bit askance at it, you know, like it's not the greatest thing,
20:02 but she understands that I enjoy it and have a good time doing it.
20:06 My family, I don't really tell them anymore because you get a lot of shaking heads
20:10 and shrugged shoulders and they don't really understand why I do it.
20:14 Since I'm a senior citizen, it's kind of frowned on.
20:19 A lot of them think it's really neat, but then there's some that just think I'm totally out of my mind.
20:24 Most of my friends think it sounds like fun, sounds entertaining.
20:28 They don't do it.
20:30 My friends, they're a little more understanding.
20:33 They tell me--it's happened more than a few times--
20:36 that they tell me they want to come out on a ride with me,
20:39 and as soon as I pack up my gear and I'm ready to head out the door, they seem to disappear.
20:44 My mother spent a lot of worrisome years, I'm sure.
20:47 When I got to Dunsmire on that trip there, I called her,
20:51 and it just so happened I had a check coming from a job that I'd worked before I left a couple months before,
20:56 and she sent it to me by Western Union.
20:58 I got my butt on it, god dang greyhound.
21:01 Quitted that hoboing.
21:03 [banjo music]
21:20 Outside the rain was falling on the lonely boxcar door,
21:27 but the little form of Hobo Bill lay dead upon the floor.
21:36 While the train sped through the darkness with the raging storm outside,
21:44 no one knew that Hobo Bill was taking his last ride.
21:53 He-Ho-Bo-Bill.
22:02 Oh, it was always cold, and stuff was always blowing in your face,
22:06 and I think the coldest ride I had was from Eugene, Oregon to Klamath Falls, Oregon,
22:19 and on into Dunsmire, but we rode over the top of the mountain there in the snowstorm,
22:24 and a couple of other Bo's and myself were in the ice compartment back in those old 40-foot reefers.
22:32 If they didn't have any fruit they were carrying, they'd leave those reefer tops open sometimes,
22:38 and it was an excellent place to get if you couldn't get inside of a boxcar somewhere,
22:42 and that's where we were on that mountain in that snowstorm.
22:46 It was just too hot. You'd get stuck in the back end of a well car.
22:51 There's no way to get out of the sun, and you roiled to death.
22:54 The worst part about it would be in situations where you've run out of water,
22:57 and you know it's going to be a long time before you can find any.
22:59 Finding a place to take a shower.
23:01 Being hungry.
23:02 Lonesome towns.
23:03 Waiting, waiting, waiting.
23:05 What you're waiting for is when you finally catch out again, and you start moving,
23:08 and you have that, "Ah, this is what I was waiting for,"
23:11 but when you wait a long time for that, I sometimes sit there and go,
23:14 "Is this really worth it just to get on that train? This is really a pain."
23:18 But in the end, it is always worth it.
23:21 Well, the worst thing I used to think was getting a flat wheel,
23:25 and you're lying there trying to sleep, and you're bouncing off the floor
23:28 every time that wheel goes around.
23:30 The railroad bull running you out of the yards,
23:33 or the town clown putting a run on you from his town and telling you to move on.
23:43 I get sick and tired of the bugs sometimes.
23:45 Some of the places I go, I slap on the bugs.
23:48 All of a sudden, in the middle of the night, man, they'll break air
23:50 and they'll leave me out in the middle of nowhere in the desert.
23:52 That's kind of hard.
23:54 The worst thing that could possibly happen for some of us would be if they made it legal.
24:01 I'd like to make a little disclaimer here, just for our lawyers' sake, no bail.
24:08 Came down to make sure we're all in line.
24:10 By no means does the National Hobo Association encourage anybody to go get on a freight train.
24:16 It's illegal, and it's dangerous.
24:20 During the Depression, hundreds of trespassers invaded yards like this
24:26 and risked the wrath of the railroad bull.
24:29 Today, it's a misdemeanor in most places,
24:32 the law's main concern being vandalism of railroad property.
24:37 A pesky hobo could surely wind up in jail if the bull's warning goes unheeded.
24:43 Had to run alongside and follow the advice of the older men,
24:50 hook a ride, get in.
24:53 And the railroad police, they couldn't stop you from doing that
24:59 because it was just as risky for them as it was for us.
25:04 They could masterfully keep you out of the railroad yards,
25:10 and that's where we tangled with them.
25:15 Back in the old days, you're going to go to the chain gang for 30 days, you know,
25:20 especially down south.
25:22 They were mean and bad.
25:28 Well, in the old days, they used to hit you with them breakman's club.
25:33 Today, they're not too bad, I guess.
25:36 They didn't stop us from getting aboard the train, slow moving.
25:45 And we were very agile, and we had done it many times.
25:50 Once we broke through their lines, we were on our way to Peoria.
25:56 They walked the train with the deputy sheriffs, pulled us off of there,
26:00 and it was kind of nice, sort of like Aunt Bea bringing us dinner and everything.
26:03 It was kind of fun.
26:04 They wrote us a ticket for trespassing on railroad property.
26:06 We had to spend the night in the jail, and they told us to get out of town the next morning
26:09 because the DA wasn't going to prosecute it.
26:11 The city was too small.
26:13 I was never badly treated by them.
26:18 They saw that I was younger.
26:21 They were, in a sense, protective,
26:25 but they did not want me aboard their freight trains.
26:29 I got into a boxcar with about eight other hobos, and I was hungry.
26:34 I went down and broke the seal on one of them refrigerator cars,
26:37 did the unmanageable, and took a whole case of green beans out of there.
26:42 I threw it up in that boxcar, and those hobos went to screaming at me and said,
26:46 "Man, we'll get 50 years in jail.
26:48 What are you doing breaking the seal on that boxcar?"
26:50 I said, "They'll throw us all off this train."
26:52 I said, "Well, at least we'll be hungry."
26:54 One old hobo way back in the corner of the boxcar,
27:00 he threw over a can opener and a spoon.
27:03 He said, "I'll join you, young man."
27:05 [music]
27:14 Hobo camps, also known as jungles, grew up near the train yards, water tanks,
27:19 crew change points, anywhere locomotives stopped.
27:24 Sooner or later, you did fall into one of the camps,
27:30 and very imaginative men ran them.
27:34 They were congenial places.
27:37 You didn't want to leave.
27:40 You made friends. You heard great stories.
27:44 Well, I remember going into a hobo jungle one time in Barstow.
27:50 They had really a large hobo camp there.
27:55 I participated in some community stew a couple times in my life.
28:00 Fit for a king, hobo stew, the famous mulligan that's been made in spike cans
28:09 and paint buckets under bridges and on the edge of the railroad yards since the Civil War.
28:14 The stew pot gurgled over the fire for days on end.
28:18 They just kept adding ingredients as the level went down.
28:22 Those jungles, they were clean. They had an order.
28:26 They didn't throw garbage around.
28:30 Usually if a guy come into jungles, he came there with his loaf of bread
28:36 and his bologna and cheese, and maybe he wanted to make a pot of coffee
28:44 and wait for a train and catch out.
28:49 The townspeople that complained, they complained to the police.
28:53 The police complained to the railroad bulls, and the railroad bulls ran them out.
28:57 If they keep the place clean, you know, and pick up all their trash and stuff,
29:02 I don't think they'd even be bothered.
29:05 The jungles are being wiped out with caterpillar tractors
29:08 so that there would be no place for the riders to hide.
29:12 There's very few jungles nowadays.
29:15 [music]
29:17 Go to sleep, you weary hobo.
29:22 Let the town strip slowly by.
29:28 Can't you hear the steel rail humming?
29:34 That's a hobo's lullaby.
29:40 Though your clothes are torn and ragged,
29:46 though your hair is turning gray,
29:52 though you've spent a lifetime searching,
29:58 you'll find happiness someday.
30:03 So go to sleep, you weary hobo.
30:09 Let the town strip slowly by.
30:15 Can't you hear the steel rail humming?
30:21 That's a hobo's lullaby.
30:28 [music]
30:31 Hobos communicate through the National Hobo Association,
30:35 founded in 1987 by Santa Fe Bow,
30:39 who's been a trained barnacle since the '70s.
30:42 His two goals were uniting others who shared a love of the open road
30:46 and preserving the history of the hobo.
30:50 During his travels, Santa Fe came across an old copy of the now-defunct Hobo News,
30:56 a publication that dated back to 1908.
31:00 Consequently, he created the Hobo Times, America's journal of wanderlust,
31:05 and began distributing it to kindred spirits.
31:09 In 1990, Buzz Potter came on board,
31:13 and together they upgraded the Times to the only magazine in America
31:17 that features a blend of railroad adventure stories, poetry, nostalgia,
31:23 and the current news of life on the hobo trail.
31:26 A letter that we got from a 96-year-old former hobo who rode back in the Depression,
31:33 and he found out about us, and he sent us a letter,
31:36 and it said very simply, "Dear National Hobo Association,
31:39 please don't let the hobo die."
31:42 It grew slowly over the years, but steadily,
31:46 and today we have thousands of members nationwide
31:49 that span the demographic spectrum from lawyers to laborers, professional people, corporate people.
31:58 They're from all walks of life, and they've been where I've got to go yet,
32:02 and I learn from their experiences.
32:05 It's amazing how many people don't realize they're hobos until they come and see us,
32:09 and they realize that they're on the same wavelength with us, with their kindred spirits.
32:13 They have the wanderlust, the sense of romance, and the sense of nostalgia.
32:18 All of a sudden we understood that there were other people like ourselves,
32:22 and we found out how to get a hold of them.
32:24 It provides a forum for us to get together and tell our tales,
32:28 rather than just maybe running into one or two people in the jungle
32:31 and telling your individual experiences.
32:33 And to get together occasionally and share the fellowship
32:36 that was forged in early days around campfires in remote places throughout the country.
32:41 Now we're a little more respectable, I guess,
32:44 and we get together with much better stew and much better clothes
32:47 and much warmer fires perhaps, but the fellowship hasn't changed.
32:51 We enjoy brotherhood, camaraderie.
32:53 We sing songs, we trade photographs and addresses, and we sort of get together.
32:58 This, to me, is my family.
32:59 We have younger people now, some of the X generation people
33:03 who are looking for themselves, trying to find themselves, I guess,
33:06 and part of that is seeing America.
33:09 We're trying to educate our children and our younger folk
33:13 who might not know what a steam locomotive is and what a hobo jungle was
33:17 and a mulligan stew in a pot and a Frisco circle and stuff like that,
33:20 terms that were used back in the '20s and '30s and '40s.
33:24 Many NHA members are devoted collectors of hobo memorabilia.
33:31 George Horton has acquired hobo artifacts such as these antique carvings,
33:36 each whittled from a single piece of wood.
33:40 These whistles and chains were formed in a similar fashion.
33:44 Enterprising hobos even chiseled peach pits into monkey trinkets.
33:50 Del Romines wrote a book on hobo nickels,
33:54 explaining how bows tooled Indian head coins
33:57 to match the profiles of their paying customers.
34:01 They'd even reshaped the buffalo image on the reverse side.
34:06 Drummond Manfield's art reflects earlier days
34:10 when it was pretty much a man's world out on the road.
34:13 But nowadays, women are prominent members of the hobo community.
34:18 We have a lot of fun together,
34:22 and it becomes like your extended family, your brothers, your sisters,
34:25 and you make friends for life, so I love them.
34:29 Hoboing's definitely in Connecticut Shorty's blood.
34:34 Her father was a hobo for 40 years and by no means a bum.
34:39 You see, real hobos bristle at the intimation that they shunned work.
34:44 In fact, they discreetly marked their own hieroglyphics around train yards
34:49 to alert each other about town prospects.
34:53 An oft-repeated axiom sums up the men on the road.
35:00 A hobo is a traveling worker.
35:04 A tramp is a traveling non-worker.
35:07 A bum is a non-traveling non-worker.
35:11 You gotta do work in order to keep yourself independent.
35:16 Traveling money.
35:19 Take any kind of a job, whether it's two hours or two days or two months.
35:26 Get a road stake.
35:28 The western farmers had a deal with the railroads
35:35 whereby they would ship their cattle from the ranch to the slaughterhouse in Chicago.
35:43 They had to have somebody aboard the train
35:47 so that at every 12-hour interval,
35:52 you stopped, unloaded the cattle, exercised them, watered them, fed them,
36:01 got back aboard the train and went on to Chicago.
36:06 You got no money for this, but you did get transportation.
36:11 We used to hay.
36:13 They'd have two cuttings of hay a year
36:17 and you're good for a week to two weeks of haying.
36:22 We went and caught a freight out of Denver and went west.
36:27 We wound up in Yakima, Washington.
36:30 He had an aunt there that had an apple orchard.
36:35 He thought, "Well, we could find that place and maybe we could pick some apples."
36:39 We never found the place.
36:41 We had the great state of Washington State.
36:45 That's the real apple-knocking country.
36:50 Everybody was a hobo back then.
36:54 Roadhog washed all the windows in my house inside and out.
36:57 Side door had scrubbed my kitchen floor immaculate.
37:01 They raked all the leaves in my yard.
37:03 It was fall, late September, and that was to pay me back for the ride
37:07 and the little bedroom I gave them, separate from mine, of course.
37:14 I've done all the irrigation ditches, broke horses,
37:19 hoed watermelon in the fields.
37:23 I've done just about every kind of work you can think of.
37:27 I worked in a produce packing house loading lettuce and bananas, stuff like that.
37:35 Primarily I play guitar.
37:37 I do a lot of folk festivals around the country.
37:39 I play veterans' hospitals. I do children's hospitals.
37:42 I try to bring a few hundred dollars along with me on the freights when I take a trip.
37:47 If I run out or if I happen to fall out at the job, I'll take it.
37:51 I do anything from painting, carpentry, concrete work, trimming trees.
37:56 When I'm broke in between guitar gigs, I go to day labor and push a wheelbarrow,
38:00 dig a ditch, just anything I can to get by.
38:05 The average hobo isn't going to last long at any job.
38:11 Today there's a new class of unticketed passengers who vary from the old-time hobos.
38:18 They aren't chasing down jobs. They're running from them
38:21 and have come to be known as yuppie or recreational hobos.
38:27 Yuppie hobos, they're a pretty good group.
38:32 A lot of those guys really do more than their share.
38:35 I approve of them. I'd like to see everybody see America.
38:38 It's a beautiful country and there's so much that people don't really see.
38:43 Well, you know, everybody deserves a vacation.
38:46 These guys work hard, you know, they put all the big money together.
38:49 I mean, if I could have a BMW and ride the rails and have the better of two equals,
38:52 I'd have a great life too.
38:54 They're not as generous as our old school were and has been.
39:00 They're a different breed of bozo.
39:04 I'm out there just like them, just riding the rails, seeing the country.
39:07 And that's really what the real hobos are all about.
39:10 I had somebody send me $50 a month. That was the deal.
39:13 Couldn't send me more than $50 a month unless I came back to Minneapolis and resigned papers
39:19 because I figured the less I'd spend, the more I'd experience.
39:23 And so I would go that last week, you know, where I'd burn all my money,
39:29 and then I wouldn't have any money for a week.
39:32 I always found that the third week of the month I had more fun.
39:35 As a professional pilot, there is a courtesy among airline pilots
39:40 that if you present your ID card, they'll let you ride up in the cockpit.
39:44 And since the name of the game is traveling for free,
39:46 it's a little faster way of getting somewhere if you don't have quite the time.
39:50 Coming here, I rode up in the cockpit of a 747-400
39:54 where they offered me their bunk room to sleep, which is just like a Pullman car.
40:00 So it's really a high-class hobo way of traveling.
40:04 I don't really think I qualify as a yuppie.
40:06 I mean, I'm not really young, and I'm not trying to be upwardly mobile.
40:10 I'm sort of a professional now doing nursing work,
40:13 but I don't really think anybody that knows me would characterize me as a yuppie.
40:17 I don't really think I am.
40:20 I got no complaints about other people having a different approach to it somewhat.
40:25 I think most people would sort of call me like a recreational rider, I guess.
40:29 So I got into riding freight trains as a necessity,
40:33 and after I eventually got back on my feet and got to working
40:36 and got a place to live and all that,
40:38 then I became somewhat of a recreational rider because I just couldn't get away from it.
40:42 I just had that wanderlust in my blood.
40:44 But we all have one thing in common.
40:47 We like to steal rides.
40:50 Besides traveling for free,
40:53 the ever-frugal hobo has learned to survive on Mother Nature's free lunches.
40:58 Most people think that hobos went to houses for meals or work and try and pay for them,
41:05 but a lot of meals were taken from right around here, right along trackside.
41:12 Here we have plantain, which no doubt was definitely part of the hobo diet.
41:20 I know a lot of stories I've read, hobos and other people
41:25 would always just pick up a little bit, chew on it,
41:29 taste good with other plants,
41:31 and between plantain with a little bit of lemon clover flavor,
41:36 you can eat a great meal.
41:39 When I finally broke free of money and realized that I could live off the blackberries,
41:46 and I know where they are and the raspberries are where they are
41:49 and the other things that are around the yards,
41:51 I could just eat them right off the land or the dumpsters or whatever else.
41:57 The quick-witted hobo has traditionally added humor to his social commentary.
42:03 Put your lobsters in the trash
42:05 Eat your pheasant while it's under the glass
42:08 Get into your garbage, I have no cash
42:11 Little dinner, I'll be gone in a flash
42:13 Won't you hold them pickles, hold that lettuce
42:16 Special orders, they don't upset us
42:19 As long as they would let us dive it our way
42:23 Yeah, we're gonna go dumpster diving
42:27 I'm surviving my kitty cats are thriving today
42:35 Just open the lid, have a little look
42:38 It's all prepared, there's no need to cook
42:41 We're going dumpster diving, whoa, whoa, hey
42:45 As long as they would let us dive it our way
42:51 Catching rides on freight trains is notoriously dangerous.
42:54 Even the most seasoned hobo will caution against novices
42:58 trying to jump on board a moving train,
43:00 telling horror stories of accidents they've witnessed,
43:03 resulting in agonizing dismemberments or gruesome deaths.
43:09 One wrong move and you've ended your days.
43:13 There were extended couplings probably 10 or 15 feet across
43:16 and the trains were moving and there were the two of us.
43:20 One guy would stand here and shine the light at the couplings
43:23 and after he safely got across, we'd leave the light on
43:26 and this was at night and the train maybe going 50 or 60 miles an hour.
43:30 We'd toss the flashlight to the other guy
43:32 and of course it was up to him to make sure he caught it
43:35 and then in turn, he would shine the light
43:37 as the second guy would go across the railings
43:39 and we had to do this for about four or five cars
43:42 and I think back, it's probably the most foolish thing I ever did.
43:46 I'd never do it again and I still get goose bumps when I think about it.
43:50 There's dangers out there and there's no way you can avoid them
43:52 and even the most experienced veterans cannot avoid the dangers of riding trains.
43:56 I just really never travel with somebody I don't know.
44:00 You just, it's just too chancy. It's too chancy.
44:06 People who wish you harm and want to take you and rob you,
44:13 that's the biggest danger today.
44:15 It's not from the bulls and it's not from falling off the trains.
44:19 Back in the old days, there was nothing for 10, 15 guys
44:23 in a side door Pullman, which is a boxcar, to ride in the same car.
44:28 Nowadays, you wouldn't dare to ride with strange hobos
44:34 or anyone you didn't know. You ride by yourself.
44:39 I was learning how to fight from a friend of mine on a boxcar one time.
44:42 He showed me how to take a knife away from a guy and flip him
44:45 and all that stuff. He learned it in the Marine Corps, I think.
44:49 We practiced that in a boxcar moving about 80 miles an hour one time.
44:53 When it comes to train riding, you have to give that train all of your respect,
44:57 but the train will never give you any.
45:00 You can't rely upon the train to get you where you're going
45:04 or to be a smooth ride or a safe one.
45:06 I have a great concern about equipment failure.
45:09 I have a concern about human error with regard to rail operations.
45:13 These kinds of things I have no control over.
45:15 You never know whenever you're going to be on a train
45:18 that has a crew that's gone to sleep at the throttle,
45:21 and next thing you know, you're in a big pileup at the bottom of a hill.
45:28 I rode the rods from Iowa to Illinois
45:36 on a more hellish experience no young fellow ever had.
45:43 It was horrible.
45:47 You set up a little protection there to keep the soot out of your face,
45:56 and you bounced along, and you felt that the ride would never end.
46:03 It was a descent into hell,
46:07 and how these men could do it again and again and again bewildered me.
46:13 No matter how long it may take us...
46:17 Life-threatening challenges took on new dimensions on December 7, 1941,
46:23 the day many believed the hobo died.
46:26 We'll win through to absolute victory.
46:30 No longer did Bo's jungle up in Frisco, Spokolo or Mini-Hopeless.
46:36 Now it was Anzio, Normandy, and Iwo Jima.
46:41 And when they were welcomed back home, there were jobs for everyone--
46:45 new automobiles and even diesel locomotives.
46:48 Life on the hobo trail would indeed never be the same.
46:53 What will become of the hobo
46:59 Whenever his time comes to die?
47:04 I wouldn't trade my experiences out here on the road
47:08 for anybody's college education.
47:11 And though I never really accomplished anything by all this travel,
47:17 it satisfied something in me.
47:21 I don't know whether I was born with it,
47:26 but it started very young.
47:30 And I never stopped.
47:33 I got stopped,
47:37 but I would love right now to be in one of those hobo camps.
47:45 Will they tell us that we cannot ride?
47:51 Will the hobo chum with the rich man?
47:57 Will the hobo survive, or will he go the way of the steam train?
48:03 We wonder.
48:06 If you think about how many lifestyles
48:11 or how many businesses or whatever have lasted 150 years,
48:16 there's not very damn many of them,
48:19 and yet hobo continues to be with us.
48:22 The day is coming when we won't be able to ride freight trains.
48:26 This is not the '30s or the '40s anymore,
48:29 but that doesn't mean that it still isn't an alluring prospect
48:33 for people of adventurous souls.
48:35 As long as there's trains, there's going to be people riding them.
48:39 I had a dream about a train that was completely hobo-proof.
48:43 There was no possible way you could jump on it.
48:46 In fact, it was just so slick, there was no grab irons, there was nothing.
48:50 I don't know if the rail industry is going to go that far
48:53 and design cars exclusively to keep people off of them.
48:56 It's really getting a lot tougher.
48:58 A lot of railroad corporations are merging together.
49:01 Security is tightening up a lot because there's a few idiots out there derailing trains.
49:05 It might get harder to get into hopped freights.
49:08 It might get easier, but it will always be here.
49:12 There's not going to be too much of it in the future, I'm afraid,
49:16 because, well, they're seeming to get pretty tough on hobos now.
49:21 There's just more and more poor people.
49:23 I'm sorry to say, I think there's going to be more and more poor people.
49:27 They may be back on the trains again going around looking for odd jobs.
49:31 I think maybe the hobo is pretty much gone in the east,
49:36 but in the west he will live.
49:39 The old hobos now are too old to travel.
49:42 They're becoming homeboys now.
49:44 They just stay in one location. They don't travel no more.
49:48 I think we'll always have heavy-duty rail riders,
49:51 people that want to ride freights and go for the adventure,
49:54 but the old bridger steam train hobos are pretty much gone.
49:57 We're losing a few more every year.
50:00 And my era of hobos, they're vastly dying out.
50:09 The real hobo is a dying breed,
50:12 a guy out there who's trying to get by, going from town to town, looking for work.
50:17 A real gentleman, honest fellow is a hobo.
50:19 I have a sinking feeling in my heart that the day of the hobo is about over.
50:25 I think it's a fading game.
50:28 There's a legacy that we'll always live on,
50:31 and it will change with the different groups who are out there,
50:34 but as long as there's a rail to ride, I think someone will be riding it.
50:37 The future could be pretty bright, actually,
50:41 if a young man should want a hobo in this country, it might be the way to go.
50:46 I think there will always be young men like me
50:55 who are a little bit a thwart of civilization.
51:03 I've been a loner. I've been my own man, fiercely so.
51:11 Hey, now come now, all you ramblers
51:16 All you travelers on the road
51:20 Well, the time has come to remember what you're known
51:28 Like, where do you come from and where do you think you're going?
51:48 I don't see any of the bows riding the trains these days
51:51 for the simple reason they got all the letters cut off.
51:54 And you say to yourself, well, how do they get up there?
51:58 You know, but they do, and they make their way,
52:02 and they're still hobo and all around the country.
52:05 God bless them.
52:08 See you down the road.
52:14 I was all around the water tanks waiting for a train
52:22 A thousand miles away from home, sleeping in the rain
52:29 I walked up to a brakeman to give him my talk
52:37 He says, if you've got money, I'll see that you don't walk
52:45 I haven't got a nickel, not a penny can I show
52:53 Get off, get off your railroad bum, and he slammed that boxcar door
53:06 Though my pocketbook is empty and my heart is full of pain
53:14 I'm a thousand miles away from home, waiting for a train
53:21 Yodel-ay-do, yodel-ay-do, oh me!