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00:00You
00:30As
00:39The drover runs a cattle trail and the sailor follows billowed sail
00:44So the hobo tames the iron trail and longs for places far
00:49The open road becomes his home. He can't subdue his urge to roam
00:55Headlight and the whistles moan
00:57become his guiding star
01:00works and wanders
01:02Also learns and in his heart. He always yearns to see beyond the rivers turns
01:09the view
01:10rolling cars
01:13You
01:21All around the water tank waiting for train
01:29Thousand miles away from home sleeping in the rain. I
01:36Walked up to a breakman
01:40To give him time to talk
01:44He said you got money
01:48I'll see that you don't walk. I
01:52Haven't got a nickel
01:55Not a penny. Can I show?
02:00Get off get off your railroad bum and he slammed that boxcar door
02:09You
02:13You know when we were kids
02:15He used to walk the railroad tracks to see how far could walk
02:20Make bets among ourselves, you know, oh boy. Look at this. Look how far he's gone
02:26And occasionally see a train pass by and you see a hobo up there and you wave at him
02:34But they'd wave back you wondered where these people were going
02:42There's a fascinating adventure in our little lives and
02:47to look at these fellas and
02:50realized that
02:52They were going somewhere and on a train
02:58I was a little hobo. I
03:01Did not have a stable home
03:04so I was always willing to
03:07head out for a
03:10New adventure, I listened to a lot of those old Jimmy Rogers songs and
03:14He talked about riding freight trains and made it sound so enticing that I just couldn't stay off of them
03:20I like the lifestyle like the people I associate with and of course, it's a free ride
03:25it's like being on a time machine where you
03:27You ride along and you and you see
03:30So many historical elements of this country. I've always been intrigued with travel and
03:36Adventure
03:37It's like kind of recharging your batteries
03:40I'm out here seeing things. I missed when I was a kid. It's an experience that in a lot of ways just escapes a
03:48Explanation you you really have to do it to understand what it's like
03:51I think it's the adventure and the thrill and the
03:54And sometimes just the peace to watch the country go by and I always call it National Geographic live
04:01self survival, you know
04:04Eat when you want to eat sleep when you want to sleep
04:09You don't have to worry about the IRS
04:13In the blood I guess once once you do it you just
04:17It's in here. You can't quit you called your own shots as you see fit
04:23For yourself, I don't own a car right now
04:26I don't like riding Greyhound buses man, because I get always get lucky man
04:30I always draw the wild card I get some big old gal sitting next to me wants to fall asleep with her head in my
04:35Lap and I can't smoke a cigarette or drink a beer and I can do this in a boxcar
04:38I rode freight trains all my life because I just love to do it
04:44The rhythm of the rails is an enticing song to those who long to be far away
04:49like the Pied Piper
04:51Wandering souls have followed the tracks stitched like seams across the country since the Civil War
04:59Legend has it that Erie Cripp and Philly pop to discharge Union soldiers were the founding members of the fraternity of
05:07freight-hopping hobos the two men
05:10Accustomed to the open-air military lifestyle hitched a ride on a passing freight and rambled over the horizon
05:18Other Civil War veterans followed suit and hopped on trains to get back home while the less fortunate soldiers left homeless by the
05:26devastating war
05:27rode the rails in search of a new beginning a
05:30Great number of these early wanderers sought jobs as migrant farm workers and carried hoes along with them
05:38therefore it is thought the nickname hobo is derived from being called homeward bound soldiers or
05:47Ho boys both shortened to hobo as
05:52the nation expanded westward the railroads needed laborers to set ties and lay tracks and the hobos played a vital role in these
06:00activities
06:01to feed a growing nation
06:02The hobos became the harvesters who reaped the crops of mid-america often working a route
06:08That took them from the Texas panhandle to the Canadian border each season
06:13During the prime age of dam construction the hobos formed the nucleus of the hardy traveling workforces
06:20Who built these massive structures often in remote areas whose only real access by freight train?
06:28these restless men
06:30continued to follow the developing railroads through the Rocky Mountains and became the lumberjacks of the Northwest woods and
06:37merchant seamen of the Pacific Ocean
06:43This land is my land from California
06:47To the New York Island
06:49From the Redwood for the Great Depression of the 30s prompted factories to lay off laborers
06:56businesses to foreclose and farms to fall into ruin
07:00Banks went broke and millions of people lost their life savings
07:03It was a nightmare and created a new surge of hobos who took to the rails in search of work
07:101934 the US Bureau of Transient Affairs
07:14Estimated there were one and a half million men and women
07:19riding America's freight trains
07:22You could taste the depression
07:25These were bad years, you know
07:2930 31 32
07:33Everything was lean and mean no jobs. You had to start with
07:38Trying to get it everything from a day's work to whatever you can get back then
07:45Everybody had a relative a brother a son a father an uncle who was riding the trains looking for work
07:54That lonesome whistle continues to recruit new visionaries
07:58Offering passage to where dreams are found. I
08:02Hopped my first freight train
08:04back in
08:071966 in Athens, Alabama a couple of buddies that I wanted to go up to Nashville
08:13And we didn't know how to get there
08:16Except take the bus. So we're sitting on down the weeds by the college there and
08:22This freight train came by and was going real slow. So he said let's do it next thing. You know, we're on our way to Nashville
08:29Well, I started
08:31Riding freight trains is a kind of a recreational boyish adventure when I was about 15
08:36And I rode pretty hard for several years
08:40Finally coming to rest at about 21 or 22
08:43Well the first freight train I rode I was a kid about 15 years old and I wanted to get home from
08:49Minnesota down into Iowa and I didn't want to wait for my father to come up there to get me
08:54So I rode a freight train the first true
08:58hobo trip I ever took was
09:00when my brother hop along Chet and I
09:03Were going back to our grandfather's 90th reunion and
09:07we rode from Barstow, California to the east coast of Boston and took us eight days and
09:1313 different train connections and from that moment on we were hooked. I decided to make a documentary film and
09:21It was mostly the film started out as an excuse for me to figure out how to get on a freight train
09:26so
09:28When I finally took my first ride
09:31It was everything that I had imagined it might be and
09:36it was
09:38Pretty much an immediate addiction. I've been doing this since the age of 13 years old. That's
09:44I'm telling you the real McCoy
09:46Friend of mine used to work for Canadian National up in Montreal and he knew I liked trains a lot
09:52I'd always liked trains going way back to when I was a little kid and
09:56He said, you know, you might think about jumping on trains to get around
10:01I mean you like to travel around a lot and you like trains and
10:04And that was sort of the beginning of it and I took it from there. I
10:09think the first time was an old oil spur up there where I used to live in oil Dale, but
10:14The first long trip I took was from Bakersfield to Fresno on the old SP
10:19at the age of
10:2212 or 13 I
10:25Was living near Philadelphia and with a partner a year older
10:33We bummed our way
10:36All the way to the Canadian border
10:40And all the way south to Florida
10:47Every year at a different location alongside a mainline railroad
10:53The National Hobo Association
10:55sponsors the hobo poetry and music festival
10:58This year's site is charming Marquette, Iowa on the banks of the mighty, Mississippi River
11:06When music has always been a central component of hobo life
11:10They'd sing of their old homes their old loves their work and their trains
11:15They'd play guitars mandolins and banjos and simpler instruments like gin whistles
11:22harmonicas and Jews
11:41The boss set me a driving spikes
11:44The sweat was enough to blind me the boss. He didn't like my face. So I left my job behind me
11:52I climbed aboard an old freight train
11:56Country travel the mysteries of a hobo's life to me. We're soon
12:02Yes, and the jungle telegraph goes out to hobos and hobos at heart in every corner of America
12:09And they come from all nooks and crannies
12:12they arrived by various modes of conveyance many by car truck or motorhome and
12:19of course
12:21Freight train. Oh
12:23The big rock candy mountain
12:25There's a land so fair and bright where the boxcars all are empty and you sleep out every night
12:31Where the handouts grow on bushes and the sun shines every day on the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees and the lemonade
12:38Springs with the bluebird sings in the big rock candy mountain
12:51You
12:59This fun-filled event brings out the free spirit of the hobo that lives within us all and
13:04Everyone is encouraged to partake in the wide variety of family activities
13:14It wouldn't have to miss retired hobo is being hounded by his alter ego
13:19Returned to the rails
13:20We could hop an extra West and head out toward the coast or maybe take the valley route with the river as our host
13:26You always like the scenery on the Colorado run or the smell of hay as the boxcars wade in the autumn, Kansas Sun
13:33He said we never rode the Chesapeake or the seaboard or the Sioux and what about the cotton belt that promise came from you?
13:39You said we'd ride the Lehigh in the Wabash Cannonball and you absolutely promised we'd ride New England in the fall
13:46How long can I resist the call? I really couldn't say but the inner hobos argument gets stronger every day now
13:53I'm not one for idle talk
13:54But I want the world to know that if I hear that whistle one more time, I just might up and go
14:04Early in the morning and it looked like rain around the band come up past the train
14:15Well
14:21Casey Jones was a brave engineer. He told his fireman not to be all he needed was a water and coal
14:38Trains are marvelous contraptions under any circumstance
14:42They are unreal shimmering steel creatures that are almost alive
14:47fire breathing monsters with intense undulating tails
14:51So what is it that lures a hobo to mouth these beasts again and again?
14:57And being that I like to play music, you know, there's nothing finer than we sort of like the rhythm, you know
15:02You're in tune with the rhythm not only the rails
15:05But I get in tune with the rhythm of waters that the trains go by the speed
15:10The power of the train
15:12All those really they really turn me on the freedom not not getting away from everything getting away from everything. Yeah, not
15:21Not feeling like I've got to be responsible about anything being punctual being somewhere in an exact time being able to just hang out
15:28Go with the train get somewhere for free. I'm getting from point A to point B and I don't have to drive
15:33I don't have to deal with inner city traffic or
15:38Anybody who's not gonna let me get in my lane a nice day a
15:43Good ride. I like to get into a terminal to that. I haven't seen before and poke around. I like to do that
15:54You also go through parts of the country unlike the interstate system that has virtually no
16:00signs of any commercial activity
16:03No billboards no exit signs no neon seeing America from a from a boxcar you see the wild horses you see the
16:11ghost towns you see
16:13You know, you see everything about America. That's
16:16That's wonderful to be out in the open prairie where there's nothing but beautiful land around me
16:21And I have all that solitude and all that time to think things out and get creative
16:25See in different parts of the country a new new piece of scenery every day there are places like, Idaho and
16:34Montana and Wyoming all those western places. I love there. Those mountains are beautiful sheer excitement of
16:42getting to new places and
16:45new experiences just to see what I call priceless wonders those things that drift by when you're riding a train and
16:53The adventure doesn't end when the rides over
16:57Breathtaking landscapes give way to the colorful characters who pass through the train yards
17:04the friends you meet along the way it's
17:06That's what keeps me going back. I think more than anything
17:09They're not in a nine-to-five office kind of person and we can sit and tell tall tales and relate to each other
17:16I really enjoy those kind of folks. We're not caught up in that huzzle-buzzle
17:20Credit card plastic money car payments concrete highways and going from the office to the club to make the scene
17:27in other words, I use the
17:29hobo
17:30as a medium for my poetry and found that
17:33Everybody I've met so far has a story and that helps me tremendously with my with my feelings
17:39the friendship
17:42Of the young fellow who took me to Canada and to Florida was precious
17:48When I started out I had my own preconceptions about
17:54Who is out riding freight trains and I thought that it was a fairly homogenous group
17:59And I think what I've one of the things I really learned is that there are
18:03Many different personalities that are out riding the freights
18:06And those different personalities rarely devolves their family names
18:12adopting unique aliases instead
18:15Everybody's road name
18:17kind of
18:19gives in a nutshell who they are and what they represent and so I can introduce myself as jet said John and and
18:25that kind of tells a little bit of the other side of me rather than just
18:28being a hobo
18:30Some guys will walk along the track. They might call him track man, you know and
18:35Sidecar Sam he was riding sidecar on a tanker with his feet dangling down
18:42Alongside the tank. That's why I named him sidecar Sam then low-lying Larry
18:47He rides from Florida all the way up to Utah and he rides that low line. So I give him the name of low line
18:53Everybody has a road name
19:00I was a stranger passing through your town. I
19:07I was a stranger passing through your town
19:14When I asked you a favor good girl you turned me down
19:29Most the time I'm alone because I have my own destination and I have my own reason for going somewhere
19:35I love solitude. I was lonely before I started riding. I never got lonely anywhere. I told my wife I was going an 18-day trip
19:42She I hopefully hopefully was sorry to see me go my sister and everybody get a kick out of telling her friends what I do
19:49My brother has been with me one time
19:52But he wouldn't he doesn't want to do it again, but he kind of likes the concept
19:55You know what? I mean? My mother looks a little bit askance at it, you know
20:00Like it's not the greatest thing, but she understands that I enjoy and have a good time doing it. So
20:05My family I I don't really tell him anymore because you get a lot of a lot of shaking heads and shrugged shoulders
20:11and they don't really understand why I do it since I'm a
20:15Senior citizen it's kind of frowned on a
20:19Lot of them think it's really neat. But then there's some that just think I'm out totally out of my mind
20:24most of my friends think it's
20:26It sounds like fun sounds entertaining. They don't do it my friends. They're uh, they're a little more understanding
20:33They they they tell me it's happened more than a few times that they tell me they want to come out on a ride with
20:38Me and as soon as I pack up my gear and I'm ready to head out the door
20:41They they seem to disappear. My mother spent a lot of
20:45worrisome years, I'm sure she
20:48When I got to Dunsmire on that trip there
20:50I called her and just so happened I had a check coming from a job
20:53But I'd worked before I left a couple months before and she sent it to me by Western Union
20:58I got my butt on it. God dang Greyhound
21:00Quitted quitted that hobo
21:20Outside the rain was falling on the lonely boxcar door
21:27But the little form of hobo bill lay dead upon the floor
21:36While the train sped through the dark
21:40with the raging storm outside
21:44No one knew that hobo bill was taking his last ride
21:52Hey
21:56Oh
22:01Always always cold and stuff was always blowing in your face and and I think the coldest ride I had was from
22:11Eugene, Oregon to
22:15Klamath Falls, Oregon
22:18and I don't own into Dunsmire, but we rode over the top of the mountain there in the snowstorm and a
22:24Couple of other bows and myself were in the in the ice compartment back in those old Oh
22:3040 foot reefers. They if they didn't have any
22:34Fruit they were carrying they'd leave those reefer tops open sometime
22:37And and it was an excellent place to get if you couldn't get inside of a boxcar somewhere
22:41That's where we were on that on that mountain and that snowstorm. Sometimes it's just too hot
22:46You get stuck in the back end of a well car
22:50There's no way to get out of the Sun and you royal to death
22:53the worst part about it would be in the situations where you've run out of water and you know
22:56That's gonna be a long time before you can find any finding a place to take a shower being hungry
23:01Lonesome towns waiting waiting waiting what you're waiting for is when you finally catch out again and you start moving and you have that
23:08Ah, this is what I was waiting for
23:10But when you wait a long time for that you some I sometimes sit there gonna
23:14Is this really worth it just to get on that train? This is really a pain
23:18But and in the end it is always worth it
23:21well, the worst thing I used to think was getting a flat wheel and you're lying there trying to sleep and you're bouncing off the
23:27Floor every time that wheel goes around the railroad boat running you out of the yards or the town clown
23:35putting a run on you
23:37from his town and
23:41Telling you to move on I get sick and tired of the bugs sometimes some of the places by the way slapping the bugs
23:48All of a sudden in the middle of night, man
23:49They'll break air and leave me out in the middle of nowhere in the desert
23:52That's kind of that's kind of hard the worst thing that could possibly happen for some of us
23:58Would be if they made it legal
24:01I'd like to make a little disclaimer here just for our
24:05lawyers sake no bail
24:07Came down make sure we're all in line by no means does the National Hobo Association
24:12Encourage anybody to go get on a freight train
24:16Illegal and it's dangerous
24:20During the Depression
24:22hundreds of trespassers
24:24Invaded yards like this and risked the wrath of the railroad bull
24:28Today, it's a misdemeanor in most places the law's main concern being
24:34Vandalism of railroad property, but a pesky hobo could surely wind up in jail if the bulls warning goes unheeded
24:42I had to run alongside
24:46Follow the advice the older men
24:50hook a ride get in and
24:52the railroad police
24:55It couldn't stop you from doing that
24:58Because it was just as risky for them as it was for us
25:03but they could
25:05masterfully keep you out of the railroad yards and
25:10And that's where we
25:14Tangled with them back in the old days. You're gonna go to the chain gang for 30 days, you know
25:19Not especially down south. They were
25:23mean and
25:27Bad well in the old days they used to hit you with them my breakman's club
25:33Today, they're not too bad. I guess
25:36They didn't
25:38Stop us from
25:40Getting aboard the train
25:42slow moving
25:44And we were very agile and we had done it many times
25:50Once we broke through their lines we were on our way to
25:54Peoria they walked the train with the deputy sheriff's pulled us off of there
25:59But it was kind of nice or like ant be bringing us dinner and everything, you know, it's kind of fun
26:03They wrote us a ticket for trespassing a railroad property
26:05We had to spend the night in the jail and told us to get out of town the next morning because the DA wasn't gonna
26:09Prosecute it city was too small. I was never
26:14Badly treated by them
26:17They saw that I was younger
26:20They were in a sense protective
26:24But they did not want me aboard their freight trains
26:27I got in into a boxcar with about eight other hobos and and I was hungry and I went down broke the seal on
26:35one of them refrigerator cars and did the
26:37unmanageable and took a whole
26:39Case of green beans out of there and I threw it up in that boxcar and those hobos went to screaming at me and said man
26:45We'll get 50 years in jail. What are you doing breaking the seal on that boxcar said they'll throw us all off this train. I
26:51said well, at least we'll be hungry won't be hungry and
26:56One old hobo way back the corner of the boxcar
27:00He threw over a can opener and her spoon. He said I'll join you young man
27:06Hobo
27:14Camps also known as jungles grew up near the train yards water tanks crew change points anywhere locomotives stop
27:24Sooner or later you did fall into one of the camps and
27:30very imaginative men
27:33Ran them they were congenial to places
27:37You didn't want to leave
27:39You made friends you heard great stories
27:44well, I remember going into a hobo jungle one time in in Barstow they had a
27:51Really a large hobo camp there. I participated in some
27:56community stew a couple times in my life
28:03Fit for a king hobo stew
28:06The famous mulligan has been made in the spike cans and paint buckets under bridges and on the edge of the railroad yards
28:12It's a civil war
28:14The stew pot cooked over the fire for days on end. They just kept adding ingredients as the level went down
28:21Those jungles they were clean. They had a order
28:26They didn't throw
28:28garbage around
28:30Usually you have a guy come into jungles he came there with
28:34his a loaf of bread and his bologna and cheese and maybe he wanted to make a
28:42Pot of coffee and
28:45Wait for a train and catch out
28:49it's a townspeople that
28:51Complained they complained to the police the police complained to the railroad bulls and the railroad bulls run them out
28:57They keep the place clean, you know and
29:00Pick up all their trash and stuff. I don't think they'd even be bothered
29:05The jungles are being wiped out with caterpillar tractors so that they will be no place for the riders to hide
29:11There's very few jungles nowadays
29:17To sleep you weary hobo
29:20Oh
29:22Let the town strip slowly by
29:28Yeah, you hear the steel rail
29:34That's a hobo lullaby
29:40Though your clothes are torn and ragged
29:46Though your hair is turning gray
29:50Oh
29:53You've spent a lifetime searching
29:58You'll find happiness someday
30:03So go to sleep weary hobo
30:09Let the town strip slowly by
30:13I
30:15Can't you hear the steel rail humming
30:21That's a hobo's lullaby
30:31Hobos communicates with the National Hobo Association
30:35founded in
30:361987 by Santa Fe bow who's been a trained barnacle since the 70s
30:41His two goals were uniting others who shared a love of the open road and preserving the history of the hobo
30:49during his travels Santa Fe came across an old copy of the now defunct hobo news a
30:56publication that dated back to
30:581908
31:00Consequently, he created the hobo times
31:03America's Journal of Wanderlust and began distributing it to kindred spirits in
31:101990 Buzz Potter came on board and together they upgraded the times to the only magazine in America that features a blend of
31:18railroad adventure stories
31:20poetry
31:21Nostalgia and the current news of life on the hobo trail a letter that we got from a 96 year old
31:29former hobo
31:30Who rode back in the Depression?
31:32And he found out about us and he sent us a letter and it said very simply dear National Hobo Association
31:39Please don't let the hobo die
31:41it grew slowly over the years and but steadily and today we have thousands of members nationwide that
31:49span the
31:50demographic
31:52Spectrum from lawyers to labor professional people
31:56Corporate people they're from all walks of life and they've been where I've got to go yet. And I learned from their experiences
32:04It's amazing how many people don't realize they're hobos until they come and see us and they realize that they're on the same
32:11Wavelength with us with their kindred spirits. They have the wanderlust the sense of romance and and the sense of nostalgia
32:18All of a sudden we understood that there were other people like ourselves and we found out how to get a hold of them
32:23It provides a forum for us to get together and tell our tales
32:27Rather than just maybe running into one or two people in the jungle and telling your individual experiences and the get-together
32:33Occasionally and share the fellowship that was forged early in early days around campfires and remote places throughout the country now
32:41We're a little more respectable
32:42I guess and we get together with you know with much better stew and much better clothes and much warmer fires perhaps
32:48But the fellowship hasn't changed. We enjoy a brotherhood camaraderie. We sing songs we
32:54Trade photographs and addresses and we sort of get together. This to me is my family
32:58We have younger people now some of the the X generation people who who are looking for themselves trying to find themselves, I guess and and
33:06Part of that is seeing America and we're trying to educate our children and our younger folk
33:13who might not know what a steam locomotive is and what a hobo jungle was and a mulligan stew in a pot and a Frisco circle
33:19and stuff like that terms that were used back in the
33:2220s and 30s and 40s
33:25Many
33:26NHA members are devoted collectors of hobo memorabilia
33:31George Horton has acquired hobo artifacts such as these
33:35Antique carvings each whittled from a single piece of wood
33:39These whistles and chains were formed in a similar fashion
33:44Enterprising hobos even chiseled peach pits into monkey trinkets
33:49Del Romines wrote a book on hobo nickels
33:53Explaining how bows tooled Indian head coins to match the profiles of their paying customers
34:00They'd even reshaped the Buffalo image on the reverse side
34:05Drummond Manfield's art reflects earlier days when it was pretty much a man's world out on the road
34:13But nowadays women are prominent members of the hobo community
34:18We have a lot of fun
34:20Together and it becomes like your extended family your brothers your sisters and you make friends for life. So I
34:27Love them
34:30Hoboings definitely in Connecticut shorties blood her father was a hobo for 40 years and by no means a bum
34:39You see real hobos bristle at the intimation that they shunned work
34:44In fact, they discreetly marked their own hieroglyphics around train yards to alert each other about town
34:51prospects
34:56Off repeated axioms sums up the men on the road a hobo is a traveling worker a
35:03Tramp is a traveling non worker a bum is a non traveling non worker
35:10You got to do work in order to keep yourself independent traveling money
35:19Take any kind of a job whether it's two hours or two days or two months
35:25Get a road stake
35:27the Western farmers
35:30Had a deal with the railroads
35:34Where by they would ship their cattle
35:38from the ranch
35:39to the slaughterhouse in Chicago
35:42They had to have somebody aboard the train
35:46so that at every
35:4912 hour interval you stopped
35:54Unloaded the cattle
35:57Exercise them water them fed them
36:01Got back aboard the train and went on to Chicago
36:05You got no money for this
36:07But you didn't get transportation
36:10We used to hay
36:12that have two cuttings a hay a year and
36:17You're good for a week to two weeks a hay and we went and caught a freight out of Denver and went west and
36:26We wound up in Yakima, Washington, and he had an answer that had a
36:33An apple orchard and he thought well we could find that place and maybe we could pick some apples
36:39We never found the place. We had the great state of Washington State
36:45That's the real
36:47Apple knocking country and we were
36:52Everybody was a hobo back then Roadhog washed all the windows in my house inside and out
36:57side door had scrubbed my kitchen floor immaculate and
37:01They raked all the leaves of my yard. It was fall late September and that was to pay me back for the ride and
37:08the
37:09You know the little bedroom I gave them so separate from mine, of course
37:13I've done all dug irrigation ditches broke horses
37:18Hold watermelon and the fields
37:23I've done just about every kind of work. You can think of I worked in a produce packing house
37:29loading lettuce
37:33Bananas and stuff like that
37:34Primarily I play guitar. I do a lot. I do a lot of folk festivals around the country. I play veterans hospitals
37:40I do children's hospitals. I try to bring a few hundred dollars along with me on the freights when I take a trip and
37:46If I run out or if I happen to follow at the job, I'll take it I do anything from painting carpentry
37:53concrete work
37:55Trimming trees and when I'm broken between guitar gigs
37:58I go to day labor and push a wheelbarrow dig a ditch just anything I can you know to get by you know
38:05The average hobo isn't gonna last long at any job
38:09Today there's a new class of unticketed passengers who vary from the old-time hobos
38:15They aren't chasing down jobs. They're running from them and have come to be known as yuppie or
38:21recreational hobos
38:24Yuppie hobos. They're they're pretty good group a
38:29Lot of those guys really do more than their share. I
38:32Approve of them. I'd like to see everybody see America. It's a great country
38:37To see everybody see America. It's a beautiful country and and there's so much that the people don't really see
38:43Well, you know everybody deserves a vacation
38:45These guys work hard, you know, they put all the big money together
38:48I mean if I could have a BMW and ride the rails and have the better of two equals I'd have a great life, too
38:53They're not as generous as our old school were and has been
39:00There are a
39:02Different beta bows. I'm out there just like them just riding the rails seeing the country and that's that's really what the real hobos are
39:09All about I had somebody send me $50 a month. That was the deal couldn't send me more than $50 a month unless I came back to
39:17Minneapolis and they signed papers because I figured the less I'd spend the more I'd experience and and
39:23so I would
39:25Go that last week, you know where I'd burn all my money and
39:29Then I wouldn't have any money for a week
39:31I always found that the third week of the month. I had more fun as a professional pilot
39:37There is a courtesy among airline pilots that if you present your ID card
39:41They'll let you ride up in the cockpit. And since the name of the game is traveling for free
39:46It's a little faster way of getting somewhere if you don't have quite the time
39:49Coming here. I rode up in the cockpit of a 747 400 where they offered me their bunk room to sleep, which
39:57It's just like a Pullman car
39:59So it's really a high-class hobo way of traveling I
40:03Don't really think I qualify as a yuppie. I mean, I'm not really young and I'm not trying to be upwardly mobile
40:09I'm sort of a professional now doing nursing work, but I don't really think anybody that knows me would characterize me as a yuppie
40:17I don't I don't really think I am
40:19I
40:20Got no complaints about other people having a different approach to it somewhat
40:24I think most people sort of called me like a recreational rider, I guess
40:29So I got into riding freight trains is at a necessity
40:32But after I eventually got back on my feet and got to working and got a place to live and all that
40:38Then I became somewhat of a recreational rider because I just couldn't get away from it
40:41I just had that wanderlust in my blood, but we all have one thing in common
40:46We like to steal rides
40:50Besides traveling for free
40:52The ever frugal hobo has learned to survive on Mother Nature's free lunches
40:57Most people think that
41:00hobos went to houses for meals or work and try and pay for them, but a lot of meals were
41:07Taken from right around here right along trackside
41:11Here we have
41:13Plantain which no doubt
41:16Was definitely part of the hobo diet. I
41:20Know a lot of stories. I've read hobos and other people would always just pick up a little bit
41:27chew on it
41:28tastes good with other plants and
41:31Between plantain with a little bit of lemon clover flavor
41:36You can eat a great meal when I finally broke free of money
41:40And realized that I could live off the I could live off the blackberries
41:45You know that and I know where they are and the raspberries are where they are and the other things that are around the yards
41:50You can eat right off the land or the dumpsters or whatever else
41:56Quick-witted hobo has traditionally added humor to his social commentary
42:02Put your lobsters in the trash
42:04Eat your peasant while it's under a glass
42:07Get into your garbage. I have no cash
42:10Little dinner I'll be gone in a flash. Won't you hold them pickles? Oh that lettuce special orders
42:16They don't upset us just as long as they would let us dive it our way
42:22Yeah, we're gonna go
42:24Dumpster dive in I'm surviving my kitty cats are thriving today
42:34Just open the lid have a little look it's all prepared. There's no need to cook
42:40Dumpster diving
42:50Catching rides on freight trains is notoriously dangerous
42:54Even the most seasoned hobo will caution against novices trying to jump on board a moving train
43:00Telling horror stories of accidents they've witnessed
43:03resulting in agonizing dismemberments or gruesome deaths
43:08One wrong move
43:10You've ended your days
43:12There were extended couplings probably 10 or 15 feet across and the trains were moving and there were the two of us
43:20One guy would stand here and shine the light at the couplings and after he safely got across
43:25We'd leave the light on and this was at night and train may be going 50 or 60 miles an hour
43:30We'd toss the flashlight to the other guy
43:32And of course it was up to him to make sure he caught it and then in turn
43:35He would shine the light as the second guy would go across the railings and we had to do this for about four or five
43:41Cars, and I think back. It's probably the most foolish thing I ever did. I'd never do it again
43:46I still get goosebumps bumps when I think about it. There's dangers out there
43:50There's no way you can avoid them and even the most experienced veterans cannot avoid the dangers of riding trains
43:56I mean, I just really never travel with somebody. I don't know
44:00You just you just it's just too chancy. It's too chancy
44:05people
44:08Who wish you harm I want to want to take you and rob you that's the biggest danger today
44:14It's not from the bulls and it's not from falling off the trains
44:18Back in the old days. It was nothing for
44:221015 guys in a side door Pullman, which is a boxcar the ride in the same car
44:28Nowadays you wouldn't dare the ride what?
44:32strange
44:34Hobos or anyone you didn't know
44:37You ride by yourself. I was learning how to fight from a friend of mine on the boxcar one time
44:42he showed me how to take a knife away from a guy and flip him and
44:46All that stuff he learned it in the Marine Corps
44:48I think we practiced that on in a boxcar moving about 80 miles an hour one time when it comes to train riding
44:54You have to give that train all of your respect, but the train will never won't give you any
44:59So you can't rely upon the train to get you where you're going or to be a smooth ride or a safe one
45:05I have a great concern about equipment failure. I have a concern about
45:10human error with regard to rail operations and these kinds of things I have no control over and
45:15You never know whenever you're going to be on a train that has a crew that's gone to sleep at the throttle and next thing
45:21You know, you're in a big pileup at the bottom of a hill
45:23I
45:28Rode the rods
45:31From Iowa to Illinois
45:36And a more hellish experience
45:39No young fellow ever had
45:43It was horrible
45:47You set up a
45:49little
45:51Texan air to keep the soot out of your face
45:56And you bounced along and you felt that ride would never end
46:02It was a descent into hell
46:06And how these men could do it
46:10Again, and again again bewildered me
46:13No matter how long it may take us life threatening challenges took our new dimensions on December the 7th
46:211941 the day many believe the hobo died
46:29No longer did Bo's jungle up in Frisco
46:33Spokaloo or many hopeless now it was Anzio
46:37Normandy and Iwo Jima and
46:40When they were welcomed back home there were jobs for everyone new automobiles and even diesel locomotives
46:48life on the hobo trail would indeed
46:50Never be the same
46:52What will become of the hobo?
46:59Whenever his time
47:01to die I
47:04Wouldn't trade my experiences out here on the road for anybody's college education
47:10and though though I never
47:13Really accomplished anything by all this travel. It satisfied something in me
47:20I don't know whether I was born with it
47:25But it started very young
47:29And I never stopped I
47:33Got stopped
47:36But I would
47:40Look right now to be in one of those hobo camps
47:45Will they tell us that we cannot ride
47:51Will the hobo
47:53Come with the rich man
47:56Will the hobo survive or will he go the way of the steam train?
48:03wonder
48:06If you think about how many
48:10Lifestyles or how many
48:13Businesses or whatever have lasted a hundred and fifty years
48:17It's not very damn many of them and yet hobo continues to you know to be with us
48:21The day is coming when we won't be able to ride freight trains. This is not the 30s of the 40s anymore
48:27But that doesn't mean that it still isn't an alluring prospect for people of adventurous souls
48:31As long as there's trains there's going to be people riding them
48:34I can guarantee you that with a strong railroad industry
48:37You're going to have a plenty of trains and you're gonna have more people riding them
48:40I had a dream about a train that was completely hobo proof
48:44There was no possible way you could jump on it. In fact, it was just so slick. There was no grab irons
48:49There was nothing. I don't know if the rail industry is going to go that far and design cars
48:54Exclusively to keep people off of them
48:57It's really getting a lot of tougher a lot of railroad coverage corporations are merging together
49:01Security is tightening up a lot because there's a lot of there's a few idiots out there derailing trains
49:05It might get harder again to hop freights and make it easier
49:10But it'll always be here
49:11There's not going to be too much of it in the future. I'm afraid because
49:16Well, they're seeming to get pretty tough on hobos now. There's just more and more poor people
49:22I'm sorry to say I think there's gonna be more and more poor people
49:26They may be back on the trains again going around looking for odd jobs. I think maybe the hobo is
49:33Pretty much gone and in the east but in the west he will live the old
49:39Hobos now too too old to travel they becoming homeboys now. They just stay in one location
49:45They don't travel no more
49:47I think we'll always have heavy-duty rail riders people that want to ride freights and go for the adventure, but the old
49:54Bridger steam train hobo. They're pretty much gone. We're losing a few more every year and
50:00my era of
50:02Hobos
50:04They're vastly
50:07Dying out
50:09The real hobo is a dying breed a guy out there
50:13Who's who's trying to get by going from town to town looking for work a real gentleman honest fellow is a hobo
50:19I have a sinking feeling in my heart that the day of the hobo is about over. I
50:25Think it's a fading game
50:27There's a legacy that will always live on and it will change with the different groups who are out there
50:33But as long as there's a rail to ride, I think someone will be riding it
50:36the future could
50:38Could be pretty bright actually if they if a young man should want a hobo in this country. It might be the way to go. I
50:46Think there will always be
50:51Young men like me
50:55Who are a little bit a
50:58Thwart civil
51:01Civilization
51:02I've been a loner. I've been
51:05my own man
51:09Fiercely so
51:16All you travelers on a row
51:22To remember what?
51:27Like where do you come from?
51:32I
51:47Don't know how any of the bows ride the trains these days for the simple reason they got all the letters cut off and
51:55You said to yourself, well, how do they get up there, you know?
51:58But they do and they make their way and they're still hobo and all around the country god bless them
52:08See you down the road
52:13All around the water tanks waiting for a train
52:21a thousand miles away from home
52:25sleeping in the rain
52:27I
52:29Walked up to a break
52:32To give him my talk
52:36He said you got money. I'll see that you don't walk. I
52:45Haven't got a nickel
52:48Not a penny. Can I show?
52:51Oh get off get off your railroad bum and he slammed that boxcar door
53:05Though my pocket book is empty and my heart is full of pain
53:13I'm a thousand miles away from home
53:18waiting for a train
53:21here today