This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part one)

I was standing on an entrance ramp to I-5 somewhere in the scrub lands west of Bakersfield when a guy with longish brown hair in an army coat walked up. "See that train down there," he said, pointing to a line of idling coal cars where the land sloped down steeply from the highway. "It can take a week or so to get cross country hitching, but hopping a freight train can get you there in days."

I liked this idea because you never knew how your rides would pan out. I'd thumbed 2500 miles from Florida to California in 48 hours six weeks before, thanks to a lucky ride from a whacked out junkie named Ed. He'd picked me up at the Mississippi and had driven non-stop until his hand-painted Studebaker Lark crapped out and died in the desert near Barstow. He'd spray-painted it with four or five cans of powder blue paint and why the police never stopped us I have no clue. But it had taken me 24 hours to get less than 300 miles from San Francisco to Bakersfield on my way back to Indiana. I'd been stuck in the dark and the cold for 12 hours in one spot alone and had finally been picked up by two men I was sure would rape and kill me. They seemed dangerous and weird and the back of their Pinto was piled high with hundreds of cellophane-wrapped sandwiches. When they invited me to visit their Children of God "colony," I flinched and pined for the good old days with jittery, carrot-top Ed. I'd heard of the Children of God. People went there and got mind-raped instead, and I had places to go. 

The guy in the army coat was named Jack. After a while I realized he was crazy, but by then we were hundreds of miles from any highway, and hurtling over the mountains in a dirty, empty coal car that was vibrating madly and freezing us nearly to death. He was shouting very strange shit the whole time, trying to drown out the howling wind and the rattle of the train. When we came down from the mountains to a halt in Indio and climbed out covered in coal dust, he was babbling about being a Vietnam vet and, sure, it could have been true. But lots of crazy people used that to explain their weirdness back then, whether they were vets or not. We'd discovered we were both going to Indiana and having a partner, even if he was insane, seemed better than being alone. 

The train yard in Indio was beautifully warm after that numbing rumble through the mountains. I was astonished to find that the culture of hobos was actually real. There were young guys like me who were just passing through, but there were legions of men who had embraced this life on the road--or been trapped in it--for many, many years. Two old guys I met in the yard were classic, cantankerous coots. One was missing the lower half of his right leg and said he'd lost it hopping trains. They were lean and haggard men, worn down by the ways of the road, yet choosing it over a world that everyone else yearns to conquer.

"There's tramps and then there's bums, my friend," said one, as we lolled around the yard, waiting for a train to hop that a railroad worker told us was heading back east. Yard workers were free with information helping us, either to ease us out of their way or because they'd grown to accept our presence. In many places there was a simple culture of tolerance and mutual support between yard workers and the 'bo's who had no real business being there. It was a culture that would nourish me on my way back home, and whose absence would sear me, just as yard workers warned. Not everywhere I'd go would be friendly.


"A tramp is like Charlie Chaplin," said the 'bo. "A tramp will work a bit here and there then move on, 'cause he's restless. And then there's bums who just refuse to work. I'm a bum," he laughed, through many missing teeth. "I refuse to work."


TO BE CONTINUED