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Unfortunately for the young boy that was me in 1961, I was born with horizons in my head. They are still there, but, thankfully, under control.
Being born in 1945, I was not here for the depression, and if I had been I am sure I would be one of the young hobos of the time. As it was I stole a car in 1960 and headed west at the age of 15. No drivers license. No real idea of where I was going, either. Luckily, a highway patrolman near Eads, Colorado spotted me and put a temporary end to my plans, such as they were. I spent a week in jail while the authorities figured out what to do.
I resumed my journey three years later when I freed myself from familial restraint, which, to be honest, was not great anyway. My shadow ran fast during my 50 years of travel, and has only recently been reattached to my psyche. Marriage helped, but that did not occur until I was 45.
Vagabondry runs in my family. By brother, age 66, is somewhere in South America, and rarely speaks English anymore. My sister hold a New Zealand passport and has visited nearly every continent.
The crushing loneliness spoken of in the article is familiar to me, although not in recent years. I remember having no place to go for Christmas, not knowing anyone in the world, and fending for myself no matter what.
I have been to 49 states and 19 foreign countries. I fought in a war, flew sailplanes, piloted ships, been an auto mechanic, an electronics technician, a sailor, a truck driver, a home inspector, a public speaker, and someone's husband. Life on the road is not for everyone, of course. But there are those of us who understand the appeal completely.
I once read a book to my 7-year old son that referred to riding the rails, and I told my wife that I was going take him down to the tracks and hop a freight, and get off at the first stop and phone her, and she could come and pick us up. She put the kabosh on that idea. Instead, after reading "Treasure of the Sierra Madre", we went down to Mexico and stayed in a cheap flop house overnight in a little Sierra Madre town. He loved it.
Take it from one who has followed the industry all his life; a railroad yard can be a very dangerous place for the uninitiated; fortunately, empty boxcars seldom move with a door open as often as was once the case. Riding on anything else is an even greater invitation to serious trouble, not to mention the possibility of arrest.
Take it from one who has followed the industry all his life; a railroad yard can be a very dangerous place for the uninitiated; fortunately, empty boxcars seldom move with a door open as often as was once the case. Riding on anything else is an even greater invitation to serious trouble, not to mention the possibility of arrest.
We patiently waited for the trains that passed by our street at a leisurely 5 MPH so we could throw rocks at them. One day, at school, we saw a film about a brakeman that had been struck in the eye by a rock that came through the caboose window. We never threw rocks at a train again.
We also used to yell "chalk" as the caboose passed by, and sometimes we would be rewarded with one or two sticks, which were used to mark the bases in the street for our ballgames.
At the age of eight I was introduced to hopping a freight train by my teenage neighbor. He regularly rode the rails to visit his girlfriend on the other side of the city. One day when I was showing my friends how to jump into a boxcar, a giant of a man with a shotgun suddenly appeared and fired at us as we ran down the slope, striking my buddy Denny in the butt and thighs with a load of rock salt. That ended my riding the rails days.
During the Korean War flatcars would roll on by carrying tanks, and it was very tempting to hop aboard but, as you said, that could have led to serious trouble.
It is probably still true (it was when I was there) that people if Africa commonly ride on railway cars. It is generally referred to as "fourth class", it's free and railroad officials normally do not try to regulate or prohibit it. There were always a lot of people riding on the roofs of passenger cars, and on freight cars. Riding the ore cars from the mines to the coastal ports was the only way to get through Mauritania, which had no road.
Of course it was dangerous, lots of people dozed off on the long boring rides, and fell off the train -- it was considered imperative to tie yourself on somehow. On some notorious African trains, riding on top was not necessarily less comfortable than riding inside third class, which I did on three different train trips of over 36 hours.
I have always been fascinated by this subject. I wish this thread had drawn more comment. I had a brother who ran away from home around 14-15 and became a wanderer all of his short life. A tragic story in and of itself. But he tried the rail cars, then stayed with hitch hiking until he was able to get some rattle trap old trucks to travel around in. He never failed to stop and help a stranded motorist or offer a ride to a hitch hiker. If he had been born 20 years earlier (born in 1936), he would have been a staunch rail rider, I think.
I've read some books about riding the rails but I am looking for more. Any suggestions?
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