![]() ![]() Violence between hobos isn't the problem, but when you live on the streets beyond the protective bubble of society, you're exposed to all types of people, the good and the ugly. Heroin overdoses, fights, muggings and even murder. Then there are dangers that have nothing to do with trains. ![]() Most modern train cars are sealed up anyway, so hobos nowadays tend to ride on the "porches" or spaces between containers, as Connecticut Shorty did. If it's too blurry - from speed or inebriation - catch the next one. The rule of thumb is to only hop a train if you can clearly make out each bolt on its spinning wheels. Hopping on a moving train is hard enough, but even harder when you're drunk or high and hauling a huge backpack. Dirty has friends who have lost limbs to trains. The freedom and independence of the rails comes at a stiff price, though: serious physical danger. From Folklife Festival in Seattle to the Rainbow Gathering in Ocala, Florida to Halloween in New Orleans.įrederic Lewis/Archive Photos/Getty Images Dirty and his hobo friends moved all over the country following a loose migration of crusty kids on the trail of music festivals and drugged-out blowouts. When you're traveling by train, Dirty says, you have total independence - assuming you get on the right train. Plus you have to stay awake in case they're a weirdo.” You have to entertain the person that's driving with stories and stuff. Even when you're hitchhiking, it's still not free. “You can either be a ‘rubber tramper' - which means you have your own car - a classic hitchhiker or a train hopper. ![]() “There are different segments of the traveling culture,” Dirty says. Living on food stamps and handouts, sleeping in parks, getting wasted on cheap liquor and street drugs, and drifting from one city to the next, Dirty and his street family were drawn to the trains for the same reason all hobos are drawn to trains: they're free. A lot of people have been pushed away from their families, but they've found a lot in common with their friends out on the streets. “Even if people did have a family that supported them, if you start tattooing your face and smoking crack they're going to start looking at you different. “After a certain point, there's nothing to go back to,” Dirty explains. Even if the hobo lifestyle starts as a choice, though, it doesn't always stay that way. Other kids are on and off the streets since childhood and have never known anything better. Some kids like him grow up in a relatively stable middle-class environment and decide one day that's it's all a scam, so they head out in search of something different. And the best way to get there is to hop a train.Īll of the above, Dirty says. Today's hobos are gutter punks and anarchists, crusty kids and societal dropouts trying to piece together an existence outside of civil society. Hobo culture is alive and well in the United States, but it's a far cry from the sanitized Halloween-costume version most of us are used to - the patched overalls, the charcoal beard and the red-bandana bindle (that's a bundle on a stick). But Shorty is only one type of modern American hobo. For her, hoboing is a hobby and a way to honor her late father. She has a home in Iowa and a winter refuge in Florida. You cross the country, you're out there with nature, you go through Indian reservations, over mountains - it's a wonderful adventure, and you're seeing America for free.”įor Shorty and her white-haired hobo friends, hopping trains is one of the last great traveling adventures. You're sleeping on metal floor, after all. A veteran hobo called Road Hog USA showed her the ropes - where to hide from the “bulls” (train yard cops), where the train stops or slows enough to hop on, what type of train cars to look for, and what to bring in your pack. Shorty was in her mid-40s when she caught out on her first train from Dunsmuir, California to the legendary Roseville rail yard outside of Sacramento. Shorty didn't fully understand the lure of the hobo lifestyle until she began hopping trains herself in 1993. When a hobo dies, they say he's “caught the Westbound.” Shorty's father, Connecticut Slim, rode the rails for 44 years before catching the Westbound in 1990 to the hobo jungle in the skies. CHUCK BOWEN/AFP/Getty ImagesĬonnecticut Shorty's father is buried in the National Hobo Cemetery in Britt, Iowa. While the glory days of freight trains have long passed in America, there remains a loyal contingent of hobos and wannabes. Collinwood Kid serves mulligan stew with park district employees at a 2007 hobo gathering at Deep Lock Quarry near Akron, Ohio. ![]()
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