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Stretch in Jackson, TN

Los Angeles, CA—

Stretch has deep knowledge of trains and their schedules in these contiguous United States, all of which he has ridden in.

You could say, “Stretch, how do I get from, say, Trinidad, Colorado to Spokane, Washington?” He would say, “Well you catch such-and-such a line from this yard in Trinidad. It’s scheduled to leave at ten but is usually about 15 minutes late. Then, it’ll stop at this time in this yard. Switch to track two. Those guys are friendly, it’s usually a cab ride for me.” Which means he knows the guys on the train and they let him ride in the warm locomotive on padded seats. “Ride that to Sacramento, which you’ll know from the smell of such and such, walk to this rail yard two miles away and get on this train, which ends in Spokane.” It’s something I think one can gain only by lots of trial-and-good-lord,-Where-am-I-now? experience.

It was my first ride in an open boxcar, a short hop from Jackson, Tennessee to Corinth, Mississippi.

I’ve watched the world go by from most of the different modes of transport. Bikes. Boats. Planes. Cars. Passenger trains. Buses. Watching the world go by from the open picture window of a boxcar’s doorway is different. It is at once both intimate with and removed from the outside world. It’s a really weird feeling. A big paradox.

Maybe it was that the night had a moon bright enough to cast shadows, or maybe it was our middling speed of 40 miles an hour, or the fact that you could fall out at any moment, but the world from the gaping mouth of that car looked fake, like a painted backdrop—but it was also always reminding you that it was real. People moving in the light cast by a Christmas tree. The tiny rectangular glare of a television. Cars speeding alongside the tracks, maybe or maybe not realizing that it feels like we’re racing.

Then there’s the wind and the cold and the noise. The noise. The roar made by railclatter echoing around the hollow space of the empty boxcar, dull due to its persistence and acute due to its volume, is deafening at first but turns into overwhelming background noise enough that it’s possible to sleep. Which is exactly what Stretch did while I sat and watched.

There’s another thing: everything out there passes in the time of an awkward eyelock with a beautiful stranger (longer than a blink, shorter than you’d like), so there’s no time to reconcile the push-pull of this weird clash.

At railroad crossings, where cars sit and wait patiently, this glancing interval is sometimes a really good thing.

There you are, happy and full of wonderment, watching the Mississippi countryside roll by all peaceful when suddenly you are pasted to the wall, arms akimbo, a look of horror on your face, a fat human target that’s mostly salad-plate eyes, by the headlights of waiting cars. You feel as inconspicuous as (I’m sure there’s some pithy Southern saying I could employ here if I knew it)—just really inconspicuous. Like it’s impossible that they didn’t see you. Then you think about how little attention you pay to passing railcars and think maybe they didn’t. Then you really hope they didn’t or that if they did they don’t call the cops on their cellphone.

Because on top of all of this, what you’re doing is not really “legal,” per se.

It’s a thrill and a pretty intoxicating feeling.

Eventually I got tired and cold and so I lay out my slim foam sleeping pad, put by head on my pack and fell asleep until Corinth, Mississippi, where I disembarked to catch the train back to Jackson, Tennessee. Stretch and I said our goodbyes for now, I thanked him, and went on my way.

The day was balmy for December as stretch and I rolled into Jackson, Tennessee. Seventies and sunny, which you think would have been welcome to Stretch after days of single-digit lows in Indiana, but he doesn’t like having to remove his coveralls, his fleece hoodie, his flannel and his long johns, and then having to hump them to the next train.

Stretch out of his coveralls on an unseasonably warm day

We’d skipped breakfast in Kentucky and were peckish by the time we arrived at The Old Country Store and Casey Jones Village there in Jackson. The Old Country Store and Casey Jones Village is a little strip mall tourist attraction that hosts a train museum, a false-front series of shops and a small hobo gathering each year. It’s a family-run affair headed by a devout, rotund man of impeccable southern breeding called T. Clark Shaw.

T. Clark Shaw treated the Hobo King 2008-2009 to a free country buffet (full disclosure: he treated the Hobo King’s reporter companion to a free country buffet, too: we are dirt poor graduate students, after all), where Stretch piled on the food in three trips through the line. The food, as T. Clark Shaw said, was “real Southern cooking” which as far as I can tell means things with great viscosity that are bad for you, and usually delicious.

T. Clark Shaw and Stretch in the offices of The Old Country Store

Our train wasn’t leaving until about 8:00 that night, so we lingered everywhere we went, killing time. I tried to get stretch to talk about the Freight Train Riders of America. He mostly demurred. (More on the FTRA next week when Eric and Meredith report from one of the organization’s Founders’ homes in Montana.) We took a walk with Burlington dog. We scouted places to stash my car for the night.

The day dimmed; the hour approached. I dropped Stretch and Stretch’s stuff and Burlington dog at the train yard. He put his pack together and hoofed it quickly across the tracks and dove into the brush to drink beer and sit and wait. It was four or so and crews would be changing. He didn’t want to be seen by the train master or any other authorities.

Stretch, packing up

100 lbs. of stuff

I pressed back to where I would park my car, popped the trunk and stuffed my pack willy nilly with the necessities. I couldn’t find my headlamp. Is a liter-and-a-half enough water? Bring a sleeping bag, or no? No. It’s a short trip and I’ll be fine. A jar of mixed nuts (with which my mom diligently provides me every time I hit the road) and a few cereal bars and I was pretty sure I was set. It was warm out, why would I need anything warmer than my down puffy jacket? I struck out.

The implicit adventure that comes with wandering down railroad tracks is great, but man, railroad ties are just the wrong distance apart for a body like me. To skip ties makes each step a sort of leap. To step on every tie is an infuriating, oxymoronic combination of rapid activity and creeping progress (like pedaling down your flat street on your first ten-speed in granny gear). To step in between ties is to roll on rugged ball-bearing cobbles across the backdrop, which in this case was a west Tennesssee countryside wiped in quickly warming light. Stretch, at six-foot five, must loaf without a second thought between skipped ties. I don’t often envy the tall, but on the tracks I do.

Stretch warbled at me from the brush when I crossed his line of sight. I piled into the tall grass, set my pack down and plopped on top of it.

From the brush

We sat. I asked him questions, brandishing my recorder. He answered them kindly. I pressed the shutter on my camera (which is really the school’s camera). We sat some more. He talked on his pay-as-you-go cell phone, which a friendly hobo in Wisconsin sponsors for him. He called people to let them know where he was and where he’d be headed. He drank what we called in college Beast Ice after Beast Ice. We watched our train chug into the yard. We heard them building the train for the trip to Corinth, Mississippi that night. We waited for darkness to settle.

I found Stretch, the elected King of the Hoboes sitting on his pack in the snow with a ruddy smile on his face and a beer in his hand. He was at the rail yard in Avon, Indiana, just outside of Indianapolis. The 2008-2009 monarch wore Carhartt coveralls and was packed for the road. I had organized this meeting with the prolific tramp via a series of calls to his cell phone.

(The fact that he had a cell phone was surprising at first, seeing as he doesn’t have much of a home address, but the weirdness wore off quickly. It’s pay as you go, so no address needed. He said it makes tramping safer.)

Our destination wasn’t yet clear, but he was excited to get out of the cold he’d been sitting through for three days.

He piled his dog Burlington, his 100 lbs. of gear and his namesake 6′5″ frame all into my four door Honda Civic and pulled out the atlas. It was cold outside, about 28 degrees, so the only thing we knew for sure was that we’d head south.

I noticed the smell as soon as we closed the doors. Stretch was two-and-a-half pungent weeks out from a shower and his dog was wet. Alternately blessed and cursed by an acute sense of smell, I was relegated to mouth breathing for the six hour ride. It would have been longer, but I broke the law in the name of my nose so we could just get there.

There, we decided, was Fulton, Kentucky. Nobody has ever been to Fulton, Kentucky. Except for hoboes.

“We get them all the time,” one Fulton Police Department cop told me as he hassled us to move along. “I don’t know why. But we do.”

I know why. There are trains to catch. But none that suited my peculiar holiday-circumventing schedule and so after taking some pictures and getting removed by the cops from our first campsite, we repaired (with police permission) to a nearby abandoned Wal-Mart parking lot. The cops told us it would be “safer—you might not think it, but this is a pretty rough little town,” the lieutenant on duty told us. He had a big white moustache, weathered skin and an alarmingly authentic Western Kentucky accent, and so we believed him.

Fulton train yard; we were removed by the cops, but not ticketed

The night sky looked like rain so Stretch curled up with Burlington under the awning of the building formerly known as Wal-Mart and I knocked the back seats down in my car, stuck my legs in the trunk and crashed.

I experienced the rain as a sort of ominous slamming on the roof of my impermeable car. Stretch got more of the reality of the rain.

“The wind was blowing from five different directions,” he said the next morning. “I woke up when it started blowing up under here…my sleeping bag’s a little bit wet.”

For the record, it was soaked.

We sat and watched the sky change from rain to just clouds to clouds punctured by blue sky sucker holes. Things were looking up and we blasted down to Jackson, Tennessee to catch a train to Mississippi.

More later…

We had the distinct pleasure of spending the past 24 hours at the Plymouth, New Hampshire home of a gentleman beloved by many hoboes, Fran “The Hobo Minstrel” DeLorenzo.  Fran is a hobo historian and a major figure in the hobo community.  We learned a lot in our conversations and look forward to sharing video and photos as soon as we can get them up.

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Welcome to our multimedia exploration of the contemporary hobo.  We are just getting started, so have a look around and visit us often!

Cheers,

Team Hobo