- 9 saat önce
The American Hobo -Sd
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01:00He works and wanders, also learns and in his heart he always yearns to see beyond the river's turns, the view from rolling cars.
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04:16Bir sebeğe güvenliyiv 보고 alpha takımla getiriyor.
04:19Ben içi bir bakımda.
04:21...
04:24...
04:25Almışımda gr pracy, bir araç değil.
04:27.
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04:38I rode freight trains all my life because I just love to do it.
04:44Ah, the rhythm of the rails is an enticing song to those who long to be far away.
04:49Like the Pied Piper, wandering souls have followed the tracks,
04:54stitched like seams across the country since the Civil War.
04:59Legend has it that Erie Crip and Philly Pop,
05:03two discharged Union soldiers,
05:05were the founding members of the fraternity of freight-hopping hobos.
05:09The two men, accustomed to the open-air military lifestyle,
05:13hitched 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
05:23while the less fortunate soldiers, left homeless by the devastating war,
05:27rode the rails in search of a new beginning.
05:30A great number of these early wanderers sought jobs as migrant farm workers
05:35and carried hoes along with them.
05:38Therefore, it is thought the nickname hobo is derived from being called homeward-bound soldiers,
05:46or ho-boys, both shortened to hobo.
05:51As the nation expanded westward, the railroads needed laborers to set ties and lay tracks,
05:57and the hobos played a vital role in these activities.
06:00To feed a growing nation, the hobos became the harvesters who reaped the crops in mid-America,
06:06often working a route that took them from the Texas Panhandle to the Canadian border each season.
06:12During 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 was by freight train.
06:27These restless men continued to follow the developing railroads through the Rocky Mountains
06:33and became the lumberjacks of the Northwest woods and merchant seamen of the Pacific Ocean.
06:40This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to the New York Islands, from the Redwood Forks...
06:50The Great Depression of the 30s prompted factories to lay off laborers, businesses 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.
07:10In 1934, the U.S. Bureau of Transient Affairs estimated there were one and a half million men and women
07:19riding America's freight trains.
07:22You could taste the depression. These were bad years, you know.
07:2930, 31, 32.
07:32Everything was lean and mean. No jobs. You had to start with trying to get everything from a day's work to whatever you can get.
07:44Back then, everybody had a relative, a brother, a son, a father, an uncle, who was riding the trains, looking for work.
07:54Ah, that lonesome whistle continues to recruit new visionaries, offering passage to where dreams are found.
08:02I hopped my first freight train back in 1966 in Athens, Alabama.
08:09A couple of buddies and I wanted to go up to Nashville, and we didn't know how to get there, except take the bus.
08:17And so we were sitting down the weeds by the college there, and this freight train came by, and it was going real slow.
08:24So we said, let's do it. Next thing you know, we're on our way to Nashville.
08:29Well, I started riding freight trains as a kind of a recreational boyish adventure when I was about 15.
08:36And I rode pretty hard for several years, finally coming to rest at about 21 or 22.
08:42Well, the first freight train I rode, I was a kid about 15 years old, and I wanted to get home from Minnesota down into Iowa.
08:51And I didn't want to wait for my father to come up there to get me, so I rode a freight train.
08:56The first true hobo trip I ever took was when my brother Hopalong Chet and I were going back to our grandfather's 90th reunion.
09:06And we rode from Barstow, California to the East Coast to Boston.
09:11And it took us eight days and 13 different train connections.
09:15And from that moment on, we were hooked.
09:17I decided to make a documentary film.
09:20And it was mostly the film started out as an excuse for me to figure out how to get on a freight train.
09:26So when I finally took my first ride, it was everything that I had imagined it might be.
09:35And it was pretty much an immediate addiction.
09:39I've been doing this since the age of 13 years old.
09:43I'm telling you the real McCoy.
09:46A friend of mine used to work for Canadian National up in Montreal.
09:50And he knew I liked trains a lot.
09:52I'd always like trains going way back to when I was a little kid.
09:55And he 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.
10:04And that was sort of the beginning of it.
10:06And I took it from there.
10:08I think the first time was an old oil spur up there where I used to live in Oildale.
10:13But the first long trip I took was from Bakersfield to Fresno in the old SP.
10:19At the age of 12 or 13, I was living near Philadelphia.
10:27And with a partner a year older, we bummed our way all the way to the Canadian border and all the way south to Florida.
10:47Every year, at a different location alongside a mainline railroad,
10:52Our National Hobo Association sponsors the Hobo Poetry and Music Festival.
10:58This year's site is charming Marquette, Iowa, on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River.
11:04Oh, and 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.
11:19And simpler instruments like gin whistles, harmonicas, and Jews' hearts.
11:24The boss set me a-driving spikes.
11:44The sweat was enough to blind me.
11:47The boss, he didn't like my pace.
11:49So I left my job behind me.
11:52I climbed aboard an old freight train.
11:55Round the country traveled.
11:57The mysteries of a hobo's life to me were soon unraveled.
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 arrive by various modes of conveyance, many by car, truck, or motorhome, and, of course, the freight train.
12:21Oh, the big rock candy mountain.
12:24There'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.
12:35On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees and the lemonade springs
12:38where the bluebird sings in the big rock candy mountain.
12:41This fun-filled event brings out the free spirit of the hobo that lives within us all.
13:03And everyone is encouraged to partake in the wide variety of family activities.
13:08This retired hobo is being hounded by his alter ego to return to the rails.
13:20We could hop an extra west and head out toward the coast.
13:23Or maybe take the valley route with the river as our host.
13:26You always liked the scenery on the Colorado run
13:29or the smell of hay as the boxcars weighed in the autumn Kansas sun.
13:33He said, we never rode the Chesapeake or the seaboard or the Sioux
13:36and what about the cotton belt? That promise came from you.
13:39You said we'd ride the Lehigh in the Wabash Cannonball
13:42and you absolutely promised we'd ride New England in the fall.
13:45How long can I resist the call? I really couldn't say.
13:49But the inner hobo's argument gets stronger every day.
13:52Now I'm not one for idle talk, but I want the world to know
13:55that if I hear that whistle one more time, I just might up and go.
14:00Early in the morning and it looked like rain.
14:06Around the bend coming past the train.
14:08Under the camp was Casey Jones.
14:10A good engineer, but he dead and gone.
14:12Dead and gone, dead and gone.
14:14A good engineer, but he dead and gone.
14:16Well, Casey Jones was a brave engineer.
14:22He told his firemen not to fear.
14:25All he needed was the water and coal.
14:27Put your head out the window and see the driver's roll.
14:29Hey, yeah, the driver's roll.
14:31Put your head out the window and see the driver's roll.
14:33Trains 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 mount these beasts again and again?
14:57And being that I like to play music, you know,
14:59there's nothing finer than 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.
15:08The speed, the power of the train, all those really, they really turn me on.
15:15The freedom, not getting away from everything, getting away from everything.
15:19Not feeling like I've got to be responsible about anything,
15:24being punctual, being somewhere at an exact time,
15:27being able to just hang out and go with the train, get somewhere for free.
15:30I'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
15:36or anybody who's not going to let me get in my lane.
15:40A nice day, a good ride.
15:43I like to get into a terminal too that I haven't seen before and poke around.
15:48I like to do that.
15:54You also go through parts of the country, unlike the interstate system,
15:58that has virtually no signs of any commercial activity.
16:02No billboards, no exit signs, no neon.
16:06Seeing America from a boxcar, you see the wild horses, you see the ghost towns,
16:12you see everything about America that's wonderful.
16:17To 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.
16:25Seeing different parts of the country, a new piece of scenery every day.
16:30There are places like Idaho and Montana and Wyoming, all those western places I love.
16:38Those mountains are beautiful.
16:40The sheer excitement of getting to new places and new experiences.
16:46Just to see what I call priceless wonders.
16:49Those things that drift by when you're riding a train.
16:52And the adventure doesn't end when the ride's over.
16:56Breathtaking landscapes give way to the colorful characters who pass through the train yards.
17:03The friends you meet along the way, that's what keeps me going back, I think, more than anything.
17:09They're not 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.
17:18We're not caught up in that hustle-buzzle, credit card, plastic money, car payments, concrete highways,
17:24and going from the office to the club to make the scene, in other words.
17:27I use the hobo as a medium for my poetry and found that everybody I've met so far has a story
17:35and that helps me tremendously with my feelings.
17:39The friendship of the young fellow who took me to Canada and to Florida was precious.
17:48When I started out, I had my own preconceptions about who was out riding freight trains
17:56and I thought that it was a fairly homogenous group.
18:00And I think one of the things I've really learned is that there are many different personalities that are out riding the freight.
18:07And those different personalities rarely devolves their family names, adopting unique aliases instead.
18:15Everybody's road name kind of gives in a nutshell who they are and what they represent.
18:22So I can introduce myself as Jet Set John and that kind of tells a little bit of the other side of me rather than just being a hobo.
18:31Some guys that walk along the track, they might call him Track Man, you know.
18:35And Sidecar Sam, he was riding sidecar on a tanker with his feet dangling down alongside the tank.
18:43That's why I named him Sidecar Sam.
18:46Then Low Line Larry, he rides from Florida all the way up to Utah and he rides that Low Line.
18:51So I gave him the name of Low Line.
18:53Everybody has a road name.
19:00I was a stranger passing through your town.
19:05When I ask you a favor, good girl, you turn me down.
19:22The younger lady, the cat, the cat, the cat.
19:27Tell him about me.
19:29Most of the time I'm alone because I have my own destination and I have my own reason for going somewhere
19:34I love solitude.
19:36I was lonely before I started riding.
19:38I never get lonely anywhere.
19:40I told my wife I was going on an 18-day trip.
19:42She hopefully was sorry to see me go.
19:46My sister and everybody, they get a kick out of telling her friends what I do.
19:49My brother has been with me one time, but he doesn't want to do it again, but he kind of likes the concept, you know what I mean?
19:56My mother looks a little bit askance at it, you know, like it's not the greatest thing.
20:01But she understands that I enjoy it and have a good time doing it, so.
20:05My family, I don't really tell them anymore because you get a lot of shaking heads and shrugged shoulders
20:11and they don't really understand why I do it.
20:13Since I'm a senior citizen, it's kind of frowned on.
20:18A lot of them think it's really neat, but then there's some that just think I'm totally out of my mind.
20:23Most of my friends think it sounds like fun, sounds entertaining, they don't do it.
20:29My friends, they're a little more understanding.
20:32They tell me, it's happened more than a few times, that they tell me they want to come out on a ride with me
20:38and as soon as I pack up my gear and I'm ready to head out the door, they seem to disappear.
20:43My mother spent a lot of worrisome years, I'm sure.
20:48When I got to Dunsmeyer on that trip there, I called her and it just so happened I had a check coming from a job
20:53that 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 a goddamn Greyhound.
21:01Quitted that whole boy.
21:03Outside the rain was falling on the lonely boxcar door
21:27But the little farm of Hobo Bill lay dead upon the floor
21:36While the train sped through the darkness
21:40With a raging storm outside
21:44No one knew that Hobo Bill was taking his last ride
21:52I was always cold and stuff was always blowing in your face
22:05I think the coldest ride I had was from Eugene, Oregon to Klamath Falls, Oregon
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26:21.
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26:59Eğ lângıyoruz.
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27:08Ad вполне.
27:10Tutaj bakar
27:23Sooner or later you did fall into one of the camps and very imaginative men ran them.
27:34They were congenial places, you didn't want to leave, you made friends, you heard great stories.
27:43I remember going into a hobo jungle one time in Barstow.
27:50They had really a large hobo camp there.
27:54I participated in some community stew a couple times in my life.
28:03Fit for a king, hobo stew.
28:06The famous mulligan that's been made in spike cans and paint buckets under bridges and on the edge of the railroad yard since the Civil War.
28:13The stew pot gurgled over the fire for days on end.
28:17They just kept adding ingredients as the level went down.
28:21Those jungles, they were clean, they had an order.
28:25They didn't throw garbage around.
28:29Usually if a guy come into jungles, he came there with his loaf of bread and his bologna and cheese.
28:38Maybe he wanted to make a pot of coffee and wait for a train and catch out.
28:48It's the townspeople that complain, they complain to the police, the police complain to the railroad bulls and the railroad bulls run them out.
28:56If they keep the place clean, you know, and pick up all their trash and stuff, I don't think they'd even be bothered.
29:04The jungles are being wiped out with caterpillar tractors so that there would be no place for the riders to hide.
29:11There's very few jungles nowadays.
29:14Go to sleep, you weary hobo.
29:20Let the town strip slowly by.
29:26Can't you hear the steel rail humming?
29:33That's a hobo lullaby.
29:38Though your clothes are torn ragged.
29:44Though your hair is turning gray.
29:51Though you've spent a lifetime searching.
29:57You'll find happiness someday.
30:02So go to sleep, you weary hobo.
30:08Let the town strip slowly by.
30:14Can't you hear the steel rail humming?
30:21That's a hobo's lullaby.
30:26Hobo's communicate through the National Hobo Association.
30:34Founded in 1987 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 publication that dated back to 1908.
30:59Consequently, he created the Hobo Times, America's Journal of Wanderlust, and began distributing it to kindred spirits.
31:08In 1990, Buzz Potter came on board, and together they upgraded the Times to the only magazine in America that features a blend of railroad adventure stories, poetry, nostalgia, and the current news of life on the hobo trail.
31:25A letter that we got from a 96-year-old former hobo who rode back in the Depression, and he found out about us, and he sent us a letter, and it said very simply,
31:36Dear National Hobo Association, please don't let the hobo die.
31:41It grew slowly over the years, but steadily, and today we have thousands of members nationwide that span the demographic spectrum from lawyers to laborers, professional people, corporate people.
31:57They're from all walks of life, and they've been where I've got to go yet, and I learned from their experiences.
32:03It'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 wavelength with us, with their kindred spirits.
32:12They have the wanderlust, the sense of romance, and the sense of nostalgia.
32:17All of a sudden, we understood that there were other people like ourselves, and we found out how to get a hold of them.
32:22It provides a forum for us to get together and tell our tales, rather than just maybe running into one or two people in the jungle and telling your individual experiences.
32:31And to get together occasionally and share the fellowship that was forged in early days around campfires in remote places throughout the country.
32:40Now we're a little more respectable, I guess, and we get together with much better stew and much better clothes and much warmer fires, perhaps, but the fellowship hasn't changed.
32:50We enjoy brotherhood, camaraderie, we sing songs, we trade photographs and addresses, and we sort of get together. This, to me, is my family.
32:58We have younger people now, some of the ex-generation people who are looking for themselves, trying to find themselves, I guess, and part of that is seeing America.
33:08And we're trying to educate our children and our younger folk who might not know what a steam locomotive is and what a hobo jungle was and a mulligan stew and a pot and a frisco circle and stuff like that, terms that were used back in the 20s and 30s and 40s.
33:23Many NHA members are devoted collectors of hobo memorabilia.
33:30George Horton has acquired hobo artifacts such as these antique carvings, each whittled from a single piece of wood.
33:38These whistles and chains were formed in a similar fashion, enterprising hobos even chiseled peach pits into monkey trinkets.
33:48Del Romines wrote a book on hobo nickels explaining 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.
34:04Drummond Manfield's art reflects earlier days when it was pretty much a man's world out on the road.
34:12But nowadays, women are prominent members of the hobo community.
34:17We have a lot of fun together, and it becomes like your extended family, your brothers, your sisters, and you make friends for life, so I love them.
34:29Hobo-ing's definitely in Connecticut Shorty's blood.
34:32Her father was a hobo for 40 years and by no means a bum.
34:37You see, real hobos bristle at the intimation that they shunned work.
34:43In fact, they discreetly mark their own hieroglyphics around train yards to alert each other about town prospects.
34:55An oft-repeated axiom sums up the men on the road.
34:58A hobo is a traveling worker.
35:02A tramp is a traveling non-worker.
35:05A bum is a non-traveling non-worker.
35:09You gotta do work in order to keep yourself independent.
35:14Traveling money.
35:16Take any kind of a job, whether it's two hours or two days or two months.
35:23Get a road stake.
35:26The Western farmers had a deal with the railroads whereby they would ship their cattle from the ranch to the slaughterhouse in Chicago.
35:41They had to have somebody aboard the train so that at every 12-hour interval you stopped, unloaded the cattle, exercised them, watered them, fed them, got back aboard the train and went on to Chicago.
36:03You got no money for this, but you didn't get transportation.
36:09We used to hay that have two cuttings of hay a year, and you're good for a week to two weeks of haying.
36:20We went and caught a freight out of Denver and went west, and we wound up in Yakima, Washington, and he had an ant there that had an apple orchard, and he thought, well, we could find that place and maybe we could pick some apples.
36:38We never found the place.
36:40We had the great state of Washington state.
36:44That's the real apple-knocking country, and we were, everybody was a hobo back then.
36:53Roadhog washed all the windows in my house inside and out.
36:57Side door had scrubbed my kitchen floor immaculate, and they raked all the leaves in my yard.
37:02It was fall, late September, and that was to pay me back for the ride and the, you know, the little bedroom I gave them, so separate from mine, of course.
37:13Oh, I've done all dug irrigation ditches, broke horses, hoed watermelon in the fields. I've done just about every kind of work you can think of.
37:26I worked in a produce packing house, loading lettuce, bananas, stuff like that.
37:34Primarily, I play guitar. I do a lot of folk festivals around the country. I play veterans' hospitals. I do children's hospitals.
37:41I try to bring a few hundred dollars along with me on the freights when I take a trip, and if I run out or if I happen to follow the job, I'll take it.
37:50I do anything from painting, carpentry, concrete work, trimming trees.
37:55When I'm broke in between guitar gigs, I go to day labor and push a wheelbarrow, dig a ditch, just anything I can, you know, to get by, you know.
38:02The average hobo isn't going to last long at any job.
38:08Ah, today there's a new class of unticketed passengers who vary from the old-time hobos.
38:16They aren't chasing down jobs, they're running from them, and have come to be known as yuppie or recreational hobos.
38:24Yuppie hobos, they're a pretty good group. A lot of those guys really do more than their share.
38:33I approve of them. I'd like to see everybody see America. It's a beautiful country, and there's so much that the people don't really see.
38:42Well, you know, everybody deserves a vacation. These 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.
38:52They're not as generous as our old school were and has been. They're a different breed of bo's.
39:03I'm out there just like them, just riding the rails, seeing the country. And that's really what the real hobos are all about.
39:09I 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 Minneapolis and re-signed the papers.
39:18Because I figured the less I'd spend, the more I'd experience. And so I would go that last week, you know, where I'd burn all my money.
39:28And then I wouldn't have any money for a week. And I always found that the third week of the month, I had more fun.
39:34As a professional pilot, there is a courtesy among airline pilots that if you present your ID card, they'll let you ride up in the cockpit.
39:42And since the name of the game is Traveling For Free, it's a little faster way of getting somewhere if you don't have quite the time.
39:48Coming here, I rode up in the cockpit of a 747-400 where they offered me their bunk room to sleep, which is just like a Pullman car.
39:57So it's really a high-class hobo way of traveling.
40:02I don'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.
40:16I don't really think I am. I got no complaints about other people having a different approach to it somewhat.
40:23I think most people would sort of call me like a recreational rider, I guess.
40:28So I got into riding freight trains at a necessity, but after I eventually got back on my feet and got to work and got a place to live and all that,
40:37then I became somewhat of a recreational rider because I just couldn't get away from it. I just had that wanderlust in my blood.
40:43But we all have one thing in common. We like to steal rides.
40:49Besides traveling for free, the ever-frugal hobo has learned to survive on Mother Nature's free lunches.
40:57Most people think that hobos went to houses for meals or worked and tried to pay for them.
41:04But a lot of meals were taken from right around here, right along Trackside.
41:10Here we have plantain, which no doubt was definitely part of the hobo diet.
41:18I know a lot of stories I've read, hobos and other people would always just pick up a little bit, chew on it, taste good with other plants.
41:30And between plantain with a little bit of lemon clover flavor, you can eat a great meal.
41:37When I finally broke free of money and realized that I could live off the blackberries, you know,
41:45and I know where they are and the raspberries are where they are and the other things that are around the yards,
41:49you can eat right off the land or the dumpsters or whatever else.
41:54A quick-witted hobo has traditionally added humor to his social commentary.
42:01Put your lobsters in the trash. Eat your pheasant while it's under glass.
42:06Get into your garbage or have no cash. Little dinner, I'll be gone in a flash.
42:11Won't you hold them pickles? Hold that lettuce. Special orders, they don't upset us.
42:17Just as long as they would let us dive it our way.
42:22Yeah, we're gonna go dumpster diving. I'm surviving my kitty cats are thriving today.
42:33Just open the lid, have a little look. It's all prepared, there's no need to cook.
42:39We're going dumpster diving, whoa, whoa, hooray.
42:44Catching rides on freight trains is notoriously dangerous.
42:53Even the most seasoned hobo will caution against novices trying to jump on board a moving train,
42:59telling horror stories of accidents they've witnessed, resulting in agonizing dismemberments or gruesome deaths.
43:07One wrong move, and you'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.
43:19One guy would stand here and shine the light at the couplings, and after he safely got across, we'd leave the light on,
43:26and this was at night and train maybe going 50 or 60 miles an hour.
43:29We'd toss the flashlight to the other guy, and of course it was up to him to make sure he caught it.
43:34And then in turn, he would shine the light as the second guy would go across the railings.
43:39And we had to do this for about four or five cars.
43:41And I think back, it's probably the most foolish thing I ever did.
43:45I'd never do it again. I still get goose bumps when I think about it.
43:49There's dangers out there, and there's no way you can avoid them.
43:51And 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.
43:59You just, you just, it's just too chancy. It's too chancy.
44:05People who wish you harm and 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, there was nothing for 10, 15 guys and a side door pullman, which is a boxcar, to ride in the same car.
44:27Nowadays, you wouldn't dare to ride with strange hobos or anyone you didn't know.
44:36You ride by yourself.
44:38I was learning how to fight from a friend of mine on a boxcar one time.
44:41He showed me how to take a knife away from a guy and flip him and all that stuff.
44:46He learned it in the Marine Corps, I think.
44:48We practiced that in a boxcar moving about 80 miles an hour one time.
44:52When it comes to train riding, you have to give that train all of your respect, but the train will never, won't give you any.
44:59See, 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.
45:08I have a concern about human error with regard to rail operations, and these kinds of things I have no control over.
45:14And you never know whenever you're going to be on a train that has a crew that's gone to sleep at the throttle,
45:19and next thing you know you're in a big pileup at the bottom of a hill.
45:24I rode the rods from Iowa to Illinois, and a more hellish experience no young fellow ever had.
45:43It was horrible.
45:47You set up a little protection there to keep the soot out of your face, and you bounced along,
45:58and you felt the ride would never end.
46:02It was a descent into hell, and how these men could do it again and again and again bewildered me.
46:13No matter how long it may take us...
46:16Life-threatening challenges took our new dimensions on December the 7th, 1941,
46:22the day many believed the hobo died.
46:25We'll win through to absolute victory.
46:29No longer did Bose jungle up in Frisco, Spokolo, or Mini Hopeless.
46:35Now it was Anzio, Normandy, and Iwo Jima.
46:40And when they were welcomed back home, there were jobs for everyone,
46:44new automobiles and even diesel locomotives.
46:47Life on the hobo trail would indeed never be the same.
46:52What will become of the hobo whenever his time comes to die?
47:03I wouldn't trade my experiences out here on the road for anybody's college education.
47:09And though I never really accomplished anything by all this travel, it satisfied something in me.
47:19I don't know whether I was born with it, but it started very young.
47:27And I never stopped.
47:32I got stopped.
47:34But I would look right now to be in one of those hobo camps.
47:44Will they tell us that we cannot ride?
47:50Will the hobo come with the rich man?
47:56Will the hobo survive?
47:58Or will he go the way of the steam train?
48:01We wonder.
48:03If you think about how many lifestyles or how many businesses or whatever have lasted 150 years,
48:16there's not very damn many of them.
48:18And yet hobo continues to be with us.
48:21The day is coming when we won't be able to ride freight trains.
48:24This is not the 30s or the 40s anymore.
48:26But 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.
48:33I can guarantee you that.
48:35With a strong railroad industry, you're going to have plenty of trains
48:38and you're going to 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.
48:47In fact, it was just so slick.
48:48There was no grab irons.
48:49There was nothing.
48:50I don't know if the rail industry is going to go that far and design cars exclusively to keep people off of them.
48:56It's really getting a lot tougher.
48:58A lot of railroad corporations are merging together.
49:01Security is tightening up a lot because there's a few idiots out there derailing trains.
49:05It might get harder again to hop freights.
49:07It might get easier.
49:09But it will always be here.
49:11There's not going to be too much of it in the future, I'm afraid,
49:14because, well, they seem to get pretty tough on hobos now.
49:20There's just more and more poor people.
49:22I'm sorry to say, I think there's going to be more and more poor people.
49:26They may be back on the trains again going around looking for odd jobs.
49:30I think maybe the hobo is pretty much gone in the east.
49:35But in the west, he will live.
49:37The old hobos now are too old to travel.
49:41They're becoming homeboys now.
49:43They just stay in one location.
49:45They don't travel no more.
49:47I think we'll always have heavy-duty rail riders,
49:50people that want to ride freights and go for the adventure.
49:52But the old Bridger steam train hobos are pretty much gone.
49:56We're losing a few more every year.
49:59And my era of hobos, they're vastly dying out.
50:08The real hobo is a dying breed.
50:11A guy out there who's trying to get by, going from town to town, looking for work.
50:16A 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.
50:25I think it's a fading game.
50:27There's a legacy that will always live on.
50:30And 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.
50:37The future could be pretty bright, actually.
50:40If a young man should want a hobo in this country, it might be the way to go.
50:46I think there will always be young men like me who are a little bit a thwart civilization.
51:02I've been a loner.
51:03I've been my own man, fiercely so.
51:09Hey, now come alive all you ramblers, all of you travelers on the road.
51:18Well, the time has come to remember what you're going.
51:24Like, where do you come from and where do you think you're going?
51:33I don't know how any of the bows ride the trains these days.
51:50For the simple reason they got all the ladders cut off.
51:54And you say to yourself, well, how do they get up there, you know?
51:58But they do.
51:59And they make their way.
52:01And they're still hobo and all around the country.
52:04God bless them.
52:05See you down the road.
52:09All around the water tanks, waiting for a train.
52:21A thousand miles away from home, sleeping in the rain.
52:28I walked up to a brakeman to give him my talk.
52:35He says, if you've got money, I'll see that you don't walk.
52:43I haven't got a nickel, not a penny can I show.
52:52Get off, get off, you railroad bum.
52:56And he slammed that boxcar door.
53:02Though my pocketbook is empty, and my heart is full of pain.
53:13I'm a thousand miles away from home, waiting for a train.
53:20Gjör du ne-o, le-o, le-o.
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