A true story of train hoping hobo’s
Our story will start the same place it will end, and start again, some random town in the middle of nowhere sitting beside a set of railroad tracks waiting for the next train to take me where ever the tracks are laid. In Colton, CA, sometime in 2005, we sat around a make shift fire trying our hardest to stay warm without attracting the attention of the train bulls. With a few warm coals and some pulls off the whiskey bottle, we were able to keep warm enough to sing random songs of travel and keep our minds off the fact that we could be charged with a federal felony at any minute. The train we expected had already been delayed about eight hours and the lack of sleep from staying up all night waiting was starting to get to us. Rocko and Jimi had walked down to the store, which was about 200 yards up the track, to buy another bottle of booze. This would take us through breakfast, leaving me and three other hometown road dogs on watch.
Sitting around, kicking at random empty bottles and cans, I felt the pebbles and sand begin to rattle and shake, as if an earthquake were begging to tear the very ground under me apart. A thought flashed through my head; maybe the booze and no sleep had finally brought me to the point where I was unable to hold on to earth any longer. That thought quickly dissipated as the bright lights of the oncoming freight train shined directly in my eyes. I grabbed my backpack and got myself ready to catch my first train.
Looking over my shoulder I realized Rocko and Jimi were still down at the store so I began to yell for them as loud as I could. The sound of my yelling was completely drowned out by the massive train passing by about two feet away. An open box car came slowly by and I watched as the three other people that stayed behind took off running and jumped into it as the box car disappeared from view. I looked over my shoulder once more to see that my two road dogs had come bolting out of the store and were half way too me as the freshly purchased bottle slipped from one of their hands.
Alcohol is an extremely real and scary addiction, and when you spend half your nights drinking just to stay warm, or forget the fact you did not make enough money to eat, your body begins to need the booze. As the bottle hit the ground, Rocko, who was completely grasped by this addiction, fell to his knees and began to scoop up the liquid slurping it from his hand. Looking back at the ever shortening train, I realized our opportunity to get out of this dreary town was growing thin and quickly turned and yelled to Rocko “leave it… we’ve got to go”.
No sooner had the words left my mouth Jimi comes flying by me, jumps up and grabs on to the ladder of a gondola, climbs to the top and flops inside. Realizing this was the last cart on the train, I grabbed on to the ladder as it passed by me and hung on for dear life. The feeling of dangling off the side of this massive beast of a machine was unreal. I was so overtaken by this feeling of having so little control over my own safety or life that I froze up while hanging onto the ladder. In the corner of my eye I could see Rocko heading back into the liquor store to no doubt dispute the bottle that had broken in their parking lot.
As I chuckled at the man’s extremely misplaced priorities, I looked up just in time to see a set of stop lights built on the ide of the track coming straight at me, about to knock me off the ladder. If thrown off, I would have defiantly been sucked under and pulverized. In the nick of time, Jimi who had climbed into the gondola before me, climbed to the top, grabbed me and yanked me into the dumpster-like car. I landed on the bottom of the gondola and sat there completely stunned by the near-death experience still seeing traces of my life flashing before my eyes. Jimi extended his hand and helped me up. Looking
out over the top of the gondola, gazing back at the miles of land quickly disappearing behind us, I had a sudden rush of accomplishment. Then Jimi got my attention; slyly pulling a second bottle of booze out of his jacket, we began to scream joyfully at the top of our lungs. We screamed and shouted as loud as we could with no one to hear since the sounds were completely drowned out by the roar of the train engine. With absolutely no idea where this train was heading, we passed the bottle back and forth and celebrated yet another trip into the unknown.