(Part 14)
Clown alights like a
ballerina on the
We hike the warm
ballast toward the Sparks Yard on the brown fringe of
We smell like something
from a February hole, and wash upwind jockeying for position and splashing cold
water on each other to stop the heat. We
wade out the miracle pool and raise the packs to continue along the line a mile
to a Denny’s ‘grease ranch’ (restaurant).
Pancakes go down like silver dollars into a rich man’s pocket. We board
a local bus for a ten minute ride into
She dons a Flintstone
dress splashed with Fred and Wilma, the Rubbles, the kids and Dino and ‘Yabadabado’. I wear
freshly laundered bib-overalls and a flannel.
She takes my tan arm around the block to the Reno Comedy Club. ‘Isn’t it
grand!’ she bubbles at the front door. ‘Let’s enter my turf,’ and she sweeps us past the doorman with a joke. The
ensuing show features rising stand-up comics, but Clown is brighter and
funnier.
We return to the
motel and fall into deep twin beds five feet apart to discuss humor. ‘I don’t enjoy humor, but you’re the funniest
person I’ve ever met,’ I confess.
‘Stand-up comedy makes you come to grips with yourself in front of
others,’ she replies. ‘Intellectual
humor is your strong suit. It cultivates
the mind by making thinking fun,’ I return.
‘What should I do, coach?’ she asks.
‘Your humor springs from personal experiences, so the more assorted your
future the funnier you become,’ I respond warmly. ‘If a person next to me has no vices or
weakness then I can’t make him laugh,’ she renders, and we both chuckle.
In the morning, we
check out and amble a few blocks to the gambling district to enter Hurrah’s
Casino for breakfast. Inside, ranks of
hundreds of people shake hands repeatedly with one-armed slot machines amid a
horrid clamor. ‘This reminds me of a
church,’ she mutters. ‘How you spend today is how you spend the rest of your
life,’ I chime. ‘Let’s get out of here!’ we ring. We take a fashionably late breakfast at
Hurrah’s and board a local bus to the
Clown and I sit on a
mowed grass strip between the RR mainline and city skyscrapers to discuss
today’s strategy. We design to enter the
medium-size yard to query workers about building freights, all the while
keeping an eye on the main for a through train and for the bull.
On entering the yard,
abruptly giant pinchers appear skyward. Whirrr…Boom! A giant
crane hoists a 50’ container, swings and drops it onto a flatcar twenty yards
in front of us. We watch, box after box, a unit container train being
built. But we tarry too long as a bull
in a Bronco screeches up; probably the crane operator snitched us out by radio.
There is no place to run or hide.
The RR bull is the yard watchdog.
He’s also the historic nemesis of the hobo, yet as long as the trains
have and will run people will jump them despite him. My strategy against the cinder dick is to dodge
him with a hundred tricks he’s seen a hundred times. That makes it an even contest. A savvy dick with free time on his hands and
high-tech equipment- infra-red cameras, ground sensors- plus patrols, fences
and ratting yard workers- catches an experienced ‘bo half the time and misses
the rest. That’s given the bull’s dream
scenario. Nowadays, however, the little
western yards like
Of the hunting
styles, standard is forage-chase-capture.
The bull cruises the yard in a white truck with a ubiquitous CB
antenna. With the report of an invader
off he goes. He also may ‘roll’ or
scrutinize each car for trespassers on special trains like mail, containers and
piggybacks as they enter or exit his yard.
He is the yard dog. Yet, if he
spies an outbound ‘bo in an empty boxcar he prefers
to look the other way rather than give chase, wishing only the tramp to get
along without getting hurt or stealing.
Freight hopping is
illegal but downplayed as jaywalking in most RR yards. The dance begins the second the ‘bo is nabbed: ID, scratches on a pad, ‘Don’t return on my
duty or it’s to jail’, and ‘Thank you, sir’.
I am ever genial to special agents whom I consider a cut above local
police and county sheriffs. If I can’t
evade one, I walk straight to him with hands displaying no weapons and blow
polysyllables in his face to prove a milieu sans inebriation. I stand upright and vow not to disturb RR
property before catching a ride right out of town. We cordially step apart.
.
There’s fun, and
there are hurdles to it, so I’m philosophically cheerful when caught.
Yet I tense with Clown at my side; some bulls don’t respond to intellectual
humor. This
The bull grunts and extends a meaty palm for our ID’s. He jots data from my driver’s license into a
spiral pad and hands it back. He raises
eyebrows at her Canadian passport. ‘It’s the first time in twenty years on the
job that I’ve seen a passport,’ he mumbles fumbling with it.
‘Canadian, huh?’
‘Eh?’
‘It doesn’t tell how
tall you are.’
‘160
centimeters.’
‘In English?‘
‘I only know metric.’
He jots nothing but
returns her document with a thread smile. I leap on it.
‘If your
mother-in-law were to try to catch a freight in this
yard, where would she wait so the bull couldn’t catch her?’ I ask. He snorts laughter despite himself and
utters, ‘I’d tell her to go to the
The bull proves a
rare asset today and we skirt his yard along a mile sidewalk to the
It is an iron freight
overpass with city traffic passing beneath.
A sloped dirt waiting area, not quite a jungle next to the mainline,
provides the usual carpet of fast-food wrappers and empty bottles. We prop the pack and suitcase against a
nearby hurricane fence and swiftly duck under a patchy tree out of the sun.
Clown kicks off her
platform Converses, smoothes on cherry Chapstick, and
picks at a chin pimple. ‘All this travel has got me on track to freedom,’ she
starts. ‘The Erisians sit on their soft chairs and
talk about it. Your constitution quotes it often. Every one of us has a small or great
opportunity if we’ll seize and work hard.
God bless
‘Don’t,’ I argue,
‘Force liberty on people. There are advantages to being captive to a job or
institution. Thoreau thought it rare to
meet a person who can be free. ‘World-ridden’ he called others without having the
opportunity to come out of the woods himself to the good company of the
rails. Hobos may be going to Hell, but
at least they’re moving right along.’
A
trim, middle-age man in a baseball cap with ‘War Vet’ emblazed in gold across
the bill snails along the hurricane fence.
He angles toward us presupposing a ‘starter’, for coins to pool to buy
booze. Beggardom is parcel to division
points and skid rows, and to freedom.
This is a decrepit area where drifters and locals ‘throw their feet’ or
beg. It starts and pushes out from a
town’s cream business center, decaying the districts like a launch of maggots,
expanding to the finger fringes until the bums get tired of bumming each
other. ‘Spare a dollar?’ repeats the
man.
When
a location gets overrun, it’s circulated up-and-down the roads and rails that
the spot’s ‘bummed out’ and a balancing force exerts as train jumpers avoid
it. Beggerdom then shifts to the next
division point. ‘You look like
executives in overalls,’ expresses the man with disquieting perception. ‘You
read folks like a book,’ I reply without handing him change. He smiles. ‘I’ve been a good judge of
character since flunking out of the world.’
A full-time beggar
with the right hat, feigned handicap, sharp opener, and solid ‘ghost’ story may
rake a hundred dollars a day. That’s what I make as a sub-teacher. Exact
location is important too and where medieval European beggars formed guilds
their modern American counterparts jealously guard a territory or pool their
takes with partners.
‘Why are you and the
Missus awaiting a freight? he pursues. ‘We’re out to see
The tramp got our
focus with that in the buzzing flies. ‘Correction,’ he purses his lips. ‘There
was a single flaw at eight that I never figured out. So here I am.’
‘What happened
between the flaw and here,’ Clown pleads.
‘I was born and
raised over the hump (Sierras) in
Veterans, as after
each war’s end back to the American Civil, find continued adventure on the
rails. They are unafraid, comfortable
with travel, could forage, navigate and camp outdoors. Returning Viet vets in the 1970’s were
familiar sights on the rails but in this new century the surviving proportion
is more easily recognized by their age, infirmities and willingness to face
hostility at the drop of a hat. The
survivors are also lonely after three decades of freighting, and love a
sympathetic ear.
‘You know, they
hypnotized us troops for better fighting… and it worked. I was a Hypno-Soldier, one of the best. Hypnotists put us under in mass, gave
auto-suggestions, and our duty to kill the enemy was clear. After the war, we landed in the States
scarred under the under pressed uniforms, and many Americans shamed us.’
‘They couldn’t shame
me!’ He springs to his feet like a
gymnast after a perfect 10. No jungle
soldier walks erect but with a wary roll that at the same time is relaxed, and
the movement becomes automatic. Now he reenacts being circled by Charlie,
shooting, kicking and fighting his way to freedom through the jungle. After, he sits and drawls, ‘It’s memories with a spiked postscript. Agent Orange is eatin’ up my skin alive. So I ride the trains, stop for
fun, ride the trains… It’s the best life I know.’ He fingers a graying
stubble, remembers his ulcerating hands and hides them.
‘I returned to the
States and jumped my first train out of
‘Instead of me, Tommy
Retig got the part as Lassie’s faithful companion. I
often sit under this tree and ponder what would have happened if Perfect Timmy
had become famous instead of growing up to kill gooks I didn’t even know in
Clown asks for his
knife, I tense, but he hands over without hesitation his 6’’ Buck. She kneels
at the tree trunk to engrave as he continues.
‘I ain’t the same man
any more,’ grieves Perfect Tim. ‘You want
to know what’s wrong with the world? It’s the willingness of the good to serve the
bad. Goddamn it, bloody people!’ he shakes a fist at the tree crown. ‘Don’t let anyone take advantage of you!’
He blinks slowly.
‘Today I’m riding heroin too, excuse me.’
He proffers a tainted cookie from a brown bag that we refuse.
‘Now you may be
wondering what I’m doing in
In a few minutes
Clown finishes, folds the blade, and slides it handle first into the dormant
hobo’s pocket. Great care has been taken in carving each letter on the trunk:
CARPE DIEM. (Seize the day!)
Carpe Diem is the buried American theme since the founding fathers.
Life is short. Enjoy it. Seize the day!
Sleeping
Timmy misses four diesels growling like dragons at the gate on the mainline.
The power rams a string of cars down the rail from us. Clown vaults up and lets the vibrant locks
fly. She jogs in platform sneakers out the tree to the yellow lead unit, shouts
questions high up to the driver, and sprints back screaming through cupped
hands, ‘All aboard!’
We
walk to the lead unit where the grandfatherly engineer waves. ‘This is a
‘double-stack’ train, folks. No rides, so hop on the ‘trailing unit’.’ We climb the steps of the second locomotive,
walk in the cab and shut the door, the engineer toots, and the regal freight
tugs west from the