ERIS
(Part
8)
This Executive Hobo
Trip was born two months earlier when a casual Email to a friend that I was
planning a freight trip from the Pacific to
I shake his hand at
the departure lounge noting with mitigated sadness that Apple’s soul has opened
like a rose; he’ll carry the experience to benefit myriad avenues. ‘I wonder
what my father will think?’ he asks. I
reply firmly, ‘You’ll be the curiosity and mock of everyone you left behind.
Dabbling in alternative lifestyles sifts your friends, and now the right few
will pick you. The family will think you less crazy with each step further from
the womb, and in the future your dad will push you out the door in order to
receive more postcards and exciting yarns.’
He steps back and smiles. ‘You have the right answer to everything even
if it isn’t accurate. I’m ready for the next trip before this one’s over. I’m
going to leave my girl. Freights are better. Thanks for the satori,
Doc.’
Next stop is the
Burlington Northern Santa Fe yard.
Pronto wants to try a new railroad company solo out of
A hot spot in
‘I don’t care,’ enthuses Pronto at the
send-off. ‘I just want to ride out my vacation.’ We
shake hands and I counsel, ‘There’s nothing more I can tell you about hoboing that you haven’t heard with your damn perfect
memory except to keep practicing contingencies.’ Pronto is relatively unchanged by the
outbound trip, just more certain of what he was sure he was before the onset- ‘blowed-in-the-glass’, born to be a hobo. ‘I've kept a logbook of the yards and
missions, and prefer the low-tech style of travel- no walkie-talkie, scanner or
cell phone- just the logbook and railroad map. Oh yeah! I’ll ride again. Always!’ He saunters like Hercules between a string of
cars and waves back, ‘Lessons gleaned for a lifetime. Thanks Doc Bo!’
Mark Mahoney,
webmaster of www.greatspeculations.com,
and I drive from the BNSF yard to the Denver
Greyhound station. He toasts me with
ginger ale at the step to the
I catch the bus to
The mid-point and
turnaround of the overall rail trip is
Eris draws a broad spectrum of people who have distinguished
themselves in their fields, and over fifty percent are published authors. There are scientists, film producers,
doctors, historians, artists, philosophers, educators, multimillionaires,
swamis and even hobos. The three-day weekend conference is hourly presentations
by individuals or panels with ample Q-&-A’s after each. A discordant, non-mainstream bent is
maintained throughout the weekend in the spirit of Eris,
the Greek goddess of discord whose golden apple marked ‘To the fairest’ was
thrown into a party that sparked the jealousy that started the Trojan War.
Eris free-thinkers seek out speakers with unconventional or
controversial ideas they are willing to defend in front of two hundred
excellent listeners and skeptics. I
first arrived by freight in 1985 to speak about the freight underground and
hobos. After the talk, I issued an open
invitation to ride the rails with me.
One stepped forward, the Eris founder Doug
Casey. He had raced cars, parachuted,
globe-trotted, even tried to buy a country, and this year thrilled to ride the
freight train from
Casey must drop from
this year’s trip for personal reasons, however, a similar invitation to the
2001 Eris Society bears Toronto stockbroker and
professional comic Bryce Bradley, who quickly announces, ‘I want to find myself
on the rails, baby!’ She will become
history’s first executive hoboette.
Wiz also dashes up
after speaking at Eris frothing for the
freights. ‘Good to see you! I’m sorry I had to get off that unstable car
in the desert on the rail trip out. It
was creating harmonics that wracked me. I checked into a hotel and woke up the
next morning refreshed. So I struck solo
southwest through
On August 4, 2001,
the Eris Society adjourns in
We watch Clown, a slight
blonde with an anatomically correct walk and cheerleader glow, weave the
patrons leaving a wake of smiles and laughs back to our table. ‘She plays the field like a pro,’ remarks
Wiz. Surely, the Canadian Libertarian
comic shows aggression, asks the right questions, has the correct answers, and
raises everyone’s spirit. ‘She thinks
she’s Eris,’ I groan. ‘But, Wiz questions, ‘Can she
carry it off in the railroad yard with that nail polish and city-girl
smile?’ She prances to the table with
the pizza-to-go in case the bus is premature. ‘Boxy but hot, boys. Dig
in!’
Wiz and I wear
standard overalls and flannels while Clown sports embroidered jeans with halter
top and a head of two-foot rainbow dreadlocks.
‘This undertaking won’t be easy,’ I forewarn as we chew. ‘The outbound execs last week rode hard
metal, slept in the dirt, and loved it after it was all over.’ She leans forward and blows pizza breath, ‘Do
it the right way even if it’s the hard way, right?’ ‘Clown,’ I rejoin, ‘That crayon-box on your
head will fetch information on the rails, but can get caught in moving
machinery. Tie the dreads up and double-knot those platform tennis shoes before
we reach the
The basement cafe is
not a hobo jungle but there is the sense of the same, breaking bread and
talking while awaiting the catchout. We swap stories for an hour that reveal
character and traits that will serve and may save each other on the rails. These
experiences, if quantified, are worth millions.
Bryce ‘Clown’ Bradley discloses a personal history of achievement and
rebellion. She won high school
honors and math prizes, but after graduation submerged into the
She matriculated from
the tough streets to college for a Bachelor’s in Clinical Psychology- because
she liked mice. She then earned a
Masters in English while studying French in
‘I had a pet pig
once. We lived in an apartment above my
‘If there's time, I
want to sample every lifestyle including hobos. Maybe I’m gathering pieces of a
puzzle about myself. I grew up the middle-class daughter of a
She expresses herself
with clarity and charm under the colorful if chaotic hair. ‘The hairdo is part of an experiment to study
people’s reactions to facade and to set the comedy stage. There’s nothing like
having an edge,’ and she glances at Wiz’s throat as he clears it to speak.
Arthur ‘Wiz’ Tyde III is an egghead on a strapping frame with an eager
walk. ‘You carry less physical and emotional baggage if you live each day as
though it were the last. More is almost always preferable to not enough. Never
underestimate the stimulating value of eccentricity.’ He doesn’t smile below the eyes when he talks
but the corners of his mouth twitch speedily with each understanding, and he is
an excellent listener. Today, in rare
animation, he breaks the yolk of his youth to reveal how he became a self-made
nerd.
‘My parents nearly dropped me off on the
doorstep when I was twelve. A little
bastard named Jimmy next door taunted me so in a fit of revenge I invented Pooh
Juice. I took a bushel basket and
scooped the neighborhood dog and cat poop. I slid it into a big steel pot and
put on a layer of Brewer’s Yeast, then added water. I then wired the pot to the
backyard transformer to ferment for a month.
One morning, I carefully transported the pot to evil Jimmy’s doorstep so
he would get the blame, lifted the lid, and ran. In a matter of minutes, all the pet dogs and
cats in the neighborhood started choking because the Pooh Juice is slightly
heavier than air. People ran screaming
from their homes and the police yellow taped off a square-block. My parents
found out and grounded me for a month in the basement, a mistake because it was
my workshop.
‘I developed an early
collective consciousness with robots. I built a fleet to help my parents with
chores. A maid named Red cleaned the
basement for mom. It was built from a vacuum cleaner, car battery, electric
eye, ice pick and waste basket. It
patrolled the basement whirring and blinked when it spotted trash. Then the pick went up-and-down with a
tenacity I hadn’t imagined possible until it stuck the trash and tossed it over
its shoulder into a basket. One day
mother went into the basement in bright high heels and the power went out. She
apparently locked the door. The robot chased her high heels with the pick for
five minutes until the lights went back on. Those were robotic grandchildren a
father could be proud of.
‘With dad, it was
ball lightning that chased him from the basement office.’ I fabricated a ball lightning generator in my
downstairs laboratory that rivaled nature. It’s a luminous sphere appearing out
of nowhere that moves parallel to the ground but jumps and can enter a
nonmetallic opening before disappearing into thin air. In nature, it’s normally
only a foot in diameter but I beefed up my generator to prove that the greater
the size the longer the duration. I went
outside to mow the lawn, a chore I disliked, and must have left the dynamo on.
Dad was in the basement office doing taxes when the four-foot ball entered the
door sealing the exit. I heard father scream my name over and over and the
basement windows began to shudder. I
looked in and there was a blue-orange ball traveling around the basement and my
dad dodging it. After I ran down and turned off the dynamo and opened the
windows to dissipate the ball, he made me dismantle it and promise never to do
it again.
‘Those were mistakes
a kid makes, and no one can blame me for trying. My hobo life also has deep
roots. As a kid in
‘I grew up thinking about it and
went to university at
‘My big break at Eris was at the 1985 kickoff party when the robot that
served drinks went on the blink. I
tinkered with my screwdriver in its back for a few minutes until it served
again to everyone’s delight. After Eris that year, Doug Casey, you (Doc Bo) and I rode the
rails west that opened new life windows. With eventual financial success I
still hopped freights. Nowadays, I love the high-tech aspect of hoboing. What could be better than waltzing into a yard
with a timetable, pre-programmed scanner to listen to the engineers and bulls,
cell phone to call the yardmaster for departures, walkie-talkies to talk to
buddies, night vision goggles for the real hobo hour, and satellite contact to
post trip updates at a website?
‘I recently bought an
airplane and leaflet Doc Bo’s desert digs by air since he’s become hard to get
hold of for an outing. Incidentally, you
were right not to tell my parents about the early hobo trips. You advised me to
report instead uplifting stories after the quest. But I think their biggest worry would have
been when I hopped my first freight with you after taking your sociology
class.’
A pause follows
around the table to digest Wiz’s spicy biography. ‘In contrast,’ I then tell the pair, ‘I was
raised slowly in
The table is
cleared. In final preparations, Wiz
sorts his collection of hobo-tech instruments.
Clown crams leftover pizza into her white suitcase, and I observe with
ambivalence the arrival of the Sunday afternoon bus.
’