Two Trains Running

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SEVERAL YEARS AGO I CONTRACTED TO DO AN article for Spin magazine concerning a hobo organization called the FTRA (Freight Train Riders of America), a group that certain elements of law enforcement claimed was a hobo mafia responsible for—among other crimes—hundreds of murders, drug running on a massive scale, and the derailing of trains. As a result, I wound up hopping freights over the span of a couple months. I talked to train tramps in hobo jungles, urban squats, wino bars, at a supermax prison, and in various other venues. For a time I traveled with a hobo whom I called Madcat in the article, holding back his real name for fear he might suffer reprisals from those who did not like what I wrote about them. In Madcat’s company I experienced a fair sampling of hobo life. It’s a life that has little connection with the commonly held, somewhat folkloric view of hobos, one chiefly conveyed by stories and songs and images that reference the Depression era, portraying hobos—or as they prefer to be distinguished these days, train tramps—as colorful kings-of-the-road, lazy, easygoing, good-time-loving, stogie-smoking gents who might be prone to a little drunkenness, a little petty larceny, but nothing worse than that. Though this image may loosely fit the contemporary train tramp, it scarcely describes them. While some of the men and women I met on the rails were seriously dysfunctional, the remainder were more-or-less whole. They were not truly homeless, not impoverished clue to fate—they had simply declined, for one reason or another, society’s invitation to join and claimed to be fulfilled by their vagrant lives.

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