KaBar

Provisions Risky---It's hard to condemn someone who is genuinely hungry from doing something illegal (like stealing) to eat, but in most of those cases, it was a matter of the hungry guy neglecting to prepare for the inevitable occurrance of the end of his bankroll. The worse thing about stealing is that it brings down the heat on everybody else. I do have a thing about harming others to provide for myself (i.e. stealing) but things that do not harm others, while not very dignified, still are not outside of what I consider to be acceptable. My first choice is working for wages, because it requires very little preparation and usually no tools or equipment. I have worked (while tramping) as a laborer out of day labor pools (job sharking, we called it---the day labor business being the sharks) and just regular short-term minimum wage type jobs. I unloaded boxcars for cash, "swamped" on tractor-trailers (unloaded the cargo at a warehouse), worked as a nail driver on construction sites, as a welder, and so forth. Especially during the '60s and early '70s, jobs were easy to get, especially minimum-wage labor jobs. I worked as a laborer on foundation-repair crews (pick and shovel work), pouring concrete and as a concrete laborer, drove trucks in Texas, and once got hired to work as a roughneck on a jack-up oil rig in Wyoming. I eventually settled into arc welding as a trade, because I could make more money welding than doing anything else, but I don't recommend it. It is hard, dirty and not a very healthy profession. I breathed a ton of nickel-cadmium over the years, and it causes cancer. I also worked in restaurants, usually as a bus boy or dishwasher. This is a good job for a young tramp in good health (you'll need a Health Card.) You always used to get at least one meal. Often, if the boss liked me, he'd give me a meal "to go" that I took to Rufe, or whomever I was travelling with. Also, restaurants always have uniforms for the scullery workers (the guys in the back who wash dishes, cut up vegetables, etc.) so you don't need "nice" work clothes. A lot of times I could wash up in the janitor sink, or something like that after work. If I was bussing tables, and I kept a particular waitress' tables squared away, sometimes she would give a share of her tips. Since we weren't paying rent (living at Sally Ann or somewhere like that) and got breakfast free, I could eat lunch at the restaurant and carry a meal out, my savings for "road money" built up pretty quickly. A couple of weeks of working and I'd be ready for several months of tramping. When we were actually on the road, I was not adverse to dumpster-diving at all. Many times pizza joint workers will toss out pizza "by-the-piece" after it has been on the line for so many minutes (a hour or so--it's a Health regulation.) I found perfectly edible vegetables in dumpsters behind large grocery stores. If you offer to sweep up out back, the produce manager or assistant manager (or more likely, the produce boy, who is supposed to do the sweeping up) will set out boxes of bruised fruit, scrawny potatoes, etc. for you. Technically they are "in the garbage" (fair game) but they are boxed up in a clean cardboard box. You need to be careful, though, because other tramps or homeless people will rip off "your" vegetables if you aren't careful. I have gone door-to-door offering to mow lawns or weed gardens as well. You would be surprised how generous people are if you seem down on your luck, but trying to find real work. Stealing is bad for your self-esteem. So is doing things like dealing drugs. People who are poor who resort to breaking the law to eat simply have very little imagination or judgement. I'd rather dumpster-dive than eat jail food. Or worse, have to know that I ripped off some decent person because I was too lazy to work for my own food. I never did it, but many counties will give a homeless person a small amount of "emergency money" if you are genuinely hungry, and especially if you have children. But they expect a parent to check into a shelter and start trying to get a regular, suitable place for the kid to live. I don't recommend tramping at all if you have a kid to care for, but I have met a few tramps with a child in tow, and once, two old geezers who had taken in a runaway. He called them by their first names, like"Mr. Smitty," and"Mr. John." When he answered them, it was "Yes, sir," and "No, sir." He obeyed them just like he would have obeyed a parent. Better to be loved and cared for by two old tramps than to be beaten and mistreated by your own kin, I guess. Of course, many tramps panhandle. I've done it. It made me feel like shit. I prefer working. Quite a few tramps "work a set-up" or "work a scam"--an easy way to make money without actually working too hard. This would include things like washing car windows or business windows (a "squeegee tramp") or selling something (newspapers, flowers, little American flags, etc.) The best set-up I ever saw was a "free" windshield deal. The tramps cleaned EVERY WINDSHIELD THEY COULD REACH when the light was red, FOR FREE. Of course, the next morning, those same people would take that same route to work. Eventually, they would give the guys something. Sometimes money, or food, or coffee, or clothing. This deal only works if you hit the same corner every day, day after day. This particular deal was featured in a movie, as well, that had Matt Dillon and Danny Glover. A good example of art imitating real life. True tramps are not "pitiful." I never considered myself disadvantaged, or homeless or any of that weak-sister shit. But I don't consider the rest of the world fair game, either. I took care of myself. The longest period I rode trains or hitched was five months. But in general, I stayed out about 18 months at a time, sometimes crashing with a friend for a couple of weeks, or stopping to work for a while. Especially if I met a girl, I would wind up "going homeguard" for a while. Rufe never did this. He was older and had a sort of low opinion of women in general, and didn't normally seek out their companionship, while I kept falling in love at every opportunity. Rufe would just roll his eyes whenever I'd meet a new girl. "What are you, pussy whipped? This ain't no hobby!" I think the hoppers of today are a lot less oriented to the lifestyle, and a lot more oriented to hopping as a thrilling "sport." That's cool. Tramping ain't for everybody.

Rucks Modern tramps usually carry their shit in a ruck. Frame packs are not popular, because the packs get thrown on and off cars, shoved through grainer holes, used as field expedient furniture to sit on, etc., and a pack frame is just in the way. If the frame of a packframe ruck breaks, you are fucked. The frames are usually aluminum, and you aren't going to be able to repair it trackside in some rinky-dink town. Following the trainhopper's adage "If it can break, it will break," I do not carry a framed ruck. I use an old Korean War M1952 mountain Army rucksack as my standard tramping ruck. They originally came with a tubular steel frame, and the frame SUCKED. The most annoying thing was that when I was hunting, etc., the frame banged and rattled against the stock of a slung rifle. I ditched the frame, and modified the pack straps so that the ruck is frameless--a true ruck sack. My second favorite ruck is a medium ALICE pack, also rigged without the frame. (ALICE stands for All-purpose, Lightweight, Individual Carrying Equipment. Snappy, eh? The new military packs are called MOLLE--pronounced "Mollie.") The ALICE pack technology dated from the early '60s. Internal frames are much more practical for military purposes these days, but the ALICE pack technology was extremely tough and durable. The only drawback is that a medium ALICE has limited capacity, which is not a bad thing for a trainhopper anyway. Take ONLY THE NECESSITIES. Third favorite is a large ALICE pack, rigged without the frame. On a large ALICE pack, the Army required the design to include the frame, due to the larger weight capacity. The top tube of an ALICE pack frame fits into a padded pocket at the top of the pack body, where the pad would fit against the soldier's upper back and shoulder blades. The packstraps attach to this frame tube. Standard ALICE pack packstraps can be rigged to work on an ALICE large, without the frame, by cutting a piece of wooden broomstick or other dowel-like material and inserting it crosswise up into the pocket. This provides a solid crossbar, similar to the top tube of the packframe, to which one can then rig packstraps. It's comfortable to carry with light to medium loads (up to thirty-five or forty pounds) but heavier loads are going to demand a frame unless you are built like Arnold Schwarznegger. There are many civilian packs available, and many surplus military foreign packs that are excellent and cheaper (and often heavier) than ALICE packs. You can obtain excellent Swiss Army and East German Army packs these days in the $30 range. I do not care for Italian Army packs or equipment (even cheaper) or Spanish Army equipment, but the occasional bargain will show up. Hard to pass up a well-used French Army mountain rucksack for $12, regardless of how much I prefer American-made equipment. In many cases, especially if one considers the price, former Soviet or East German equipment may be preferable. But in my opinion, the ALICE pack is still the Caddillac. There is a lot to be said for the military way of doing things. It is easy to add on equipment to your pack (the fasteners are military standard LBE clips, of course (Load-Bearing Equipment) so you can add canteens, First Aid kits, shovels, etc., etc. to your heart's content. Carrying all that excess shit is a real job, though. Resist the temptation to buy bayonets, machetes, etc. Bayonets are a "prohibited weapon" in Texas, and in most states (they constitute a "dagger or poinard"--i.e. a knife longer than 5-1/2" that has a "false edge" i.e. sharp on both upper and lower edges of the blade. Carrying a prohibited weapon is a felony. If you are going to carry a dagger, you might as well just carry a pistol.) A good military shovel (an "entrenching tool") is heavy and not too useful to a trainhopper, but would be a HELL OF A GOOD WEAPON in a fight. I like the E-tools from WWII and Korea, with a wooden handle. The new aluminum shovels are worthless and cheap-ass. You can't dig well with them, and they are not tough enough to be very useful in a fight. Don't forget--the fancier the equipment, the more it attracts streamliners and jackrollers. BE ALERT. The rip-off artists would much rather just steal your equipment instead of getting their own.

Hobos, Fires and the Railroads I like to build a campfire in the jungle. I know that it's often not the smartest thing to do, and if the jungle is anywhere near the Yard, it will attract the bulls, but I don't care. I like to have a cup of hot coffee and lay in my hammock and watch trains roll through my local Yard. We need to be careful about the way in which we build fires. I try to always use dry wood (wet wood smokes really badly) and I build a fire ring out of chunks of concrete or local rocks. I start off by trying to find some dry grass or little bunches of dry twigs for tinder. I gather up a good quantity of "squaw wood" (dry, dead branches that can be easily broken off of trees) and pick a few suitable, dry sticks to whittle up into good firestarter sticks. There's a variety of ways to build a campfire--you can drive a stake in the ground and build a "teepee" of sticks around that, leaning on the "pole." You can build a sort of log-cabin looking arrangement, and place your tinder in the middle. The most important thing is for the fire to be able to "breathe." So a pile of sticks all in a heap will usually not burn as well or as hot, or as low-smoke as a fire built to "burn hot." If I have newspaper, I'm not opposed to using a chunk of wadded-up newspaper to get things rolling, especially if the weather is wet, and all the wood is soaked. I do not believe in using flammable liquids like gasoline. They are dangerous to be around and you cannot trust anybody else to be careful with them. A good, hot fire made from dry wood means a good, clean fire with very little smoke. Green wood, leaves or wet wood means a smokey, fitfull fire than cannot be relied upon to burn well or without going out.

Mask the numbers with masking tape Cracked---I've seen several good looking pieces lately where it was pretty obvious that the graff artist had masked off the numbers and boxes with newspaper and masking tape, cut the numbers in with an X-Acto knife, peeled the scrap, then painted the piece right over the masked numbers, then pulled the masking tape and newspaper off again, leaving the car numbers intact and undamaged, and cut in with a professional, artistic fashion. This way, you wouldn't be inhibited by worrying about trying not to hit the numbers or car information boxes, and you also wouldn't have to worry about some RIP track worker stenciling some ugly shit over the piece. As complicated as some of the stuff I see here in Houston is, the artist must be masking parts of them off already in order to achieve the complicated and fine-line work. Either that, or the guy must have been one helluva graffitti maestro.

"Keeping a Clean Camp" I was looking over some of these posts again, and I got to thinking about the meaning of the phrase "Keep A Clean Camp". Obviously, it means to not throw trash and garbage on the ground. This sort of rule is far from generally recognized and accepted. There are plenty of people tramping and riding trains that have a very nearly completely unconcious attitude about how they live their lives. They just stumble through it, drinking, taking various kinds of drugs and spreading chaos and discontent wherever they wind up. These are the kinds of people who take a dump in boxcars. They not only don't care that some minimum-wage warehouseman is going to have to clean up their nasty mess, they actually get a sort of sick satisfaction at knowing that this is true. They have a "I don't give a fuck" attitude about everything, and everybody. They are not connected to the rest of the world. Like very small children, they have the idea that the only thing that matters is whatever their spoiled little heart desires at that particular moment. These are the people that go dumpster-diving and THROW ALL THE GARBAGE ON THE GROUND AND LEAVE IT THERE. What do you suppose happens when the store owner or restaurant owner comes out there and sees garbage all over the place? He starts hating tramps, and he LOCKS THE DUMPSTER. These are the guys who go into a restaurant, ask to use the bathroom, and then make a huge fucking mess in there, taking a bath in the sink, splashing water all over everywhere, stinking the place up, and THEN LEAVE THE BATHROOM ALL FUCKED UP. Obviously, as soon as the manager sees this disaster, he says "No more bathroom use for transients. Let them do it outdoors." "Keeping a clean camp" means more than just "don't throw trash on the ground." It means living your life in a way calculated to have dignity and respect. It means to grant these things to others, and to firmly, but politely, insist upon them for yourself. A crude, simplistic way of looking at this is the phrase "Don't shit where you eat." What that means is don't do things to gratify an immediate need that will screw you up in the future. But the DSWYE (pronounced "diss-wye") philosophy is strictly a self-serving, pragmatic measure. Keeping a clean camp encompasses an understanding that one has a moral obligation to live life in a certain way. All behavior is not equal. Just doing whatever is not okay. Life has rules, even for tramps and hobos. I have, on occasion, found myself out of money and hungry. It was rare, but it happened a few times. I went to a restaurant, asked to speak to the owner or manager, and waited politely in the entranceway. When the man came out, I asked him for a meal, and offered to sweep the parking lot or wash dishes in return. I got turned down several times, but I also got hired, right on the spot, as a dishwasher. It was no great shakes as a job (washing dishes in a truck stop in Wyoming is not exactly a career path I'd willingly choose) but it had more dignity than begging. The restaurant owner realized that I was trying to do the right thing, and he didn't disrespect me by just offering me a hamburger to "go away." I washed dishes, and got more food in return than I could possibly eat, plus a few bucks travelling money. But more than that, I still had my self respect. When you don't have your self-respect, you don't have anything, even if you are a millionaire. Keeping a clean camp includes keeping yourself squared away, as well. The filthy, stinking homeless wretches that one sees living under bridges or sleeping in dirt-encrusted rags on downtown streets are usually untreated schizophrenics. I'm talking about tramping with a little class. I always owned enough garments so that I could wash one set while wearing another. You can still do this, even if you don't have money for the laundomat. I carried a wooden-handled scrub brush (like one might scrub floors with) and would buy a small packet of laundry detergent at a Laundomat. Fill a plastic 5-gallon bucket with water, then add some detergent and immerse the over-alls or blue jeans in there, then scrub them on a clean piece of sidewalk or a flatbed deck, then rinse them under a faucet. I would wear clean, wet, over-alls and unlaced boots while I scrubbed the rest of my clothes, rinsed them under a faucet. One time I washed clothes at a car wash, just using the high-pressure hose to blast them. Only cost 50 cents. I got haircuts at barber colleges. Once or twice, I met another tramp (or a tramp's old lady) who knew how to cut hair. I took a spit bath out of a bucket or in a gas station bathroom sink every day. Just because you aren't rich doesn't mean that you should go around with ragged clothes. I know how to sew well enough to do my own repairs. I kept my clothes in good order, no rips, no tears, no holes worn through. And, in camp, I observed the normal, common-sense rules about fires. I cut my tripod sticks about four feet long (I eyeball the first stick, then use it to measure the other two) and I CLEAR A SPARK RADIUS AROUND THE FIRE RING THE LENGTH OF THE STICK. I clear the ground down to the dirt the length of the stick in every direction. I usually do it by laying the stick down and scuffing the leaves and trash away from the fire with my boots in a circle, but I pull up little weeds and branches if I can't scuff them, and use my saw if I can't pull them up. If I can find rocks, I build a fire ring. If I can't find rocks, I try to scoop out a hole or depression. (I am very careful about fire---if you accidentally set the woods on fire, you will be in DEEP SHIT, not to mention that the animals that live in the forest will be displaced or killed.) I never heed the call of nature where I am camping. If I wake up and need to piss, I don't do it there. I put on my boots and walk a ways off into the trees. I dig a little cat-hole a good distance from camp, to shit in, and cover my business. ("Don't shit where you eat.") I like creating jungles, in fact, it is one of my very favorite things in life. I enjoy all the various aspects of it--finding a good location, clearing a little living area, building a fire ring, setting up a tripod, finding another suitable can for a gunboat and making it. Once I get it all set up, and I'm enjoying living in it, I feel that same sense of satisfaction one gets from moving in to a new apartment. I stockpile wood for fires. I wash out 1-gallon wine jugs or 2-liter Coke bottles and fill them with water. I scrounge 5-gallon paint buckets for seats. I look for good "hammock trees." I gather cardboard and fold it so I can roll it up and put it in a 5-gallon bucket, then turn the bucket upside down so that the cardboard will stay dry if it rains. I scrounge newspapers, roll them into tight tubes and tie them with string, and put them under 5-gallon buckets, too. I dumpster-dive for useful stuff. I have found chairs and end-tables and footstools. Sometimes I find big sheets of plastic that I can make a "tent" with. And when I leave the jungle, I mark it on my map and in my memory so I can find it again. I leave it clean and squared away. I burn all my trash, then I make sure my fire is out--"Dead Out." I leave the tripod in a bush close by the fire ring. I fill the jugs with water. I sometimes leave a note or a little change for the next guy. I keep a Clean Camp. I think everybody ought to. Doing so has dignity, and respect.

The Best of the Best, and the Worst of the Worst I've always been a wanderer. I got whupped by my parents for trying to run away from home when I was only about seven. I had gotten a little pack, Scout mess kit and canteen, and I decided I'd take off and try living on my own for a while. Some neighbor spotted me headed for the brush and my Dad caught me before I got very far from our block. I got popped in Abilene, Texas when I was 13, trying to run away from my uncle's house. That time I almost made it out of town. I had made the mistake of trying to say goodbye to a girl I had a crush on (she was a cousin "on the other side of the family" of my own cousin.) Anyway, I got a trip to jail, and my poor uncle came flying down there with his comb-over all flopping down, dressed in his pajama shirt and a pair of slacks. Lord, was I glad to see him. I was fighting back tears, and he got pretty mad when he saw that the cop had hand-cuffed me to the ready bench. I guess the cop figured I was a flight risk. My first trainhop was to Galveston. A couple of other boys my age had done it before. We lived pretty close to Mykawa Road in Houston, which is right on the line leaving out of New South Yards to Galveston. We went down on our bicycles several nights in a row, watching trains and "double-dog-daring" one another to get on one. Finally, a train stopped and we got on a boxcar, and it rolled down to Galveston in about two hours. We got off, and about ten minutes later another slow boat to China came by, rolling north very slowly. We got right back on and rode back home, getting off about a block from our bicycles in the weeds along Mykawa Road. I don't consider that a "real" hop though. We didn't intend to stay gone long, we didn't take any equipment or supplies. It was a joyride. My first "real" hop was after I had been hitch-hiking and bumming around for quite a while. I knew some guys in Chicago and we started talking about going to California. They suggested jumping a freight, because hitching in Chicago wasn't the greatest. Again, I didn't know that much about it. They knew where the rail yards were, so off we went. When we got down to the yards, we just asked a switchman what train was going west. He pointed to a train, we got on a boxcar and about an hour later, she aired up and started rolling. It turned out that our train was headed to St. Paul, MN, and it was a consist of "bad order" cars. Our rbox had a flat wheel, and it bam-bam-bammed us all the way to St. Paul. There, they started humping our train to break it up and sent it's cars to different places. Our rbox was headed to the RIP track (repair, inspect, paint) so we started looking around and found another friendly yard hand, who directed us to the only train headed west--to Butte, MT. This train turned out to be a low-priority train shuttling boxcars back west. It stopped every few hundred miles, much to our frustration, and let every other train in the world go past. In one of our many trips "into the hole" we met Rufe. I took a real shine to Rufe, and I was fascinated by his knowledge of tramping. I knew about gunboats and so on, but Rufe had a vast stock of knowledge about railroad operations, etc. that I couldn't get enough of. When we got to Butte, I bid goodbye to my friends from Chicago, and took off with Rufe. Lucky for me, he was an okay guy. He didn't talk much about his personal life, but I found out he had left his wife after a big argument, and just walked out of his mobile home, left his welding truck and all his tools and equipment sitting in the driveway, walked across a field and caught a train on the fly. He didn't even have a blanket. I was amazed. He had been on the bum about ten years when I met him, in 1970. By then, of course, he had some gear, LOL.

Aw, come on, guys! I'm long-winded, but they're not that long, LOL. I guess I oughta pace myself. I figure I've got enough obscure knowledge for about a week and then I won't have shit to say!

Big T--Sorry 'bout that. Refer to "Can't Please Everybody." It's here somewhere, LOL.

Worrisome Wildlife Fox Mulder---I have spent a lot of time sleeping outdoors in all parts of the country, and the only animals brave enough to actually come up into camp with us were raccoons. Raccoons are extremely intelligent, and they can open containers and will boldly rattle around in your cook gear, trying to get into leftovers or into your garbage. Even raccoons would not approach us if the fire was still burning. I did wake up once in the middle of a herd of cows. Cattle are not the slightest bit intimidated by sleeping trainhoppers in sleeping bags. That business about snakes being attracted to warmth sounds kind of like a sea story--I've been hearing that old saw about the BoyScout/young Marine/yuppie trainhopper who woke up with a rattlesnake in his sleeping bag for about forty years. Maybe it has actually happened (anything is possible) but I doubt it. Once when I was in 29 Palms on a live-fire training exercise (called a Fire-X) in the Marines, we were in what is called an administrative stand-down, where we were allowed to build fires, cook chow and drink a couple of beers. There were two platoons of us at several fires (about eighty guys.) One of the kids (most Marines are about 17 or 18 years old--I was 26) went out into the dark, away from the fire to take a piss, and suddenly we heard this anguished scream "SNAAAKE!" To a man, every guy at our fire whipped out a bayonet or a (here's my namesake) Ka-Bar knife and rushed into the dark with a resounding 'HOO-rah!" Ten minutes later we were all barbecueing rattlesnake, seasoned with Louisiana hot sauce. That sucker was huge, at least four feet long, and big around as my forearm in the middle, but he was no match for twenty Marines. They attacked him as a group with knives. It was awesome--no fear whatsoever, they just went for it. It was a miracle nobody but the snake got stabbed. I've seen deer and a few elk cows or calves when I was camping up north, but no predators, like a bobcat or a cougar. Dogs can be a problem. The last dog attack I had, I knocked his ass cold with my deadman. I would have killed him, but he was wearing a collar and tags--probably some kid's pet. Lots of trainhoppers travel with a small dog, maybe twenty-five pounds. They make good watch dogs for the camp while you're asleep. I used to tie my dog's leash to my pack--he would defend it just like a house dog defends your back yard. Very few wild animals will approach human beings, and virtually none will approach a camp with a dog. I've never seen a bear except in Yellowstone National Park and zoos. If I did, I'd probably shit myself--they are extremely fast. You cannot outrun a bear.

Good Boots There are as many different opinions about what constitutes "good" boots as there are people who have a need for them. Everybody is different, and what suits me may not suit somebody else. But, I have a studied opinion about boots, having been tramping and living on the bum, and been a Marine Corps infantryman, and an industrial worker for years (I was once a shipyard welder.) I believe in stout boots. I don't think these lightweight boots that are sort of like rough-out leather tennis shoes are up to a railyard environment. When I was tramping in my teens and early twenties I wore "hunting boots" that had a square edge around the top of the foot that was stitched--they looked kind of like old-time Boy Scout boots. They were comfortable but provided very poor protection to your foot, and had what I call a "pussy heel." The sole of the boot was a molded, cream-colored rubber of some kind, and the heel was not sharp and defined, but had a sort of ramp effect with a ripple or waffle sole, similar to a modern tennis shoe. THEY SLIP on wet rocks or on wet steel railcar ladder rungs. In the Marines, I wore military issue leather combat boots, of course. They are really a good compromise between the heavy, steel-toed industrial boots, and the light-weight hiking boots. They used to be cheap, but are pretty expensive these days. I paid $65 for the last pair of combat boots I bought. Their one great asset is DURABILITY. Boy, they are tough boots. Choose a good mil-spec boot, with either a Panama sole (for jungle mud) or the standard military tread sole. For the rainy, humid South, the jungle boots are okay, but don't buy the cheap $19 Korean-made jungle boots. They don't fit well and are a WASTE OF MONEY. Last of all is the steel-toed industrial safety boots. I always bought Red Wing boots. They will continue to re-sole them until the boots just fall to pieces. I have a pair of beat-up, slag-pocked, steel-toed Red Wing boots that I have had re-soled three or four times at the Red Wing factory. I bought them in 1984. They are HEAVY. But they are TOUGH. Those steel toes saved my feet many a time. When you are buying boots you get what you pay for. No reason to spend $150 on steel-toed boots if you will never wear them, But kicking around rail yards in tennis shoes is a bad idea--it's just a matter of time till you injure a foot.

Tramping in Houston The other day I ran into three guys and a young woman, all in their twenties I think, at Englewood Yards in Houston. Englewood is a big place, several miles long, and it sees a lot of tramps and trainhoppers. It's the biggest yard in town. Second biggest is probably Settegast Yards, and then Congress Yards, I guess. Englewood is a major point of origin for trains headed east to New Orleans. These trainhoppers were headed to the Big Easy and they looked pretty beat. The weather is still almost like summer down here, in the 80's, and they looked like they were hot, dirty and skeeter-bit. I was impressed with their gear, though. Despite the fact that they looked a little road weary, every one of their crew (the girl, too) was wearing outdoor work boots, blue jeans or camouflage trousers, had a good coat or a field jacket, gloves and a hat, and they were all four carrying good rucks. The girl and two of the guys had military surplus medium ALICE packs with no frame, the third guy was carrying a dark-colored mountain rucksack. They were not carrying bindles, however. I wonder what they were using to sleep in? Maybe sleeping bags that can be "stuffed" into a much smaller bag. I met them on the east end of Englewood, trying to figure out which track led to New Orleans. They had no map, and I didn't notice any water containers except for a military canteen on one guy's pack. I dug out my maps and showed them which track led to New Orleans, and then they saddled up and started trudging east down Liberty Road. It kind of reminded me of a group of soldiers or Marines. They had that same sort of I-am-so-fucking-tired-I-could-fall-asleep-right-here look. I noticed that when we were talking the men always kept themselves between me and the girl. It sort of amused me (I'm no threat) , but it was tactically sound. When they decided they wanted to talk to me, everybody grounded their gear, and they sent one guy over to talk. Once it was clear that I was okay, the rest came over. What they really needed was a shower, a meal, and a decent night's sleep. Trainhopping ain't for the faint of heart, I guess.

Water Source When I was a kid (1958), I never realized that the big attraction for the tramps at T & NO Junction in Houston was the water faucet behind the Fed-Mart store. There was a liquor store down a ways at the Palm Center on Griggs, and I always figured that the reason the jungle was there at T & NO Junction was the liquor store. Foolish kid! The junction itself was in poor condition back then. The rails were beat and I can recall seeing "overflow" shards hanging off the rails in the curve of the wye. Because the wye was in shitty condition, trains went around the curves very slowly, probably at walking speed or no more than 5 or 10 mph. This made getting on or off trains a cinch. I can only recall a tramp getting off a train there once. It was in the late afternoon. He waited for his boxcar to clear the switches, then, sitting in the boxcar door, jumped down and hit the ground at a brisk walk for a few paces. He had a bindle, but no pack. He looked around, and headed straight for the jungle. A regular, had to be. The water faucet provided the tramps with drinking water, and late at night, a place to take a bath. They would strip down to their underwear and bathe out of a bucket, back behind the Fed-Mart. They would carry clean water from the faucet to the jungle in a 5-gallon bucket to use as dishwashing water. A source of nearby (or relatively nearby) water is essential to any serious jungle. If it is a "dry" jungle, it won't last for long.If people must travel a long way to look for water, they'd rather move the jungle itself.

Brake Air Reservoirs Gem 1---The hiss you heard was from the aired-up brake system. Even though that string wasn't hooked up to power (i.e. engines), it still has compressed air in the reservoir tank underneath the car. The law says the system is not supposed to leak at all but realistically they do leak a little bit, especially if it's an old, beat-up car. The brakes are "set" by the pressure in the reservoir if the air is released from the service line. When the engineer wants to hit the brakes, he operates the service air lever in the cab, and it allows the reservoir air to apply the brakes to whatever degree the engineer releases service air. If he "dynamites" the brakes, it sets them completely, and almost instantly. Modern trains have a system that sets the brakes gradually under normal circumstances. When the railroad workers want to hump the car, they drop the air out of the reservoirs. When they are going to hump a whole string, they kill the unit air from the engines, then a couple of switchmen will walk down the string operating the air reservoir lever on each car and drop the air out of them. Once they do that, the unit can then back them up and the switchmen can cut a car off the string by pulling the coupler pin (lever) and send it down the hump rolling free. Different cars have a different amount of what Littlejohn calls "rollability." Heavy cars roll with greater force, obviously, than emptys. I had watched rail workers doing this for a long time before I actually understood what was going on. When you are around trains, standing, layed-up or whatever, LISTEN CLOSELY TO THE AIR BRAKING SYSTEM. You may not be able to see that an engine has picked up the string your working on, but if you hear the brakes air up, time to get ready for it to move. To see if brakes are set on a "parked" string, kick the air hoses (not too hard, please.) If the hoses are hard, the brakes are set. If the hoses are slack(er), probably the string is sitting there without any brakes whatsoever. BE CAREFUL around a string with no brakes set (it's exceedingly rare.) It could move by accident or misfortune, or it could suddenly be humped. You don't want to get smacked by a rolling string of freight cars, for real. Stand clear, and don't lean on the cars or sit anywhere close enough to get hit by one.

Hammocks I lurk on a lot of these threads that are directly related to graff, but seeing as how I'm much more an appreciator of graffitti and graff writers, rather than a writer of any great experience or talent, I try to keep my mouth shut. Hard to believe, I know. I wanted to write about hammocks. They are really, really fuckin' GREAT. I tramped for years without a hammock, and I got used to sleeping on the ground. There's ways to make it less uncomfortable. For one, I always scooped out a "pit" for my shoulders and my hips, and covered my bed site with several layers of cardboard. Years later, I got with the program and started carrying a closed-cell foam camping ground mat. That improved things a lot. I always used a military mummy bag. Take my word for it, there are better sleeping bags. I always used a cheap-ass bag though. If you have a girlfriend, buy TWO BAGS THAT ZIP TOGETHER. Sleeping solo with a girlfriend definately sucks bigtime. Once I bought a hammock, I was hooked. Man, you talk about a serious lifestyle change! Sleeping in a hammock takes a lot of the pain and hassle out of tramping. Of course, you do need appropriate trees, but here on the Gulf Coast of Texas, we got trees aplenty. (We also got mosquitoes OUT THE ASS, so if you come down here, BRING A MOSQUITO NET, and I'm not joking.) I carry nylon strap tubing to use as hammock points on trees that lack a branch at the right height. I picked up a tip from other tramps--drive two or three 16d nails into the tree at the right height (sitting astride the hammock, your feet should touch the ground) and rig nylon tubing around the tree and stopping on the nails. The nails keep the nylon tubing from sliding down the tree. My hammock is called a "double" hammock (as if two people could sleep in it) but that just means "big enough to be right." Don't buy a hammock with spreader bars. They are a serious pain in the butt to pack around. I just roll my hammock up and stow it in a plastic sack in my ruck. I paid about $10 for my hammock, but you can find them at all prices. Or if you were a really serious tramp, you'd make your own equipment, including your own hammock.

Can't Please Everybody Well, I do run way too long on my posts. It's like a personal shortcoming, I guess. I know that not everybody wants to hear what I want to say, so I try to keep my opinions out of posts about straight graffitti action. This isn't the only place I post stuff about trains. I have gotten booted off of the train-hopper list serve (at train-hopper@nw.com) because I posted a flame about some liberal female journalist who wanted to write about hopping after riding about three trains. It was my own fault, I was drinking paisano and lemon juice and got a little carried away. But, boy, you'd think all those adventuresome, liberal, yuppie wanks over at Train-hoppers would have a little more tolerance for a out-of-the-mainstream opinion. Huh. I guess not. One of the best receptions I ever got is on a survivalist-militia-patriot board. You'd think they'd be pretty uptight, but they liked the train-hopper stuff real well. I was glad it got accepted. People were posting questions like "How would you conceal an AR-15?" Amazing. BTW, the address for the railroad operations manual is http://www.ntl.bts.gov/DOCS/rmo.html

Well, I have a fairly limited knowledge of signals. These days, trains use radios for about 80% of all communication. There is a system called the block system, in which a moving train can tell whether or not the next block of track is occupied or not by the signal lights. Littlejohn says the blocks are about two miles in length, but out in the boondocks, a block is a lot bigger than two miles. Engineers look out the right side of trains, so the signals to the right are the ones telling him what to do. If the signal is red, it means stop, and stand. If the train gets a "stop but proceed slowly" signal, it will be red with a smaller signal light off to the side and lower. Yellow means "Proceed with caution". Green means "Go ahead." The signals change according to what the trains are doing on the track. If there is a train in the block behind you, he will be getting a yellow "proceed with caution" while you will be getting a "green--clear track ahead" signal. When it comes to signals, I'm in over my head. It's a very complicated system. Back in the days of railroad semaphores, it was even more complicated. Trains are required to sound their horn whenever they approach a grade crossing, marked or unmarked. Years ago, they used a system of whistle blasts to signal the brakemen and switchmen on the ground what they were preparing to do in the engine. Today, they use radio. The operations manual for railroads is online, but believe me, it is very dry reading. It's like reading a military manual. I wish I knew more about this subject myself. If somebody knows about this, please enlighten me.

It's kind of difficult for me to tell if you are being sarcastic or not. Kind of seems like "yes." Sorry if you don't like my stuff, guy. What can I say? Don't read my posts and it won't bother you. The thread is clearly marked so I guess if it's a topic you don't care for, what the hell---just pass it on by.

Look, guys, there are LOTS of people who panhandle. Some are mentally ill people, but some are just folks down on their luck, and some are professionals who make big bucks pretending to be pitiful and poor. I met a teenaged girl once who hated her father because when she was little, he would make his girls dress in raggedly clothes and go with him to scam motorists on a busy street corner in Houston. Here they are out on the corner, looking pitiful, and Dad is there with a sign saying "HOMELESS, CANCER, Please HELP! God Bless You." And around the corner is Dad's car, fresh from the detail shop. Sure the girls looked pitiful, they were crying and humiliated and embarrassed. Whatever else the Dad did, his cynical behavior produced a daughter who was a tough-as-nails trainhopper who wouldn't take anything from anybody. She had nothing but contempt for people who beg, and she carried a .38 revolver to defend herself against predators. Mental illness, for 90% of the people who suffer from it, is a choice. There are drugs today that can help a person deal with it, and they are pretty effective. But if somebody prefers to treat his depression with Jack Daniels instead of Prozac, how is that my fault? Some guy who has what is called "ego-syntonic symptoms" (the flip side is ego-dystonic symptoms) thinks that there is nothing wrong with him and that it's everybody else that won't leave him alone, that are constantly fucking with him, belittling him, dissing him, etc. These are the nut cases that you see who are in gangs, teen-aged oppositional and defiant disorder types who constantly fight with their parents, destroy property, use drugs, etc., etc. They go on to a career in prison, usually, if they don't (or won't) accept treatment. They cannot understand that it is THEM who have a problem, and not the rest of the world. How this differs from your typical teenaged rebel is the duration and the degree. When I was sixteen, I hated school too. But I didn't attack teachers. And when I grew up, I realized that I needed the education that society was offering me for free. Mentally ill people who remain untreated never get a clue. They rave and rant against all manner of imagined injustice long after their turbulent adolescent years. There's all kinds of mental illness, and all degrees of it. (Personally, I've got to wonder about people who seek out a job as an enforcer of rules and law. It's such a thankless job.) Just for general info, ego-dystonic symptoms are when the patient is all upset and distressed and comes in trying to get help, "I feel so bad, and it's not going away, I can't sleep, I can't eat, I hate myself, I think about suicide---Can't you help me, give me medicene or something?" They see everything as their fault, and can't see that there are extenuating circumstances that have contributed to their feelings. "Ever since my dog died, I've just been acting like a crybaby weakling." So. Don't get the idea that I have no sympathy for people who are mentally ill. I do. But I still think that begging lacks dignity, and that no matter how wealthy or poor a person is, there is virtually no good excuse for stealing. Whether a bum or a banker, one should be honest. That's my opinion, anyway.

Spoter---WHOA, buddy, hold up. Please don't put words in my mouth, I screw up plenty often enough on my own. I didn't say begging shouldn't be allowed. I said that panhandling lacks dignity. And it does, at least it does in my opinion. I know plenty about mental illness as well, and to tell you the truth, there are a lot more mentally ill people out walking around loose than there are inside of any psychiatric facility. There is no law against being mentally ill, any more than there are laws against having a broken leg. If somebody is mentally ill, and they don't want treatment, and they are over 18 years old, that is A-OK with me, and legal, as long as they are not a threat to themselves or others. It is perfectly legal to be crazy as hell, as long as you're not dangerous. People older than 16, but younger than 18, have a certain amount of control over their treatment. In Texas, they can refuse medications, request discharge from the hospital, refuse to attend therapeutic groups, and so forth. Younger than 16, they are "legally" children, and their parents have control over their medical (and psychiatric) care, unless a Court steps in and takes over. But here's the catch. If the doctor disagrees, he can seek a Court order for legal committment for Court-ordered psychiatric treatment. You can still refuse everything, but the hospital does not have to let you out. If you go berserk, they can medicate you, on an emergency basis, against your will, and if the situation warrants it, the doctor can seek Court-ordered medications, too. They usually don't do that unless the patients is WAY PSYCHOTIC and the doctor figures it's the only way they guy will ever have a chance to not be mentally ill. Of course, once the patient gets out (and they usually do, unless they are violent) he can throw the medication away, and ditch the follow-up care, and just return to being as sick as he pleases. Psychiatric patients often panhandle. If it ain't against the law in that town, everything is great. But I'm not obligated to give them any money, and I generally don't. If they want money, they need to go through the channels necessary to get Welfare or SSDI, which usually means taking their medications. Or go to work. That's cool with me.

USGI Can opener--"The P-38" Back before the military went to MRE's (that's Meal-Ready-to-Eat for those of you who don't watch TV, listen to the radio or read newspapers lately) they used a kind of ration called a "C-Ration." I thought it meant "combat ration," but when I was in the Marines, I found out that there are three types of military food. "A-rations" are hot food, freshly prepared, from a chow hall. "B-Rations" are large-portion containers of field rations, but prepared by the cooks, and served hot, usually out of insulated Melmac containers in a make-shift, field-expedient chow line--the troops file past with open mess kits, and the cooks serve it up with ladles and ice cream scoopers. Last of all, and least desireable, is "C-Rations." They came in a dull brown, cardboard box, and had cans of stuff inside like beef and potatoes, spaghetti and meatballs, bacon and eggs (yuck) and so forth. They also had a can of hard, round crackers, sometimes a "shit disk" (a chocolate disk kind of like a Nestle's Crunch bar--rumor had it that the shit disk was actually a laxative, so some Marines wouldn't eat them, and traded them for other stuff) and usually a can of fruit. Best canned fruit of all were canned peaches. They were delicious, and almost as good as cash money. Along with a case of "rats" came these cool little can openers, called either "John Waynes" or "P-38's." The P-38 name has a story. During World War Two, there was a kind of pursuit aircraft called a P-38 Lightning. It had twin fusilage booms, twin engines and a separate pod with the pilot, automatic 20mm cannons, .50 cal machine guns, etc. They used these planes mainly against tanks and military trains, and the troops called them "Can Openers" because they were very effective against tanks. Conversely, they called the little USGI can openers "P-38's." Cool, eh? You can buy one for a dollar or so at a Army-Navy surplus store. Get one for your key ring, and you'll never be without a can opener.

Unit---No question is a stupid question, unless it goes unasked. How else is one supposed to learn things he doesn't know? Yes, I used to be a full-time tramp, years ago. My favorite line was the old Burlington Northern Hi-Line, especially in spring and summer, but I rode all over. Since then, I've done a whole lot of things, among them serving the Marines and going to college (at kind of an advanced age, really.) I have a regular job, a family and a house now. So I used to be a tramp, but now I'm a homeguard and a part-time trainhopper. Just like the yuppie thrill seekers, I ride for fun, not as a lifestyle. Rufe used to get pissed at me when I would do something stupid (like waving at pretty girls when we passed a grade crossing) and he'd yell "Get your head out of your ass! This ain't no hobby!" That was his attitude. He was a pro. All business. Rufe considered riding trains, collecting food stamps in several counties, petty scams with the Welfare people to be a sort of vocation. I never did that, but I shared in the food he bought with the Food Stamps, so I guess I was as guilty as he was. I preferred working, and when I finally ran out of money, I split up with old Rufe and went to work. He was not a very sentimental guy, kind of a gruff old redneck. The young riders with train radio scanners and GPS gear would just floor a guy like Rufe. He was old school. I never saw Rufe turn anybody down for something to eat. He had plenty of food, because of the food stamps, and he shared out with just about anybody and everybody, but he hated streamliners. I was pretty green when I met him, and his first lesson was about "deadmanning" the doors on a boxcar. Ever since then, I always carry a deadman 2x4 in the middle of my bindle. Rufe smoked cigarettes, and I started smoking tailor-mades because he did, and also because they were cheaper. Store-bought cigarettes were a "waste of good money" to Rufe. He couldn't buy tobacco with food stamps, so I became his source of tobacco while we rode together, because I had cash money. "Never, ever, show your bankroll," Rufe would caution me. "Keep your money in your boots, and your knife in your pocket." Of course, Bugler and Kite were dirt cheap back in those days. I think a blue pack of Bugler was thirty-nine cents, and it lasted us a long time, several days, or more. Today, tramps and trainhoppers are young and computer-literate, so they keep up with friends and family on the net, by going to public libraries or Internet cafes in the towns they stop in. I would too, if I ever went out for an extended trip. Just about all tramps have a cell phone these days it seems like---or at least, a lot of the young ones do. The older, heavy drinking tramps usually don't.

Gunboats and Dog Chain Re-reading some of this, it occurred to me that some readers might not understand that true tramps often made their own gear from trash and stuff they scavenged from dumpsters. Rufe, the guy from whom I learned to hop trains, wouldn't even use an Army surplus pack, which were available very cheaply back then from Army-Navy stores. They might cost a dollar or two. I saw a lot of tramps carrying a military surplus combat pack when I was a kid. Rufe carried all his gear in a homemade ruck, made from a "tater sack", which was a burlap bag that potatoes came in at the store (today, they come in plastic bags--Booo!) He tied a length of cotton rope to the two bottom corners of the sack, put a small cardboard box inside, and loaded the cardboard box with his stuff. When the bag was full, he tied the top shut by throwing two half hitches around the open end of the bag, and the rope then formed his "pack straps." He carried an old type one-gallon Clorox bottle as a water bottle. They were made of much tougher and thicker plastic back then than they are today. Today, I use empty, clean 2-liter Coke bottles for water. Gunboats are made from two-pound coffee cans, or those big restaurant-sized cans that vegetables or beans or whatever come in. They hold about a gallon or so. Punch a couple of holes for a handle and bend a piece of coat-hanger wire to fit the can, so that the handle can be folded underneath the can to make it easy to stow in your ruck. I carry a piece of dog chain about four feet long with a snap hook on one end, so I can loop it around the tripod of branches and leave the chain dangling down in the fire. Then, you take an "S-hook" made of coat-hanger wire or maybe a nail or a piece of welding rod, and suspend the gunboat however high over the fire you want, depending on how hot the fire is. I carry a pair of needle-nose pliers around that I found on the tracks, and I look for scrap wire and nails, and just make S-hooks out of all kinds of stuff and leave them in the jungle, usually hooked over a branch near the fire ring. If you want to cook coffee and stew or something at the same time, just hook another gunboat to the chain. As long as the tripod is well-made, you could probably put three or four on there, no problem. I never buy expensive equipment. Expensive gear just attracts streamliners and rip-off artists. I can usually find stuff I need at Salvation Army thrift stores, or scavenge it for free. A lot of stuff I just make myself. Besides a durable pack and water bottles, I bring a couple of blankets rolled up in a bindle, with a shoulder strap made from a piece of nylon webbing I picked up off the ballast. Among other things, I carry a gunboat, a few cans of food, a spoon and a tin pie plate (NOT aluminum, it's worthless) a plastic cup (I love canteen cups, but they get hot and burn your lip), a rolled-up newspaper in it's plastic sleeve, toilet paper, a military rain poncho, bottle of Louisiana Tabasco Sauce, an old Army field jacket with liner, a balaclava, extra socks, a long-sleeved shirt, leather trucker's gloves, a small flashlight, lots of matches, extra AA batteries for my scanner, and a ratty old baseball cap I've been abusing. It sounds like a lot of crap, but it really ain't all that much.

Fox Mulder---Like I said before, you certainly have a right to your opinions, I just disagree, that's all. I can't say that I've never taken anything that wasn't mine, because I have. I feel bad about it now, of course, but there's no way to compensate the person I stole from (like twenty years ago) because I don't know who the person is. What I can do, is decide for myself what is the right way to live for me, and be true to my feelings and beliefs. I suppose one could say that my beliefs about stealing are irrational. But I would never steal from a bro, and I'd never steal from a fellow rider, so that philosophy seems like it ought to extend to the rest of the world. I guess I irrationally don't see writing as destructive to industrial property, even though, as you say, it does cost money to remove it, if the owner of the spot doesn't want it there. I have left my streak on quite a few railcars, but I always tagged in chalk or soapstone, so it didn't stay there too long. The places I ever painted were so messed up already, I think my stuff improved things rather than detracted from them. Like I said, maybe it's irrational. I still don't rip people off. Even people who shoplift usually draw the line at ripping off individuals, but some don't. People who ride trains without any gear, without any money, without any way to take care of their own business are called "streamliners." This is not an affectionate term. Usually streamliners steal from other tramps, or rob freight, or do petty crimes in neighborhoods along the rail lines. Of course, this brings down the cops on everybody in sight, so most straight-up tramps hate streamliners. There are a lot of people running from the law trying to ride trains, and if they will rob some guy running a convenience store, they will rob you and me sitting around a campfire brewing coffee in a gunboat. I have seen tramps give a streamliner a beating (well, not a very effective beating, but he got the message.) He tried to snag somebody's bindle. There is a thing called the "Rule of the Match". It's an old tradition, and I've never actually seen anybody give anybody else a kitchen match (a lot of you younger guys may have never even seen a kitchen match in your life, LOL) but the idea is "Beat it, you're not welcome here, go start your own fire, you jerk." If anybody ever gives you a match, LEAVE IMMEDIATELY. It's a serious message that you are not welcome. You could get hurt, or worse. But hardly anybody today even has ever heard of the Rule of the Match. When I was in the Marines, a barracks thief was considered the lowest of the low. It was okay to snag gear for the platoon, or "kipe" stuff somewhere else, but Marines NEVER steal from their own. The worst thing you can call a Marine, worse than "coward," is "buddy fucker." It means back stabber and those words are not heard very often. They are fightin' words, for real. I just don't steal, that's all. There is a funny saying in the Marines about theft. It goes like this: "There is only one thief in the Marine Corps. Everybody else is just trying to get their gear back."

I have noticed the same thing. When I was a kid, the buckets were gray-painted steel cans with a handle for carrying, but now they are mostly plastic 5-gallon paint buckets. I find small trees with several nails driven in them about five feet off the ground, too. The tramps swing hammocks if there are any trees. Sometimes you'll find two sets of nails, one above the other--I guess they are swinging two hammocks off the same two trees, one above the other. I find clean tin cans to use for cups, lots of wine bottles and beer cans and those silver mylar bags that go inside 5-liter boxes of wine. They call them "space bags." They drink straight from the spout, without touching it, and pass it around. I usually build a fire and burn all the trash. Once I clean one up, it stays pretty clean for quite a while.

Hobo jungles The morals issue aside, I wanted to ask if any of you folks have discovered any hobo jungles in your forays into and around rail yards. I have discovered several. A couple of them were obviously still in use, but I've also discovered a couple that have been abandoned or forgotten. They were all overgrown, but I found old bottles, blue plastic UP water bottles, a metal cooking grill buried under leaves, old campfire rings and so forth. Just for something to do, I cleaned a couple of them up and left firewood (what is called "squaw wood" down here--dry branches you can break off of trees and bushes), newspaper, toilet paper, etc. in the jungles I cleaned up. When I was a young kid (maybe eight or nine) I lived near the famous T&NO Junction here in Houston. There was a large jungle near there, and we saw hobos all the time in our neighborhood. I didn't realize, back then, that we lived so close to a major Texas rail junction, or that New South Yards was so close to us. (I'm not sure when NSY was built, it might not have been there back then.) (Edit 3/12/02--I talked with my father, and he says NSY was already there when we moved there in 1949-1950.) The tramps back then cooked in one-gallon cans with a bail handle made of coat-hanger wire. The tramps call them "gunboats." I probably saw fifty of them when I was a kid, because they would make one, use it to cook, then wash it out and leave it for the next guy, upside down on a stick driven into the ground near the fire ring. Usually, they would find three straight branches about four feet long, lash them together and make a tripod above the fire, and suspend the gunboat can with a piece of "dog chain" and an s-hook made out of coat hanger wire or out of a nail. They could raise or lower the can on the chain, depending on how hot the fire was. Have any of you seen anything like this? I found one, so I decided to make a few gunboats and leave them in jungles that I cleaned up. When I go back, I see that the cans are black on the bottom from a fire, but they are still there on the stick where I left them. Look for jungles near where you go to check trains. I've met a couple of young tramps, in their twenties and early thirties. But mostly, they are older guys.