[Hobos, Tramps and Homeless Bums]

Fox Mulder---Good point. Obviously, putting up graff on somebody else's property is use of it without that person's permission, unless, of course, the owner grants permission, which I think would be pretty damn cool. But I've met people who said that if they were given permission that they wouldn't bother to write there. To those guys, the whole point was to be pissing off some property owner, especially a large corporation or a government facility. I don't agree. I think tagging on personal property like some guy's wooden fence or the side of his house is totally, completely lame. Writing on the side of a grocery chain store is still messing with property, but at least it's not an individual. Writing on railcars, and places like freeway overpasses, and other big, ugly, industrial type spots seems a lot more acceptable to me. I used to live near a school in Los Angeles that had a "tag wall" where anybody could tag anything but threats of violence. Part of it was a "big piece" wall, where writers had to get prior approval by a committee, and then the school would "feature" the piece for a month at a time, then another writer got selected. There's also a serious difference between a large fill-in (which is definately in the category of art) and some idiot that scrawls "Los XVII Avenues xxx187 Snoopy" and then disses a bunch of other ignorant tags, who then diss his stuff---it's just STUPID. Not to mention dangerous. These people that kill one another over gang tags are just beyond ignorant low-self-esteem losers. They might as well be in the Klan. Certain areas of Houston are just plagued with this kind of stupid vandalism. It's not attractive, it's not creative, it's just--ugly. In my neighborhood, patrols of volunteers regularly buff everything on every wall they see, with paint given to them by the city. The industrial-railcar-freeway overpass spots are just about the only spots where good writing stays up for any length of time. Writers with some talent are pretty rare around here, and it's been a while since I saw anything obviously put up by a crew with a plan and a color scheme. Most of it is some no-talent 13-year old kid trying to make his bones with a gang. What can I say? I guess I am a hypocrite, because I don't see decent graff and dummy vandalism in the same light, and definately not in the same light as ripping stuff off.

[Hobos, Tramps and Homeless Bums]

Vanity---I debated with myself for a while about how to respond to your statement about theft. You certainly have a right to whatever opinions you hold, and if you genuinely believe that living by ripping off from people is okay, then anything I have to say ain't going to influence you very much. I've known quite a few thieves in my life. Mostly, they treated other people with a lack of respect because they lacked respect for themselves. I can't say that I never took anything that didn't belong to me. Just riding freight trains at all is considered by the law to be a form of theft ("Theft of transportation", a Class C misdemeanor, on a par with littering or jumping turnstiles on the subway) and like any violation of law, if you get caught, there are consequences. Pretty slight consequences in this case, maybe a $75 ticket. But there is a big difference between riding an empty rbox, or a pig, or camping out on a 48 behind the container, and busting into cargo. Or ripping off somebody's gear. Or shoplifting from a store. That's all theft, and in my opinion, it is not okay. Property is owned by somebody by it's very definition. They have the right to own it, and control it, and to buy or sell it, and to limit it's use by others, unless the other person is willing to satisfy the owner with a purchase price, or rent or lease or some other exchange of value. Nobody understands the concept of property better than someone who has very little of it. I own more now than I used to, and it's still not much. But it is MINE, and pitiful little as it is, I will defend it against people who try to jack me up for it. In Montana, if someone is convicted of robbing a tramp of his bedroll, he can be sentenced to as much as twenty years in prison. Some rich rancher has his thousands of acres and his ranch house. All a transient has is his ruck and his bindle, but it's home. Out in the boondocks, one's ruck and bindle may be the difference between surviving the weather or death by exposure. Montana juries don't take robbing tramps lightly.

I chose to ride trains, I chose tramp life and during the parts of my life when I lived outdoors, I accepted the consequences of my decisions. I jumped freights knowing I was breaking rules. I've never been caught, and I've never been punished for it, but in the back of my mind, I know what I was doing was against the law, and I had already decided I was willing to accept the consequences of my actions. Maybe, if the consequences had been more severe, I would have been less willing to accept them. But I never thought, and still don't think, that I have a RIGHT to ride freight trains. The trains don't belong to me. If I get popped, well, then I guess I pay. I know three young guys that carjacked somebody with pellet pistols, and got arrested and convicted. One got ten years deferred adjudication. If he even gets so much as a MIP charge, he goes to prison. The other two got eight years apiece in the Texas Youth Commission. If they do all their time, they won't get out until they are about 25 years old.

Society is US. And WE, all of us together, collectively say, through the law, that taking anything that doesn't belong to you is wrong, and will be punished one way or another. Obviously, there are some people both rich and poor that try to get over by ripping people off. Ripping off with a fountain pen instead of a revolver doesn't make it right, and if they get caught, they get punished, or at least they are supposed to get punished. Justice is imperfect.

If I come face-to-face with somebody trying to rip ME off, I won't need any cop, judge or jury to settle it. Ultimately, that old line by Bob Dylan is true--"To live outside the law, you must be honest." I don't steal from other people because I don't want them stealing from me. Stores, restaurants, etc. all are owned by somebody. I know a few older tramps who are retired and receive a check from stocks or mutual funds that they own in companies. Essentially, they own part of the company. If you steal from the company, you are stealing from the stockholders, i.e. from thousands of people who have put up money to capitalize the company. You can buy stock too, anybody can. If you choose to spend your money on stuff you want instead of stocks, that's okay, but don't snivel that the company is some conspiracy to mistreat people. ANYBODY can buy stock. And most big corporations are now owned or controlled by worker retirement funds, essentially making American WORKERS the owners of AMERICAN COMPANIES. In other words, it's thousands of little people (and a few rich folks) who own virtually every large corporation.

I have, on occasion, GIVEN people half of whatever I had in my pocket. But how often can one afford to do that? It is the responsibility of each of us to take care of ourselves, unless we cannot do so. I might be willing to GIVE somebody five bucks, if I thought the situation warranted it. But if he tried to TAKE it from me, I would fight and use whatever force is necessary to keep it. That five dollars is mine. No sonofabitch has a right to it without my permission, not by theft, and not by robbery. So. Let criminals take heed, I guess. One lives by crime at a serious risk. The poorer the victim, the greater the crime.

[Hobos, Tramps and Homeless Bums]

I'm not sure if this topic is cool here or not, but when I'm in the yards, I see tramps occasionally. I see graff artists occasionally. Usually, I don't see ANYBODY, not even yard workers. There is a big difference between Hobos and Tramps. There are really very few hobos left. Modern tramps consider hobos to be the old timers from the steam train days of the Great Depression. There are a few of them still alive. Steam Train Maury Graham in Napoleon, Ohio, is one of the best known hobos in America. (He rode back in the late 1940s and '50s. He's in his eighties now, but he still goes to hobo conventions once in a while. The best known convention is the second weekend in August every year, in Britt, Iowa. It's on Route 18, 35 miles west of Mason City, Iowa.)

Hobos travel to work. Tramps travel to not work. Bums can't work or travel, they just get high and drink. And "homeless" people have an attitude problem. I lived outdoors for months at a time, and I never once felt like I was "homeless." Wherever I was, that was "home." I treated it with respect. I saw a hand-lettered sign in a jungle that said, "Serious Tramps Keep A Clean Camp." I believe that, too. The guy that taught me to hop freights, Rufe, said it many times. "You ain't no bum. We keep a clean camp here. Pick that trash up off the ground and burn it." Rufe called that having a "straight-up tramp attitude." All business, no sloppy behavior. Being homeless is not about being POOR. It's about being WHIPPED DOWN and NO-ACCOUNT. There's no reason to go around all filthy and dirty. I lived outside with everything I owned in a ruck sack. I still took a spit bath every day and cleaned up and washed my clothes. The people that do that sort of shit (go for days without bathing or cleaning themselves up) are mentally ill, for real. I don't believe in panhandling. Working like a squeegee tramp is okay, but no begging, and no stealing. That sort of shit lacks dignity. (Gotta go. Be back later.)

[Yard Safety]

I was reading about the DeadTrainBums.com site up the stack---the pw's are "dead" and "bums." A guy named Jaks is the owner, he's an old-time trainhopper who is real worried about all the FNG's starting to hop and getting pinched. He's concerned that if hopping gets real popular the railroads will catch shit from the government and they will ALL start turning up the heat on railriders and make new laws increasing the jail time and fines for hopping. I hop all the time--anybody interested in starting a thread on hopping and painting? I meet true tramps in the yards all the time. Some of them are cool, some of them are straight up crazy, and some of them are genuinely scarey and evil.