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KaBar

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Mr. Towel--

 

I am going to assume that you are actually asking my permission, rather than being facetious. Obviously, there is not a thing in this world I can do to stop you from using information off this website, or any website, for your report.

 

However, I have conditions. You may use information that I have posted here so long as you do not use it to make tramps, hobos, trainhoppers OR grafitti writers look bad. You may use it as long as you properly credit the source, and add footnotes and a bibliography to your report. And you may use it so long as you show respect, and do not denigrate or belittle tramps, hobos, trainhoppers or grafitti writers.

 

Do you agree? Yes or no.

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kabar, getting ssi if youre sixty five and have some condition really isnt that hard. if you have proof of a good work ethic(recommendations from bosses, work history) and you were homeless or disabled, the government will give you ssi. if you decide to retire in the east bay, or stretch does, hit up the hawkins center in richmond.

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Not much happening on the employment scene. I made a few phone calls, they are supposed to call me back. I've got eight more days of severance pay coming.

 

It's been raining a lot the last several days, and I haven't been down to the Jungle. The last addition we did was some time ago--Stretch and I scored a couple of pallets about 4x6' and added them to the Hooch's open air patio. (It's not really a "patio" but I don't know what else to call it--it's kind of like a carport with a couch and a fire ring made of cement blocks and wire racks out of a couple of dead refrigerators.)

 

The last guy to stay there, Ike, kept it up very well. He burned all trash, and kept thre Hooch swept out and very tidy. It looks like somebody's apartment almost. He also tried to improve the roof with a large piece of black railroad plastic. I don't know where he got it, but it works fairly well.

 

The problem with the roof is that it has no slope, so it leaks pretty bad from "standing" water. I could probably put a great roof on it for about $50, but it's hard to justify spending cash money on a Jungle hooch. Another problem is that whenever we find 2x4's and stuff that would make a good roof, somebody comes to stay there and they burn up our construction wood because they're too lazy to go shag their own wood and too ignorant to realize that 8' long 2x4's are not FIREWOOD. (Dumbasses.)

 

People who have a lot of unmet needs, and who lack good coping skills don't have the reserve or grace or gumption (or whatever one chooses to call it) to realize that the entire world doesn't revolve around them personally and what they want or think they need. To these guys, the whole world is their personal trash dump and shitter. Anything they find unguarded or not locked up is "fair game." They feel disenfranchised by the world and "powerless" to get what they want, so they just grant themselves the "right" to take whatever they want. It's called "a sense of entitlement." They feel "entitled" to do whatever the hell they please.

 

This is the same attitude that streamliners have. It's not all that difficult to come up with your own bindle, your own water jug, your own coat, etc., but rather than expend the minimal effort necessary to create his own gear, he steals from other tramps. Usually, if somebody will steal from tramps, they will rob you too, if they are bigger and tougher than you, or if they think you're not armed. They live in their own little world, where "If it's good for me, it's good; and if it's bad for me, it's bad." These are the kind of people who make friends with younger, smaller, weaker trainhoppers and then rip them off or worse.

 

Most of the people that have stayed at the Jungle have had a sort of "Who gives a shit?" attitude. But some Mexicans stayed there once and left Mexican coins in a cup to pay for the food they ate. It wasn't much, but it's what they had. Ike cleaned the place up immaculately before he left. Plenty of people have come through that demonstrated a regular, decent, social attitude by their behavior. They drank up water, but they went and filled the jugs. They burned up firewood, but they went and shagged some more, and piled it up under a piece of plastic so it would stay dry.

They used the gunboats to cook in, but they washed them out and put them back on the sticks, so they would stay clean.

In short, they "Kept a Clean Camp." And I respect them for it.

 

 

you are unepmployed KABAR??? damn...well i finally made it back out post KATRINA land...trains are rolling like crazy...the CSX yard looks like shit...under construction...well anyhow yeah just letting you know, hows houston?? i am glad to get outta that big old smoggy city with traffic everywhere...i just miss the trains...boy there were a lot there...well we got our fair share here...good luck on that job thing...thats what i need!

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TD---

Glad to hear you made it back to NOLA. Keep us posted on what's happening in N 'Awlin's. I hear that shit is still fucked up there big time and here it is hurricane season again already. I hope you brought some swim fins, cause it looks like another wet summer.

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ya the south is sure taking a beating, and kabar has alot of good points, along with everyone else in this thread, i dont think i read one comment that turned in to a elongated debate/arguement, which is great in my opinion because were all actually listeneing to what others have to say and accepting their own opinions. but i have seen a few camps along the tracks, and i have seen a few hobo's in freights hitching rides to somewhere's.

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you are unepmployed KABAR??? damn...well i finally made it back out post KATRINA land...trains are rolling like crazy...the CSX yard looks like shit...under construction...well anyhow yeah just letting you know' date=' hows houston?? i am glad to get outta that big old smoggy city with traffic everywhere...i just miss the trains...boy there were a lot there...well we got our fair share here...good luck on that job thing...thats what i need![/quote']

 

 

kabar, hit me with an email

jeffisdef@gmail.com

 

i just recently saw that film called "WHO IS BOZO TEXINO?"

i met and huing out with the dude that did it

bill daniels, he has a website called bill daniels.net

check it out, but hit me with an email and i will tell you all about it!

i will be out in houston soon enough in august for a show, if you want we could go

streak some!!

holler at me man!!

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Kabar, very informative and detailed posts. Really enjoyed reading them. I think i'l be copying all the posts into a word doc to read offline.

 

You mentioned you have a family now. What does your partner/children (if you have any) think of your past? You also mentioned you do it now and again. Do they not get worried when you go off?

 

Thanks.

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I think my wife does get a little resentful when I catch out. The only time I have for adventures like that is my vacation time from work. She has no interest whatsoever in riding freight trains, so that means she stays at home while I go hoboing.

 

She has no problem with my "past," believe me, riding freight trains is probably the least objectionable thing in my past, LOL.

 

There is no question that catching out and having a stable married family life are not at all compatible. One of the main reasons I quit riding freights to start with is that tramping is a very lonely, solitary kind of life. There are very few women who are tramps, and while spending four or five years without a girlfriend won't kill you, it does have a negative impact on your attitude about life and your self esteem. I frequently had that feeling of "Why am I doing this?" and "Am I really that much different than everyone else?"

 

Change is not easy though. I was a very competant tramp. I enjoyed the life, I enjoyed the personal freedom and I enjoyed the lack of responsibility and "obligation" to do what somebody else wanted me to do. I was not fazed one bit by missing a meal, or even several meals. Bad weather didn't bother me. I liked "living outdoors." I felt that very few of the straight arrows I saw driving off to work every day could successfully survive in the environment in which I chose to live. Plus, during most of that time, I had a sort of "higher calling," and that was the anti-Vietnam War movement.

 

Choosing to rejoin the "straight life" of forty-hours-a-week meant that I now had to acknowledge that my standards, goals and aspirations would not meet the expectations of possible future bosses, employers, supervisors, etc. I now had to adapt to "their" world.

 

That meant getting up at a certain time, getting to work at a certain time, showing up every day, etc.

 

My first straight job after coming off the road was driving a laundry truck for the Harris County Hospital District. I hauled clean linen from the main laundry at Ben Taub General Hospital out to the satellite clinics and to the old Jeff Davis County Hospital, and soiled linen back. It was a nasty job, amd one that had enormous potential for nosicomial infection from the soiled linen. Jeff Davis delivered about 90% of the welfare babies in Harris County. We used to find all kinds of stuff in the laundry, instruments, drugs, knives, even guns once in a while. There was a rumor that one of the guys in the shake out room discovered an aborted fetus rolled up in surgical towels once, but they may have been kidding me.

 

I eventually left this job to go to the Todd Shipyards welding school, and became a welder/tacker, working with a shipfitter building barges and ferryboats.

 

What kind of IDIOT becomes a WELDER IN TEXAS? Jesus, it was HOT.

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Well, I'm back at work, trying to get enough shifts to make up a 40-hour week. On July 1, I start back on a regular schedule. I'm hoping that I'll be able to take some vacation time the first couple of weeks of August so I can go to the National Hobo Convention again this year. I always enjoy it. But if not, I'll probably wait until it cools off some and then go catch out for a couple of weeks.

 

I enjoyed my time off (I got a month's severance pay) but I really couldn't do anything because I had to go look for a job. That's one of the "downside" aspects of living a conventional life. If I had gotten laid off in 1970 with a month's pay, I would have been long gone for a solid month! Probably for several months. Anyway.

 

Why don't some of you guys make plans to hit the National Hobo Convention this year? It's always the same weekend--

 

National Hobo Convention

first week end in August every year

Britt, Iowa (25 miles west of Mason City, Iowa, )

 

The Mason City bus station is at the airport (it's a small airport). When you get off the bus, you just walk down this long driveway back to the highway, and stick out your thumb headed west (that would be to your RIGHT, lol) It's a short hitch, and if you make a sign that says "BRITT" everybody will know who you are and where you're going. Last time it took me 45 minutes to go from Mason City to Britt in three rides, all locals, all who wanted to talk about the Hobo Convention.

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Well, I guess they are living proof that God protects fools and children. I suppose they made it safely to wherever it was they were trying to get to. I only saw a few things I really objected to. Riding a containr well car that has no deck, like a TTX 53, is REALLY STUPID. It's not that it can't be done. It obviously can be done, these two guys did it. It's that it can't be done SAFELY.

 

Hanging off a ladder just for the hell of it is STUPID. Suppose this moron had slipped, fell, and hit the ground trackside at 45 miles per hour and lived. He would be laying out there in the middle of nowhere with no gear, no food, no water, and broken arms and legs, etc. WHAT AN IDIOT. His friend would have to ride all the way to the next stop, before he could even get off and try to find help. How is he even going to describe where his injured riding partner is? Major idiocy.

 

If I was riding with someone who acted like this, that would be the absolute last ride we ever took together. The guy from UK erred when he said he had found an experienced trainhopper to ride with. If his riding partner had no more sense than to let this kid do all this stupid shit, then he either has the worst judgement on earth, or he is the least experienced "experienced trainhopper" I ever heard of.

 

Let's see: they were riding in tennis shoes and the guy's shoes got ripped all to shit. They ran out of water. They were filthy dirty. They repeatedly risked their lives and serious injuries for no discernable reason whatsoever . . . .

 

What the fuck. Idiots. I'm sure they both thought it was a big adventure, since nobody got killed or dismembered. Old time tramps like Rufe would have run these two out of camp the first five minutes. They are dangerous to be around and they apprently don't give a shit about their own lives or anybody else's. How'd you like to be on a grainer for three or four hours with a screaming, crying pal in agony from losing a bunch of fingers from a sharp overflow piece on a rail wheel? That would be a great trip, eh? How's you like to spend several hours waiting to get off so you could go to the cops and beg them to start looking for your friend who may or may not be alive "out there somewhere", missing a leg, or paralyzed from the fall, or dead as a canned mackeral? How'd you like to be "the last person to see him alive" when his mother throws a shit fit at the District Attorney's Office and insists that her little Geoff would never do anything like hang off a rail car ladder at sixty miles an hour, and the only explanation is that YOU must have pushed him off the car?

 

NO THANKS.

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That was a good video. I only have a couple of criticisms. The main one is that hey seemed to be riding a lot on container well cars on the FRONT SIDE OF THE CONTAINER, WHICH IS A GOOD WAY TO GET CRUSHED LIKE A BUG if the container shifts.

 

The other thing was the dismount from the boxcar. They could have not gotten away wth that except that the train was rolling so slowly. It wasn't a major fuck-up, but some inexperienced kid watching that video might conclude that that was an acceptable way to dismount.

 

They did not appear to be carrying any appreciable amount of water, and I did not see what I considered to be adequate clothing or boots, or GLOVES.

 

Mind you, it is obviously not going to kill you if you don't take a coat or boots or gloves, but why be so careless? It's dumb. At least they had sleeping bags.

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