Hobos, Tramps and Homeless Bums

[rolling nowhere]

 

i don't have a problem helping out a needy drunk if i got it but standard reply to the spangers is that i'm just trying to get a quarter myself. especially if i look like i've been outdoors and broke.

.

 

that shit is the best. you can be the dirtiest crustiest stinkiest motherfucker walking the earth and someone will try and hit you up for money when it looks like they got plenty goin for them.

some fool with a bunch of metal in his face in phx comes to mind...i laughed and shook my head.

[xen]

there used to be this broad out in phoenix flying a sign, back when it was still will work for food and not homeless vet, 3 days into it she put the anything legal disclaimer under it. that shit made me laugh. but i'm in line at the local store and she's rocking brand new gear with her old man and 2 kids, paying cash for breyer's ice cream. i shook my head and walked away. that is the moment i lost all respect for the sign flyers. early 90's. damn i love malt liquor.

[KaBar2]

I won't give somebody flying a sign a penny unless they've got a full set of gear and look like they just crawled off a boxcar. These alkies and crackheads that fly a sign while wearing shorts and a t-shirt and a pair of flip-flops---not a chance. If I'm not looking at a true-blue trainhopper I don't give them anything.

 

Occasionally I see some old guy flying a sign that says he is a vet who looks like he's over 60 or so, and is clearly in poor health. I always ask "What unit?" If he can answer immediately, I give him a buck or two. People that were really in Vietnam can always tell you with whom they served, where and when without even thinking about it. "Two-Nine in Eye Corps, 1970." If you know even the bare basics about the history of the Vietnam War, you know immediately if they are full of shit or not. I always tell them, "Welcome home, brother."

 

Sometimes I see homeless Iraq-Afghanistan vets now, but they are pretty rare. I think I've seen two, since the start of the wars in the Middle East. For some reason there are a lot more psychiatric casualties from Vietnam. Maybe it's because so many men were drafted and the modern Army is all-volunteer, I don't know. A lot of the Vietnam-era guys had problems with drugs and alcohol before they ever even went to Vietnam. On the other hand, they only had to go once, for fourteen months. The Iraq-Afghanistan guys keep getting sent back over and over and over. Seems to me that repeated deployments would really fuck you up after a while.

[oops...]

i love it when people fly signs that say traveling thru and you see them at the same spot for 2 months straight and always different clothes on, that shits funny, but it does ruin it for those who are traveling thru, anyways, i was at britt last year and there was alot of stupid shit going on, im not saying i wasn't part of it at one point, but, everyone was, and i mean everyone. anyways, everytime i've been there before we've never had a problem, last year was bad, but it wasn't only sinners camp, it was both sides. anyways, im just sticking to trampfest this year...

be in chitown in 3 days...

oops... and stupid dog

[stretch122]

I wasn't gona go back this year but last year i opened my BIG mouth and steped up to run the kitchen this year with the new king Inkman, so burlington dog can stay in our garage or in a freinds camper so either way burlington dog will be there so they can FO,,,,

[xen]

i haven't rode as long or hard as some of you cats but i am almost out the door for what is probably my last excursion. just a little 40 mile to get it out of my system before i become a *shudder* grownup. bound to happen eventually i guess. thanks for the inspiration kabar and peace. http://tinypic.com/r/28lcnyo/6

[rolling nowhere]

im going to denver.

woopee.

[StyleFive]

I tried riding a few times, the ride from Iowa to Nevada went on forever. No run ins though, I guess thats all you can ask for.

[stretch122]

after my 27 years riding i'm still finding new places to go,,except getting deported from canada a couple of years back, LOL

[KaBar2]

Here's a shot of Burlington Dog K-9 working over the bottom of the gunboat after chow in Amory, MS April 2010. "Burlington the Pearl Diver." (photo by Larry, I think)

 

[KaBar2]

Lare took this of me during chow. That shit was hot, too. Tupelo, MS, April 2010. (Note the half-gunboat steaming on the Svea stove, bottom right.) (photo by Larry)

 

[KaBar2]

Stretch cooking up some chow on a MSR Whisperlite International. (An excellent stove BTW.) Tupelo, MS, April 2010. (photo by Larry)

 

[KaBar2]

Tootin' my own horn and giving props to 12 Oz. (photo by Larry)

 

[KaBar2]

Larry and K-Bar shooting the shit when we first got to the jungle at Tupelo. Behind that row of trees are the tracks. It was hot as a motherfucker. Tupelo, MS, April 2010. (photo by Stretch)

 

[KaBar2]

Stretch and K-Bar at the "jungle" in Amory, MS. April 2010. We're posing in front of the locomotive in Amory's main city park.

(photo by Larry)

[dixiebeer]

What are the dates on tramp fest this year? Need to make plans. Want to stop in britt this year for a day and see how bad it is. Same gripe as everyone else, if our dogs arent welcome then neither are we. It was a fun 4 years of going, I always enjoyed myself. Unfortunate its gonna be shitty for a few years.

[rolling nowhere]

What are the dates on tramp fest this year? Need to make plans. Want to stop in britt this year for a day and see how bad it is. Same gripe as everyone else, if our dogs arent welcome then neither are we. It was a fun 4 years of going, I always enjoyed myself. Unfortunate its gonna be shitty for a few years.

 

britt was probably alright in 1945,

fuck that silly shit in 2010.

seriously.

is has nada to do with riding trains.

[KaBar2]

The NHC at Britt has had problems before, almost always caused by the so-called "Road Kids". I've met a bunch of trainhoppers in my time, and most of them had the good sense to behave themselves in town, but there's always a few low-life, jackass scum yeggs that think they can shit on everybody else and get away with it. In the middle of Britt, nobody was willing to deal with them. Out on the road, they would have gotten their asses kicked. I am a pretty much peaceful guy, and I don't look for trouble really, but letting one's dog run free and shit all over a jungle with 50 or 60 people living in it is totally antisocial. It would have never been tolerated back in the day, and shouldn't have been tolerated at Britt.

 

The "peaceful, hippie-dippy, can't-we-all-just-get-along" bullshit demonstrated by most of the people who come to Britt is the problem. They set themselves up to be bullied and abused by shithooks like those so-called Road Kids that defied the jungle and the crumb boss at Britt.

 

I used to be an anarchist. Anarchists don't believe in government and they don't believe in law. That will only work if everybody respects everybody else, which doesn't happen now and isn't likely to ever happen. The problem with law isn't that it oppresses people like those antisocial Road Kids. The problem with law is that it keeps the rest of us of kicking the ever-loving shit out of them for disrespecting us.

 

I don't dislike Britt or the people that live there. In fact, I like just about every citizen I ever met there, especially the former mayor, Jim Nelson. He is a really decent guy, and he always took care of the tramps and looked out for the interests of the jungle.

 

But what I do dislike about Britt is the commodification of the National Hobo Convention --- turning it into a phoney tourist attraction. Jim Nelson understands that the hobo culture is real and that every effort to sanitize it and make the jungle more comfortable and more accomodating for the tourists destroys the authentic hobo culture a little more and a little more each year.

 

It offends me to see cops from surrounding towns and other counties swaggering through the jungle trying to intimidate people. Britt hires every cop they can get to help control the 30,000 visitors who come to Britt for Hobo Days. They spend a fortune on security, but they make even more off the tourists. Jim Nelson told the police chief to back off the jungle unless there was actual trouble. He told the guiding lights of the hobo community "as long as there is no open violation of the law, we won't need police patrols down in the jungle." The jungle is a CITY PARK. It is not private property, like the fairgrounds is. Technically, nobody is permitted to consume alcoholic beverages in a city park, but the cops kind of looked the other way as long as nobody got drunk and stupid. (A big complaint by the hobos was that the people who attend the Draft Horse Show drink openly and nobody says anything, but they are on private property.)

 

But there's a big difference between people drinking a beer and causing no trouble and people getting roaring drunk and fighting. There's a big difference between a couple of people quietly slipping off to burn one down by the tracks and people openly rolling up joints and passing them around a campfire in front of twenty witnesses. No city anywhere I have ever been is going to tolerate the public use of drugs without doing something about it, at least not during the biggest tourist event of the year, anyway.

 

Everybody always took care of their dogs at Britt, every time I've been there. Burlington has been to Britt twelve times, and every time I saw him there he was tied up to Stretch's tent or wherever Stretch was camped. These Road Kids let their dogs run loose, like twenty of them, all over the place. They shit everywhere, they got into dog fights-- this sort of behavior is totally inappropriate. The Road Kids fucked it up for everybody and every dog owner. Don't blame the city. The city didn't do this. Antisocial ASSHOLES did this, and the jungle, collectively, should have gone down there and told them to roll their shit up and get out if they didn't want to obey the rules of the jungle.

 

That's the way it has always been in the past, and that's they way it should be now. Tuck went down there to talk to them and they told him to get fucked. Right then and there, the jungle should have whipped their asses and given them a match, for disrespecting the crumb boss.

[kious]

for what should have been an easy trip, i had me a hell of a time getting from montgomery to st. louis. next stop, chicago. ride free.

[rolling nowhere]

for what should have been an easy trip, i had me a hell of a time getting from montgomery to st. louis. next stop, chicago. ride free.

 

those times when youre thinking..THIS IS GONNA BE A PIECE OF CAKE PSSSSh is usually when shit goes completely bonkers.

its great.

[dixiebeer]

britt was probably alright in 1945,

fuck that silly shit in 2010.

seriously.

is has nada to do with riding trains.

 

Doesn't answer my question. I go to see the family, not because I think its an authentic fucking event. Never seen you there, second-hand information isn't always what it cracks up to be.

 

As for Britt last year, I knew it was going to be a bad year when I had got there and there were 'jungle cops' before the event even started. Some fuckhead pulled a knife and was ran off, people being dumb, drunk, etc etc. As for me and mine, we always kept our dogs tied up and ALWAYS clean up after them; its part of the responsibility of having a dog. I felt like people were there just to fuck up the event, and when majority rules, majority rules. There was no getting through to anyone that was being a fuckhead last year. I'm not surprised that Mr. Nelson made some serious decisions. The (actual) police have never been bad since I started going, the most they've done was tell people to put beers in cups and stand around for about 10 minutes. People weren't getting harassed even though we would have like six 30 packs in coolers and bags of beer cans 5 feet tall. (edit) People left the sinners camp trashed all the time too, me and a few others were always up at like 6am cleaning up shit, that really got on my nerves. Every time something was said about it, it just fell on deaf ears. It was all just a matter of time I suppose.

[InfraRed]

edit nevermind

[scaryletters]

me and stupid dog are gonna be in chicago in a few days, its been awhile since i been through there, i've heard that the bensonville spot is no longer a good spot to catch from (heading west), does anyone know if this is true or not, you can send me an private message so it doesn't have to be posted for everyone to see...

oops... and stupid

 

i was in that yard a week ago and it's beyond fucked up because of the airport expansion. it's still do-able, but a major pain in the ass.

 

chicago was fucking packed with kids as well, don't plan on making any money there.

[KaBar2]

Major heat wave in Houston. It is HOT and HUMID. Miserable ass summer weather. Why do any of us live here? I hate Houston during the summer.

[getaclue]

its like stepping out of a hot shower directly into a blow dryer. especially in the southeast with all the refineries and metal everywhere. alot of trains in houston though.

[rolling nowhere]

its worse in richmond.

va not tx.

its still hot as fuck outside right now.

 

HI I LIKE TRAINS.

[acer910]

its bad in NC too, that and all the rain isnt helping witht he humidity.

 

just thought id let you know...

[dixiebeer]

Major heat wave in Houston. It is HOT and HUMID. Miserable ass summer weather. Why do any of us live here? I hate Houston during the summer.

 

I ask myself the same question about New Orleans. It's like living in a smelter.

[KaBar2]

I know the answer to my problem--GO NORTH IN THE SUMMER, SOUTH IN THE WINTER ---but like an idiot, I choose to have a regular job, to own a home and to suffer half the year in this horrible, hot-ass, humid, shit weather. I bet it has rained every other day for like three weeks. You barely have time for the ground to dry out enough to mow it and it rains AGAIN. Texas sucks a big one in the summer.

[dixiebeer]

t-fest 13-15th, oops you and stupid better make it!