Hobos, Tramps and Homeless Bums

[net pi]

homeless nyc cats

 

someone post flicks of tags on homeless cats....ive caught quite a few tags on some homeless cats in my day. its fun. just ask them, sometimes they say yes.most of the time no. thats just my personal experience with it. the trick is to find a really dirty homeless cat. most of the time the really dirty ones dont deny you a tag. sometimes i catch them sleeping on the train and i do it. even just regular looking people sleeping on the train. usually ones who are assed-out from drinking and they missed their stop and they wake up at the end of the line. i truly love doing that shit. net one pi nwc ftr bs tv 2009;)

[KaBar]

And you guys thought that the milk of human kindness and a decent respect for your fellow man was threatening to make graff all soft and civilized. Shit, no chance of that.

[Weapon X]

Re: homeless nyc cats

 

Originally posted by net pi

someone post flicks of tags on homeless cats....ive caught quite a few tags on some homeless cats in my day. its fun. just ask them, sometimes they say yes.most of the time no. thats just my personal experience with it. the trick is to find a really dirty homeless cat. most of the time the really dirty ones dont deny you a tag. sometimes i catch them sleeping on the train and i do it. even just regular looking people sleeping on the train. usually ones who are assed-out from drinking and they missed their stop and they wake up at the end of the line. i truly love doing that shit. net one pi nwc ftr bs tv 2009;)

 

if i ever caught someone doing that, i'd skull fuck them with my fist and enjoy it.

[tdoter]

once i payed a hobo five bucks and i dida bomb on hie body, it was funny cuz he walked around for like a year with this bomb on his pants and coats, trust me, bomb a bum, its instant fame, hardy har bump

[Guest imported_b0b]

Question for KaBar

 

KaBar

 

I enjoy reading all your posts and have a few requests for info:

 

How do hobos/tramps deal with personal hygene (sp?) without access to water? Any products that are useful or tricks?

 

Have you ever had to resort to eating wild plants? If so which ones and any favorite recipes? Infact a jungle cookbook would be interesting.

 

And finally more info on hobo/jungle ettiquette would be fascinating, more stuff like the 'being given a match means leave' sort of stuff.

 

Thanks

 

^^

 

Edit:

 

I thought I had printed off the entire thread, but only the first page printed (that alone was 7 sides of paper) Sorry if these topics have been covered already. Am now reading the rest of the thread to see.

[KaBar]

Crazeeb0b

 

Sad to say, most modern tramps panhandle and eat at Burger King and places like that. Very, very few live a life sophisticated enough to involve eating edible native plants, except maybe a few of the hard-core Earth First! anarcho-ecology types, and I doubt most of them know enough to do it safely.

 

There is a very good book about a guy that did this (and died in Alaska) called "Into The Wild." I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU READ IT if you are contemplating trying this. Exactly as you say, he was surviving fine, until he accidentally ate the wrong plant, one that looked EXACTLY like a safe one, illustrated in his wild edible plants book.

 

Tramp ettiquette is a complicated topic, and a lot of people riding trains are just clueless dumbasses who don't know or care about what happened last week, much less a hundred years ago. Conyers book, "Rolling Nowhere" covers this pretty good.

 

If you want to ride, find yourself an older, experienced tramp and ride with him for a while. You'll learn a shitload of info in a week that would take me six months to write down.

[Guest imported_b0b]

KaBar

 

I'm from England and can't ride as we don't have a fr8 system anywhere like yours. People hitch-hike instead.

 

Still you must have some jungle recipes for us, or least some seasoning you never travel without?

[KaBar]

Seasoning?

 

Crazeeb0b---You don't want to stay over there. It's cold as shit in the winter, and there's no good hopping. Scrape together a stake and Jump the Pond. Come ride some freight trains. You don't live anywhere near London do you? I used to know a bunch of really first-rate anarchists who were part of Cienefuegos Press and Black Flag. Of course, that was about twenty-five years ago and more. Ever heard of the Kate Sharpton Library?

 

Yes, there are some culinary favorites, of course. Like I said above^^^, most tramps just eat at Burger King or MacDonald's. But some of the old hands still do things the old way. We had a first-rate mulligan stew up at Britt this year (the Boy Scouts in Britt cook 500 gallons every year, and serve it up for free.) The hard-core guys, like the FTRA, are likely to go with steaks and whiskey. They seem curiously wealthy, for tramps. Curiously well-armed, too.

 

I enjoy making stew once in a while. The ritual of making mulligan was formed around having quite a few guys to help find the ingredients. Mulligan traditionally starts with beef chunks, if you've got it, but any sort of meat (chicken, pork, goat, sausage, whatever) will do the job. Traditional mulligan includes any root vegetable (potatoes, rutabagas, carrots, turnips), cabbage, onions, bell peppers, beans, tomato sauce, pasta like macaroni, some corn starch, and seasonings. The whole point of mulligan is that "anything that you happen to have" will make a meal. The more people you have in the crowd, generally the more pasta goes in the pot.

 

Being a former Marine, the one condiment that I take everywhere is Louisiana Tabasco Sauce. Any kind of hot sauce will do in a pinch, but I prefer, most of all, "Scorned Woman" Hot Sauce from Georgia. ("Hotter than a scorned woman.")

 

Stews and soups are popular with tramps becauise the clean-up is usually simple. Recipes that stick to the pot are not popular.

 

I covered "personal hygiene" a little farther up the stack. To tell you the truth, tramps are pretty grimy, especially after a couple of weeks on the road. I have bathed out of a 5-gallon plastic bucket many a time. Most of the old guys wear a beard, so no shaving is necessary. The guys I rode with bathed pretty often (maybe once a week, or whenever we stopped somewhere near a river) and washed clothes when they could. In the winter, that means waiting until you have a washing machine or a laudromat available. When you can get a bath, but have no clean clothes, you wear your cleanest clothes next to your skin, and the most soiled clothes on the outside. If you only have a small amount of water available, you wash your hands, your face and your ass, in that order. I have bathed "out of a canteen cup" before. It was better than nothing, but we still smelled pretty bad. That's life on the trains. You are going to get pretty grubby.

[Guest imported_b0b]

KaBar

 

Many thanks for your response. The mulligan stew really reminds me of a recipe I saw from Flavor Flav. All these hip-hop stars were asked for their favorite recipes for some charity book and Flav's was Flav's Special Rice. Basically it was you boil up a load of rice and chop up whatever vegetables you got and chuck them in. Simple as that. I guessed most tramps would rock the "one-pot" dinners.

[Hank Parker]

Originally posted by Fox Mulder

Kabar, when sleeping on the ground do you ever worry about animals? Snakes(would be attracted by heat) and bears/coyotes(being attracked by the smell of food)?

 

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You pussy. "Snakes? Oh my no, get it away". Sorry Fox you sounded too gay. It's cool bro. Hey I'm hopping on friday probably just for the day. We might just take a local and have our friend in that city pick us up. We've got shit to do this weekend so no long rides.

[KaBar]

I'm Actually Amazed

 

That this thread and this topic have lasted so long and been as popular as it is. It's not a very complicated subject, really. The longer I hang out in hobo jungles and the longer I am interested in hopping and tramp life, the more critical that carrying a very light load becomes. It is so easy to adopt the "Everything and the kitchen sink" mode when hopping. One way to avoid this is to keep all your possessions limited to a short list and to substitute knowledge and resourcefulness for equipment.

 

In the Marine Corps, we were provided what was called an "issue" of equipment. We were supposed to bring all that crap with us whenever we went into the field. Basic issue in the Corps is a 66 lb. combat load, including full canteens, rifle, full magazines for one's weapon, two bandoleers of ammunition, helmet, flak jacket, ALICE pack (today's Marines carry the MOLLE pack system,) entrenching tool (E-tool --folding shovel,) bayonet, pistol belt, combat suspenders, magazine pouches, First Aid kit, poncho, poncho liner or sleeping bag, three meals, Field Protective Mask (gas mask) and carrier, sleeping bag cover, and foam sleeping pad. (Water and ammunition are the two heaviest categories of supplies in a Marine infantryman's combat load.)

 

Combat load is calculated in light of "available combat support." In other words, the reason you only carry two full 1-quart canteens is that the Marine Corps will provide you with enough water by heli-borne, air resupplied "water bo's" (water tanker trailers). Each man only carries full magazines and two bandoleers of rifle ammo, plus two cans of machinegun ammo because a fifty billion dollar logistical train is lifting ammo to you from a Navy resupply ship. If the Corps screwed up somehow and you did not get the basic re-supply (water, ammo and rations) every day or so, you would be in a world of shit rather shortly--i.e. out of water and out of ammo. Either way, you're dead.

 

Tramps are faced with a similar (although less dramatic) choice. Either you carry enough water, food, etc. with you to ENSURE that you do not run out, or you assume that you are going to get to somewhere where you can get water (or food, or warm clothes, etc.) If you do not ABSOLUTELY KNOW FOR SURE where your train is going or stopping, you must assume that no provisions are going to be available.

 

I'm one of those guys that likes his comforts, and I tend to travel way too heavy. This problem can be ameliorated somewhat if you are hopping with a crew. You don't need four lightweight camping stoves, just one. One guy carries the stove, somebody else carries the stove fuel. Whenever you can share the burden with another able-bodied, trustworthy person, you should do so. Traveling with a woman, or a much physically weaker male, apportion the load out so that each is carrying a load appropriate to his or her stamina, strength and experience.

 

In the Marines, this is done by corporals and sergeants. You don't get to decide what you will carry or what you will not carry. If the corporal tells you to pick up the machinegun (26 pounds), you pick it up, regardless of the fact that it's "not yours." It's yours to carry because the sergeant said so. End of discussion. The flip side of this is that you may be proud of being the squad's 0331 (machinegunner) but if the squad leader tells you to hand off the gun, you hand off the gun just as you are told to do.

 

It is definately possible to get separated when hopping. This is another good reason to apportion out the load. If one guy is carrying all the water, and he stumbles and screws the pooch on the catch-out, YOU are the one with no water, not him. Everybody should have their own basic gear. A one-gallon water jug, two-blankets in a bindle or an inexpensive sleeping bag, a decent pair of boots with a pronounced heel, leather gloves, a couple of cheap bandana handkerchiefs, a jacket or coat and a cap or hat of some kind is really the absolute minimum of equipment. Anybody with less equipment than that is really risking dehydration and exposure.

I would add a medium ALICE pack without the frame or some other type of DURABLE rucksack, some food, and a gunboat. The more stuff you add, the heavier it gets. Twenty-five pounds is supposed to be the maximum weight for ALL equipment. It's not easy to carry what you need and stay under that limit.

[KaBar]

Ka-Bump

 

bump bump

[effyoo]

Heh.

 

Bunp, I mean Bumo, I mean BUMP!

[Fox Mulder]

Originally posted by Hank Parker

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You pussy. "Snakes? Oh my no, get it away". Sorry Fox you sounded too gay. It's cool bro. Hey I'm hopping on friday probably just for the day. We might just take a local and have our friend in that city pick us up. We've got shit to do this weekend so no long rides.

 

so what if i have an irrational fear of stepping on a snake?

[Guest cheesecurd]

Originally posted by xhobox

in the cn yard in milwaukee there used to be a big one... the one that's under the interstates by the harbor... it was almost like a city inside a city back in the day... but things have changed...

 

catching out in that place isn't hard... there's always a train leaving... you probably wouldn't want to paint there though because of the traffic...

 

I seen them in milwaukee along the river on the cp tracks by potawatamie...it's easier to spot em at night with their cooking fires.

[Guest SIVIK]

Yo kabar that was a very interesting post.

[KaBar]

Thanks, Sivik

 

I'd like to hear whatever you've got to say about trainhopping in Australia. I've heard that it is extremely difficult, but it doesn't seem like it should be. What would make trainhopping more difficult in Australia than here? Is it some kind of major felony or something?

 

If you enjoyed the post about deliberately limiting one's equipment footprint, you might enjoy some of the earlier posts.

 

I've recently read several posts on Trainhoppers.com and on the Tourist Union #63 web site that compare hopping to a military operation, replete with pre-operational recconnaisance, map recconnaisance, rally points, assembly points, communication protocols, signals (radio) recconnaisance, objective rally points and so forth.

 

Frankly, I think all this shit is way too complicated and formal for most tramps, but to tell you the honest truth, when I hop, I make an op plan just like I did when I was a Marine sergeant. Before I ever go to the train yard, I (informally) do most of the above. I use the normal Marine Corps Five-Paragraph Order as a handy way to insure success.

 

SMEAC

 

a.) Situation

1. Enemy

2. Friendlies

3. Attachments

 

b.) Mission

c.) Execution

d.) Administration and Logistics

e.) Command & Communication

 

Bizarre as it may seem, I use standard Marine Corps organizational acronyms and tactical organizational outlines for a lot of things in my life. It's easy to remember (I already know it), it's a proven way of conducting business, and it is combat tested. What more could one ask of a philosophy for overcoming adversity?

 

How about this one for catching out at night?

 

Infiltration Techniques

 

A. Purposes of infiltration

1.) to avoid detection

2.) to surprise the enemy

3.) to avoid losses

4.) Used when movement by combat rushes is not practical

 

B.Day infiltration

1.) Move by crawling

a.) Lie flat, keeping head, ankles and elbows on the ground.

b.) Head, abdomen, chest, arms, knees and ankles touch the ground at all times.

c.) Pull one leg forward and push. Extend one arm to feel and guide.

d.) Carry rifle by grasping upper sling swivel and allowing it to ride across forearm, with operating handle up.

2.) Obstacles

a.) Go around, rather than over, where possible.

b.) Place body alongside and parallel with obstacle grasping weapon at balance, slide it over obstacle. Slide one leg over, avoiding letting it fly into the air, use other leg and arm to push body over, dropping off obstacle between weapon and obstacle. Do NOT roll off onto your back.

3.) Barbed Wire

a.) Roll over on back

b.) Place weapon at center of body, operating handle DOWN.

c.) Move under wire by rocking slightly on shoulders and pushing with outsides of feet. Keep knees down.

d.) If necessary, use weapon to hold wire up

e.) NEVER jerk or pull wire. It may be booby tapped, or hooked to a surveillance system.

4.) Trenches and Ditches

a.) Turn fighting side parallel to ditch (note: if you are right-handed, your "fighting side" is your right side, if left-handed, your left side. Sergeants try to place people in movement formation so that right-handed Marines are on the left side, with their weapons pointed "outboard" i.e., to the left of the direction of travel; and left-handed Marines on the right side, with their weapons pointed "outboard", i.e. to the right side of the direction of travel.)

b.) Feel with hand for booby-traps or mines.

c.) Slide quickly into ditch.

d.) Come out of ditch at a different position, after having selected route and position and next direction of travel.

e.) Slide weapon out to arm's length, slide one leg out, keeping body flat on ground (riverbank), pull entire body from the ditch.

5.) Night Infiltration

a.) Avoid obstacles whenever possible.

1.) Usually covered by enemy fire

2.) May have noise-making devices or booby traps.

b.) When you must investigate and pass through obstacles, MOVE CAUTIOUSLY AND WITH STEALTH.

1.) When approaching wire, stay low to silhouette it against the sky.

2.) At night, you may be able to cross over wire more quietly than crawling under.

3.) If you must cut wire or fences, work in a team to prevent the ends of the cut strand from recoiling noisily into the barbed-wire entanglement.

4.) Learn to cut wire silently, and only when ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY..

 

Now, obviously, one will not be crawling under any barbed-wire with a rifle. But the principles are sound.

[effyoo]

^^ Good info, If sure that alot of this will come in handy for alot of people. I know I'll put it to good use.

[KaBar]

Britt Mulligan Stew

 

A few posts up the stack^^^, we were talking about favorite recipes and condiments. I happened to run across the original recipe for Britt Mulligan Stew on the net. Here it is:

 

BRITT MULLIGAN STEW

 

450 pounds of Beef, 900 pounds of potatoes, 250 pounds of carrots, 35 pounds of green peppers, 300 pounds of cabbage, 100 pounds of turnips, 10 pounds of parsnips, 150 pounds of tomatoes, 20 pounds of hot chili peppers, 25 pounds of rice, 60 pounds of celery, 1 pound of Bay leaves, 24 gallons of mixed vegetables, 10 pounds of Kitchen Bouquet flavoring. Serve with 400 loaves of bread.

 

Brown kitchen stew chunk-cut beef in the bottoms of thirty clean 55-gallon drums that were cut in half with an acetylene torch (medially, not longditudinally) with a re-bar steel handle welded to each side facilitate pot-handling. Fire the pots over fifteen cooking racks made of welded steel angle-iron, each equipped with a burner fashioned from 1/2" gas pipe with 1/8" drilled holes spaceed 1-1/2" apart. Propane cooking gas will be acceptable, or regular natural gas. In a serious pinch, wood fires would work nicely.

 

While the beef is browning, have several Boy Scouts or young hobos stir the pots with large wooden ladles made of planks, to discourage sticking.

Wash, peel and chop potatoes, scrape and chop carrots, chop peppers, celery and cabbage into pieces small small enough to ladle.

 

Once meat is nicely browned, divide the other ingredients more-or-less equally (mind the chili peppers) and cover with potable tap water. Bring to a rolling boil, add rice and Bouquet flavoring, salt and pepper to Cook's taste. Boil hard for fifteen minutes, then cut heat back to just enough to keep pot bubbling. Stir as required, do not let the bottom stick. Cook at least four to five hours before beginning to serve.

 

Serves 5,000.

[KaBar]

Ka-Bump

 

I don't know what it is about this thread. It's a character flaw, without question, but I just don't want to see "my baby" get scrolled off into Cyber-nowhere.

[eli b]

this is perhaps one of the most in-depth and interesting things i have read on a messageboard in a long time. i am interested in reading more. why don't you write a book? i would buy it in a heartbeat...

[KaBar]

Eli B

 

Everybody keeps saying that. I really should, just for you guys. Actually, I'm working on a screenplay--I've got over 70 pages, it takes a long time because I vacillate about stuff. You wouldn't believe how misgivings about important major issues can screw you up as the plot progresses. For instance, I agonized over whether or not to make a main character an 11-1/2 year old boy (sort of me, as a little kid) or whether to make him a young teenager (maybe like 16, and he could be played by a very young-looking 18-year-old actor.) In the first case, I'm writing the screenplay that I want to write. And in the second, I'm writing a movie that I could actually shoot "by myself." That is, without Hollywood--an indie.

 

I am a devoted aficianado of "outlaw" digital video film. You get a combat-ready camera, something tough that can take a good deal of getting knocked around without damage (something like a combat photographer would use) and a fearless sound man, and two or three actors, and a good script, and you just go out and fucking make a movie.

 

With the right crew, I could probably shoot my movie for less than $10,000. Maybe $20,000 max, and most of that would be processing, fees for professional sound processing and so on.

[KaBar]

STRETCH IS IN TOWN

 

My buddy Stretch, from Cleveland, OH, and his famous trainhopping dog, Burlington, blew into town yesterday from Shreveport, LA. He's been on the road 5-1/2 days from Amory, MS, the site of the Amory Railroad Days and the First Opener Hobo Gathering of the year (2003) in April. It runs between April 9th and the 13th. The town of Amory is a cool little town, and very hobo-tolerant, but, like at Britt, DO NOT HIT STUFF IN TOWN. Get caught and they will have a very bad attitude with you in jail.

Stretch called me yesterday morning from a Dairy Queen in Humble, Texas (just north of Houston about 20 miles) and said "Hey, we're here, but our train went in the hole up here in Humble and we've been sitting here 2-1/2 hours. You want to come up and get us?" I jumped up, put on my clothes, called in sick, and drove up and got him and Burl.

For a tramp, Stretch carries more goddamned gear than anybody I know. His pack (no exaggeration) is at least 75 pounds. He has three sleeping bags (Northern hobos carry what's called a "Montana bindle"--a whole lot of bedrolls, tents and shit,) a tent, a tarp that he rigs over the tent, several gallons of water, a ton of food ("I ate those big cans of Spaghettios first--they were breaking my back,") cooking gear, a pressurized gasoline stove, a tool kit and a mountain of pretty ripe ECW cold weather gear, complete with homemade boot inserts ("I cut them out of one of those foam sleeping mats and glued them to some Dr. Scholl's inserts,") insulated snow pak boots, Arctic-quality gloves and insulated Minnesota-style coveralls. ("I'm an outdoors kind of guy.") Boy, let me tell you, that's no shit. Stretch and Burl can set up camp in a blizzard without a care in the world. ("It was -15 one time and we were riding in the open. That was pretty cold.")

 

We rode all over Houston checking out jungles and looking at various Yards ("Hey, I recognize that headquarters shack! I got arrested here four or five years ago. They put me in handcuffs and took me to the guard shack, but then they let me go with a warning.") and eventually, after looking at what was available ("No, I ain't going to Congress Yard downtown. It's too tramped out.") he decided on my jungle. We went and got groceries, water, dog food and a half-rack of Busch and then went to the jungle and set up. We built a fire and I hung around drinking beer and telling war stories about hopping, but I've got to work today, so I split at midnight. He and Burl are up there this morning probably checking out the dumpster-diving opportunities.

 

I wanted to catch out SO FUCKING BAD, but I didn't. I'm a good little soldier---off to work I go.

[KaBar]

I heard from my buddy, Tex

 

He says he's living in the mission in east Texas, because the Longview police have burned his camp three times since January 1st. Seems like to me maybe that east Texas is no longer as tolerant of tramps as it once was.

 

I can understand them getting pushy if you were jungled up in town and causing a problem, but if you are out in the sticks and minding your own business, what's the stress about? I think there's not enough real crime in Longview to keep the cops busy, so they have a lot of extra time to bother with burning down hobo camps and worrying about people who live outdoors. What's next? Closing the border in California to "vagrants?" It's like a Woody Guthrie tune or something.

 

 

"California's the Garden of Eden,

a paradise to live in or to see,

but believe it or not,

you won't find it so hot,

if you ain't got the do-re-mi."

[KaBar]

Spent the Weekend kicking it with Stretch

 

We spent the weekend in the jungle, and man, it was cold--went down to 40 on Saturday night. (I'm sure this is amusing to you guys up north, but winter in Houston usually means weather around 50 degrees or so.) We just laid around camp, keeping the jungle fire burning, playing with the dog and watching trains. Drank up a case of beer. I am SOLD on MSR gasoline stoves. Stretch has one, and man, that is a first-class piece of gear. I'm going to have to retire my Svea stove and get one of those. We went dumpster diving Sunday morning, and then went and got Stretch a bus pass so he can get around Houston without having to walk. Burlington stays in camp, guarding Stretch's gear. That's the smartest dog I ever saw in my life.

[baLLeRplAyA]

whoowee!!!! obsess much?!?!?

[HUH?]

kabar i read a few pages back that you were a welder.what type?i am a welder also an i am jus fixin to bust out workin.did you go to any trade schools or what not? i jus finished with mine.i am jus curious to what kind of welding you do.also what type of metal fumes gives you cancer?i have never heard of that.

[KaBar]

Huh

 

I'm not a welder by trade anymore, but I did make my living that way on and off from 1973 or so, when I attended Todd Shipyards Welding School here in Houston, until 1995, when I graduated from nursing school. It is a trade that consistently pays a living wage, but you'll never get rich working for wages. Even a "good union job," which I never managed to land, even though I think I worked pretty hard at it, doesn't usually pay more than about $13 or $14 a hour, unless you are such a good welder you can pass the Nuclear Facilities x-ray welding tests. Those jobs paid up into the mid-$20 range back in the day. Probably more, now.

 

MY SUGGESTION is that if you try welding and you enjoy it (I actually enjoyed it, up to a point) MANUFACTURE SOMETHING TO SELL to others. You take steel, like pipe, channel, flatbar, roundbar, I-beam, etc. and create something of value that enhances the desireability of the "raw" materials. One of the most lucrative "redneck technology" businesses I ever saw was the airboat manufacturing business in Orange, Texas. They have two first-class wire-feed aluminum MIG welders there that are building some beautifully welded aluminum airboat hulls. Of course, the welders are working for wages, but if they can build airboats for their boss, they could build airboats for themselves.

Owning a general service mobile-welding business is a tough way to make a living. You are scrambling all the time to make ends meet. It has a lot in common with owning a tow-truck wrecker service.

Another good low-tech, "redneck rechnology" manufacturing business is building welded-steel barbeque pits and wood stoves for deer camps, etc. To build a wood stove to be placed in someone's home, it must be engineered and UL certified as fire-safe, otherwise, it voids the fire insurance on the house. You need to be real careful, because some idiot burns down his house with one of your wood stoves, then he sues you and says you built it wrong. (Nobody can take responsibility for themselves any more.)

Arc welding and oxy-acetylene gas welding both give off fumes and particulate smokes and dusts that are harmful, but arc welding is the most dangerous. Never weld in an enclosed space (like a tank car or oil storage tank) It's dangerous from both a smoke viewpoint and also a suffocation oxygen-deprived viewpoint. Always ENSURE that you have good forced-air ventilation. An open hatch won't do the job, you need a blower or at least an air hose. I welded for years with nothing more than a dust mask under my welding hood, but this was idiocy. I didn't know any better. Wear a double-filter Mine Safety respirator. They make special welding hoods to fit them. You only get one set of lungs.

All manner of welding rods give off carcinogens (shit that causes cancer), but the mud rods like 7016 and 7018, that contain a lot of manganese and stainless steel electrodes like E-308-15s contain a LOT of chromium and nickle. These heavy metals are absolutely bad for you. How many years of welding it takes to give a guy lung cancer I can't say, but the less of that shit you inhale, the better. If you are a welder, I would suggest you don't smoke cigarettes. Don't wear a beard, and always use a good double-filter respirator.

It's hard on your eyes, too. NEVER weld or tack without a hood. Check your lens every time you remove your hood or drop it, to see if the lens cracked. You'll check it a million times and it will be fine, and the one time you forget to check, it will be cracked and you'll BURN THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR EYES.

It's a tough way to make a living, but a very handy skill to know. Be careful about fire. I always worked with a helper and a fire extinguisher close by.

[KaBar]

Tex is in town too

 

We went up to Longview and picked him up at the Highway 80 Rescue Mission and came back down to Houston. He and Stretch and Burlington are all jungled up, up there near my favorite yard. I'm tired, that was a pretty long drive. We camped in Rusk, and took a look at the Texas State Railroad yards and facilities. It would be fun holding a tramp gathering there.

[dosoner]

Re: Cool

 

Originally posted by KaBar

BTW, I liked Conover's book, "Rolling Nowhere," too. Read both, but take them both with a grain of salt. Littlejohn sugarcoats hopping, but Conover makes it sound too bleak and depressing and pointless. It's sort of a cross between the two. Some bad, some good. Check it out, you'll see.

 

 

 

"Rolling Nowhere" is great, i read it cover to cover yesterday, it kept me pretty intrested for pretty much every page.