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KaBar

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Now that the weather has turned nice, every train rolling by is calling my name. I haven't been out in 3 years but the old lady says hopping = divorce. I am weighing my options.

 

Grab a camera and get trainhopping flicks alive and well. I have decisions to make, dammit.

 

rolling nowhere, i blame/credit you for my indecision.

 

"if you wanna ride a train why dont you just go get on one? dang." best advice ever :)

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im tired of people asking about it or thinking they need someone to hold their hand or trying to learn how to do it via the www. you just have to get out there and get on a fucking train or dont. do it or dont. its not hard. i k now a lot about trains and i still fuck up and get on the wrong shit and go somewhere i didnt want to go. ive asked people for info on here before about places i havent been to. but when its time to go i put shit in my back pack and get to it. thats what i did the first time. went to a spot i knew from painting it for years. i knew nb trains stopped there. got on one. and went the wrong fucking way!

 

to anyone reading this..if you wanna hop trains..JUST GO! its nice to have someone who has done it going with you but its not necessary at all. people rely on the internet too fucking much. sometimes you just have to learn shit by doiing it. put some actual effort in.

 

GO RIDE TRAINSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

 

im about to go watch trains. yeah. wow. woo.

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Now that the weather has turned nice, every train rolling by is calling my name. I haven't been out in 3 years but the old lady says hopping = divorce. I am weighing my options.

 

Grab a camera and get trainhopping flicks alive and well. I have decisions to make, dammit.

 

rolling nowhere, i blame/credit you for my indecision.

 

"if you wanna ride a train why dont you just go get on one? dang." best advice ever :)

 

youre welcome! hahaha. decisions decisions. going to scope out a new eb catch out spot. potentially a new spot anyway. bug bites here i come!

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Hey I'm new here, I stumbled onto this forum via someone's graff blog. I read about the first 12 pages of this thread (really interesting) before realizing the thread is about 6 times that long. So I'm jumping in without reading the entire thing (but I probably will when I'm bored).

 

I'm wondering what sorts of supplies might be handy to leave for people who are riding the rails.

 

I recently moved near a major train yard and I've noticed a lot of train hoppers around. I came across a spot where people had obviously camped and cooked food. My husband and I went back a few weeks ago and left bottled water, some cans of soup (with pull tabs), breakfast bars and handy-wipes. I haven't been back by to see if it's been discovered and taken yet.

 

It occurred to me the other day that socks might be a good thing to leave as well.

 

What else might come in handy for people traveling the trains?

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Hey I'm new here, I stumbled onto this forum via someone's graff blog. I read about the first 12 pages of this thread (really interesting) before realizing the thread is about 6 times that long. So I'm jumping in without reading the entire thing (but I probably will when I'm bored).

 

I'm wondering what sorts of supplies might be handy to leave for people who are riding the rails.

 

I recently moved near a major train yard and I've noticed a lot of train hoppers around. I came across a spot where people had obviously camped and cooked food. My husband and I went back a few weeks ago and left bottled water, some cans of soup (with pull tabs), breakfast bars and handy-wipes. I haven't been back by to see if it's been discovered and taken yet.

 

It occurred to me the other day that socks might be a good thing to leave as well.

 

What else might come in handy for people traveling the trains?

 

go from here. everything you can learn about train hopping from the internet will be revealed.

http://www.12ozprophet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=55285&page=13

 

and you are correct in that you can never have too many socks. It seems that once you hit the road your feet will never be dry again. A pipcock for water, a can opener, a mini mag flashlight with plenty of batteries, at least a gallon of water and

 

3053762346_e2c4859e65.jpg

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Hey I'm new here, I stumbled onto this forum via someone's graff blog. I read about the first 12 pages of this thread (really interesting) before realizing the thread is about 6 times that long. So I'm jumping in without reading the entire thing (but I probably will when I'm bored).

 

I'm wondering what sorts of supplies might be handy to leave for people who are riding the rails.

 

I recently moved near a major train yard and I've noticed a lot of train hoppers around. I came across a spot where people had obviously camped and cooked food. My husband and I went back a few weeks ago and left bottled water, some cans of soup (with pull tabs), breakfast bars and handy-wipes. I haven't been back by to see if it's been discovered and taken yet.

 

It occurred to me the other day that socks might be a good thing to leave as well.

 

What else might come in handy for people traveling the trains?

 

what yard? im curious... you can send that in the pm zone if you choose to reveal the secret location.

 

socks. yes. socks and more socks. new socks are so nice. i mean i usually have like 2 shirts and a bag of fuckin socks when im on a train. haha.

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Shit, if chick's feeding the strays, a couple of hundred dollar bills can't hurt.

 

But in all seriousness, if you are looking to help a hobo out, just stay out of the jungle, don't bring heat to the catch out. If you are there painting follow the common sense rules about empty cans and trash. That is how you help.

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what yard? im curious...

 

It's the yard in Colton, CA. Inland Empire, socal.

 

The yard is right next to the 10 freeway and there's homeless people at every offramp panhandling the cars that are exiting the freeway. There are camps right next to the freeway/train tracks there, but the spot I left food at isn't one of those. It's a much less visible spot.

 

I've noticed a lot of homeless camps since moving out here. I don't know if it's always been that way or if it's because the economy is so bad out here. (One of the hardest hit areas in the nation as far as drop in home values go, since the real estate bubble burst.)

 

When we dropped off the U-Haul rental truck we used to move, it was early Sunday morning and the place wasn't open yet. There were several people sitting outside waiting for it to open with trash bags full of stuff. I couldn't figure out why a bunch of homeless people were waiting for a U-Haul place to open up, till my husband pointed out there were storage units there. I guess they rent and stay in a storage unit during the day?

 

Sorry I'm as wordy as Kabar. :)

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Shit, if chick's feeding the strays, a couple of hundred dollar bills can't hurt.

 

But in all seriousness, if you are looking to help a hobo out, just stay out of the jungle, don't bring heat to the catch out. If you are there painting follow the common sense rules about empty cans and trash. That is how you help.

 

I can afford a couple packs of socks. Can't do much more.

 

I have a niece that is a homeless drug addict. I can't do anything for her, but I can leave some bottles of water for the homeless kids (20-somethings, probably) I see tramping around.

 

Bringing attention to the spot I found is a good point, though, I'll be careful about that. Judging by all the trash there, it's probably not a commonly used camp, just an out-of-the-way spot to find some shelter.

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It's the yard in Colton, CA. Inland Empire, socal.

 

The yard is right next to the 10 freeway and there's homeless people at every offramp panhandling the cars that are exiting the freeway. There are camps right next to the freeway/train tracks there, but the spot I left food at isn't one of those. It's a much less visible spot.

 

I've noticed a lot of homeless camps since moving out here. I don't know if it's always been that way or if it's because the economy is so bad out here. (One of the hardest hit areas in the nation as far as drop in home values go, since the real estate bubble burst.)

 

When we dropped off the U-Haul rental truck we used to move, it was early Sunday morning and the place wasn't open yet. There were several people sitting outside waiting for it to open with trash bags full of stuff. I couldn't figure out why a bunch of homeless people were waiting for a U-Haul place to open up, till my husband pointed out there were storage units there. I guess they rent and stay in a storage unit during the day?

 

Sorry I'm as wordy as Kabar. :)

 

ive been to/through colton a bunch. i know it well. there are always a bunch of home bums and people riding trains around. a lady friend of mine was waiting for a train there a couple of months ago and some dude rolls up in a truck jerking off and asked if she wanted to make some money. reallll nice place haha.

i hated the place the first time i ended up there. but i kinda like it now.

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If I lived near a hop-out spot, I'd clean up and haul away some of the trash.

 

I've thought about it, actually, but it'd probably take several truck loads. This spot is seriously trashed. I'm not sure how often it's used--I looked around outside for any markings that might be there but didn't notice any. There is some hobo graff inside it:

 

5580405143_07c21127d2.jpg

 

ive been to/through colton a bunch. i know it well. there are always a bunch of home bums and people riding trains around. a lady friend of mine was waiting for a train there a couple of months ago and some dude rolls up in a truck jerking off and asked if she wanted to make some money. reallll nice place haha.

i hated the place the first time i ended up there. but i kinda like it now.

 

Then you'll like this one:

 

5613588546_c9959faa27.jpg

 

The rural areas of the Inland Empire are pretty sketchy places from what I've seen. Colton, Bloomington, Muscoy...it's kinda weird to see dudes riding horses past buildings covered in gang graffiti.

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Dunno if I mentioned this here or not yet but...

 

da2one2.jpg

 

Finished the new issue of Decrepit Americana last month. Get in contact if you wanna look at 48 more pages of photos of hobo monikers and rail art. Guest art by Texican Gothic and the Flying Yankee.

 

I also printed out some copies of the first issue earlier today too... so, if you want that, get at me. Let's trade!

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qsysue--

 

One of the things I hate the most about modern tramps is their shitty attitude about throwing litter and trash on the ground. This wasn't tolerated at all when I was in my twenties (1970s). The adult men riding trains then (guys in their 50s) would not tolerate it, and anybody who threw stuff on the ground in the jungle would be seriously scolded by the older guys. A lot of the adult men riding trains back then were veterans of WWII or Korea. They had learned to ride from even older guys, tramps of the 1930's and 1940s, and those men had an even more hard-ass attitude about misbehavior.

 

One of the biggest differences is that most tramps of the 1930's were regular citizens, workers, skilled workmen, who were on the skids through no fault of their own. They were not hard drinkers or druggies. Most of them were riding trains because the economy was in the tank, and they were looking for work. They had no romantic ideas about freedom, anarchy, "living free" by dumpster-diving or any of that sort of thinking. Well over 60,000 card-carrying members of the Hoboes of America enlisted in the armed forces after Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 and fought during WWII.

 

We had it easy in in the 1970s, because so many Americans had sons, brothers, fathers, uncles, etc. who had "ridden the rods" during the Great Depression and after they were demobilized from the Army after WWII. People thought of us as good boys who were just down on our luck, when in actual fact many young tramps in the 1970's were pot-smoking hippies who were very anti-authority and anti-government.

 

I was an anarchist in the 1960's and 1970's. I held on to those ideas for a long time before I finally realized that I just did not believe that we anarchists were right, and knew in my heart that there is a big difference between "liberty" and "license."

 

"Liberty" means I have the ability to jungle up, but also the obligation to clean up the camp, not break a bunch of laws, and to behave like a civilized human being. Libertarians feel a sense of connectedness and responsibility towards the rest of the world.

 

"License" means that I am an immature, selfish, self-centered slob with a huge sense of entitlement, who thinks that I can behave any way I please regardless of the harm it does to the world and the people around me. People like this think the entire world is their personal toilet and trash dump.

 

"Good tramps keep a clean camp" is exactly it. Doing so is a symbol of one's maturity and character. Shitbirds and yeggs throw trash on the ground and heat up the jungle with stupid crimes.

 

The old hands on this thread are just beyond fed-up with me constantly harping on my little rules, but those rules are good guidelines both for tramping and for life.

 

When I was a kid, things like rolling a tight, even bedroll were very important to many tramps. It was rare to see an old timer with a sloppy-ass, carelessly-rolled bindle. It was considered to be embarrassing evidence of one's lack of professionalism and expertise. The old guys learned to put gear together in the Army. Their bindles were tight, and their gear usually had an orderly, cinched-down, military precision about it.

 

The jungle was run the same way. If there were several people in the jungle, one guy was usually the crumb boss, and his word went. If you wanted to stay there, you did your share of the work--you shagged firewood, hauled water, dug slit trenches or whatever was needed. Shitbirds and jungle buzzards (moochers who refuse to contribute) were given a match. Anybody who was committing crimes to make a living (yeggs, criminals) was given a match. Any streamliners or jackrollers who robbed another tramp (especially an elderly tramp, a woman or a young kid) got a beating. And then they were given a match and told to get off the rails or face the consequences.

 

I never saw anything like this, but I heard stories from the old guys that rapists and murderers were thrown under trains by both the communists and the Wobblies' "Wrecking Crew" in the 1930's. That was how they executed rapists, because it left no evidence of murder. It looked like a railroad accident.

 

By the time I was riding trains, this sort of hard-ass tramp behavior was already gone, and you had hippies, alcoholic losers and dope addicts getting beaten up and robbed, or worse, by thugs and gangs. By then the real Wobblies were mostly in their late 60s or early 70s and had long since stopped riding trains. They never rode for adventure or fun. They rode out of necessity. There were a lot of college kid, armchair revolutionaries who joined the I.W.W. in the 1960s and 1970s. Mostly they were soft-as-pudding wanna-bes.

 

I heard several stories in the 1970's of hippie girls (and boys) getting raped by creeps while riding trains or in jungles. Forty years before there would have been a wide-spread search for the rapos by the tramps themselves. When they found them, they would have lit them up like July 4th.

 

Keep A Clean Camp.

 

Leave No Trace.

 

Do No Damage.

 

Make No Disturbance.

 

Respect Others, Respect Yourself.

 

To Live Outside The Law, You Must Be Honest.

 

The tramp subculture is only a reflection of the greater society. Tramp behavior is poor and self-destructive because our society is morally bankrupt and self-destructive. We cannot re-make society, but we can control our own behavior and take responsibility for our own actions. "Correct thinking, correct action."

 

Good luck, and Godspeed.

 

K-Bar, in Houston

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qsysue--

 

 

 

Keep A Clean Camp.

 

K-Bar, in Houston

 

the spot she is talking about isnt a tramp camp. its a homebum spot straight up. drunks fighting. piles of trash. not really a place id be hanging out at all in colton waiting for a train. she sent it in a pm and i know the spot well.

 

 

a little sidenote....

been just about 9 years since i met kabar. back then i had not really been anywhere on a train. ive been 10's of thousands of miles since then. dont know how many. a lot. everywhere excpt the northeast. i thought i knew shit about trains back then. and i knew more thn your average graffiti faggot but now I KNOW. i knew jack shit bck then. but now i know so much. from riding. and watching. if you want to do this do it now before its too late.

 

750ml of fuckin wisdom. haha

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I've seen young kids (early 20s probably) near that spot with backpacks and I think bedrolls (whatever they had, it wasn't school backpacks, it was traveling by foot for miles backpacks)--just walking by. Twice now. When I saw all the graff that looks like hobo markings inside it I figured it was a tramp spot.

 

"License" means that I am an immature, selfish, self-centered slob with a huge sense of entitlement, who thinks that I can behave any way I please regardless of the harm it does to the world and the people around me. People like this think the entire world is their personal toilet and trash dump.

 

You see a lot of this today. And I don't just mean hobos. Americans in general have this attitude. It's sad.

 

Thanks for the reply Kabar.

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I've seen young kids (early 20s probably) near that spot with backpacks and I think bedrolls (whatever they had, it wasn't school backpacks, it was traveling by foot for miles backpacks)--just walking by. Twice now. When I saw all the graff that looks like hobo markings inside it I figured it was a tramp spot.

 

 

 

You see a lot of this today. And I don't just mean hobos. Americans in general have this attitude. It's sad.

 

Thanks for the reply Kabar.

 

well yeah people riding hang out there sometimes. its just not the spot i would be personally. because ive been by there when drunk ass homebums were probably tryinig to murder each other for a bottle of booze or some bs. there are more discreet places to be for sure. but those dont get discussed on here.

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I was an anarchist in the 1960's and 1970's. I held on to those ideas for a long time before I finally realized that I just did not believe that we anarchists were right, and knew in my heart that there is a big difference between "liberty" and "license."

 

"Liberty" means I have the ability to jungle up, but also the obligation to clean up the camp, not break a bunch of laws, and to behave like a civilized human being. Libertarians feel a sense of connectedness and responsibility towards the rest of the world.

 

"License" means that I am an immature, selfish, self-centered slob with a huge sense of entitlement, who thinks that I can behave any way I please regardless of the harm it does to the world and the people around me. People like this think the entire world is their personal toilet and trash dump.

 

Kabar, I think you are mistaken on what the idea of anarchism actually entails. I count myself as not only an anarchist, but a wobblie (since 2003), and more importantly, a participating member of the working class. It is particularly irritating to me when folks associate anarchism with the type of self-centered indulgence you are talking about. I know plenty of kids who use anarchism as an excuse to justify their pathetic sense of entitlement, and that really pisses me off. Anarchism is dependent on community, cooperation, and self-accountability...essentially everything you are talking about in your post. I can respect you not agreeing with the particulars of it, but don't tell me anarchism is "license", and don't tell me that all these scumfucks are anarchists. It's disrespectful to those who are actually trying to build a functioning community, and misleading to those who might want to know more about it.

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a little sidenote....

been just about 9 years since i met kabar. back then i had not really been anywhere on a train. ive been 10's of thousands of miles since then. dont know how many. a lot. everywhere excpt the northeast. i thought i knew shit about trains back then. and i knew more thn your average graffiti faggot but now I KNOW. i knew jack shit bck then. but now i know so much. from riding. and watching. if you want to do this do it now before its too late.

 

750ml of fuckin wisdom. haha

 

"If I knew now what I knew when I was 18 I'd be a genius."

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Scaryletters--

 

If you know much about the IWW, you know that it was formed in 1905 when the Western Federation of Miners amalgamated with other unions to form America's first industrial union, (as opposed to trade unions or craft unions.) The IWW preceded the Communist Party USA (1919) and the Communist Labor Party (1919), both of which formed within the Socialist Party. The IWW took the position that mass action ("direct action at the point of production") was far more effective than party building and politics. The anarchist movement, mainly through the International Workingmen's Association (1864, in London) had been sending organizers all over the world, and some of them wound up in the WFM and other unions. When the IWW was formed, probably close to a hundred of the founding members were anarchists or held very anarchist-like ideas as radical trade unionists.

 

Adopting a simple slogan "An injury to One is an Injury to All", the early Wobs accepted new members in a straight card-for-card swap. Later, in the 1930s, their policy changed out of economic necessity, and they allowed "two-carding" or "two-ducat membership".

 

I joined the IWW in 1971. We formed a group in Houston made up of old timers, like Blackie Vaughn and Gilbert Mers and Fred Hansen (all deceased now) and a handfull of young student radicals and anarchists. The "kids", as Blackie called us, did the leg work and the old guys did the thinking. We never succeeded in organizing a shop in Houston. The last IWW shop in Houston was the Houston Belt & Terminal Railway shop in 1954. There was a Marine Transport Workers Union (IU 510, if memory serves) earlier than that that helped organize the early National Maritime Union rhat broke the back of the gangster-controlled International Seaman's Union (I think) on the Gulf Coast. That was a particularly bloody fight. One of the Wobblies killed in that fight is buried in Evergreen Cemetary in Houston. His grave faces east, towards the back fence of the old Hughes Tool Company. We used to go tend it, way back in the day.

 

Our biggest effort was an attempt to get a group going in Todd Shipyards. At one point there were five of us in the shipyard, but we never made a dent. We ran four Wobblies through their welding school though, and I made a living for years as a welder.

 

Blackie Vaughn hopped trains all through the Great Depression. He crushed a couple of toes under a train wheel and amputated them in the jungle, using whiskey as anesthesia and a pocket knife sterilized by passing it through the fire. He got arrested at strikes about fifty times, at least, and was somewhat crippled up in his old age from getting beaten by the police.

 

Fred Hansen told me about a longshore strike where they attacked scabs with cotton hooks. When they requested support for the HB&TR strike a Wobbly showed up with a .45 Thompson submachinegun and a tow sack full of pistols.

 

I met Warren Billings (of Mooney and Billings fame) in Los Angeles in 1974. He did 25 years in San Quentin for the Preparedness Day Bombing in San Francisco in 1919. He told me he didn't do that one, but that he had done over 300 bombings for the Ironworkers Union AFL. Tom Mooney died in prison about 1924.

 

Carl Keller did 24 years in San Quentin for "criminal syndicalism" for organizing for the IWW.

 

Gilbert Mers was a late comer. He was a Communist until the late 1950's, and then joined the IWW.

 

Compare these guys with the Wobblies you know. The tree huggers that run the IWW today aren't fit to tie these men's shoes. And I wasn't either.

 

Eventually, I became an organizer and later, a member of the GEB, and then Chair of the Industrial Organizing Committee. We never got shit accomplished. I ran all over the U.S. and Canada, and all that work was completely fruitless. I finally quit and decided to try and actually make a living instead of "playing Wobbly." The working class doesn't want to be saved, Fellow Worker. They just don't give a shit as long as they have a widescreen and xbox.

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Hello. Thank you for everything you have all put into this. Does anybody have any tips on catching out from Bakerfield, CA to Boston, MA?? I'm between semesters at law school and I need something like this to keep life real. I know you guys have logged a lot of miles and hours... and I realize I need to put in my time, as well, and I do have time to get lost a little bit, but I was wondering if I could learn from any of your guys' mistakes or wisdom on this ride. Thank you.

 

-R. Supertramp

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