The caboose

by Forrest Whitman

This column is dedicated to two Colorado Central readers I ran into in a Salida coffee house. They tell me they are planning to go hoboin’ this fall. This column might prove useful to them. I love hearing hobos spin yarns, at least when they are fairly sober. I had an uncle who was a hobo for a while. He’s gone off to the big Rock Candy Mountain now, but at least some of his information is still good today. My recollections from my own time on the rails as a brakeman is dated, but possibly useful. I’ve also interviewed four hobos out there right now so some of this column is hot off the rails. If it’s of no use, well as the hobos say, “What the hell; it’s free isn’t it?”

Where did all the hobos go?

Our two newbie hobos will have their choice of empty box cars. There are fewer of the “kings of the shining rails” out there these days. Hobos themselves have various theories about where all the hobos have gone. Some of their ideas sound pretty crazy, but you never know. The youngest hobo I interviewed is sure the yard bulls in Salt Lake City have captured hobos there and sent them to a secret camp in the desert where they work in tunnels. He was in the army, he says, but is now on the lam from a hospital in Illinois. There he caught a freight west after going over the back fence. His theories are hazy and he does drink, but we all have our theories.

“Super Chief” Sam has some more coherent theories. Sam is about my age, a bit on the more mature side. In fact, hobos I see these days are often older guys. The hobo life is just not what it was back when my uncle could proclaim that he was a true hobo, a true knight of the shining rails. “It’s a harder game now,” says Sam. He listed three reasons for the vanishing hobo (his three points came out in the course of an hour ramble about places he’s visited and women he once knew and fights in Mexican bars). First, people forget that hobos are not bums. Hobos will work from time to time and they will settle down in one place sometimes for a week or so. True, they can often be found in soup kitchens or at the “Sally” (Salvation Army) or the “Willie,” but other times they can be found at the temporary work places. Unfortunately, the cops think of hobos as bums and can hassle them. Second, hobos normally will not steal. They will dumpster dive and will accept a beer from an aspiring journalist, but stealing: “not so much.” Third, most of the major rail yards now are lousy with railroad bulls who sometimes will haul hobos in these days. “That’s why I’m talking with you out in these mountains where we can look down on Denver, not be down in it. I wanna get through there and on my way east.” There are other theories, but Sam’s sounds good to me.

Rail mergers bad for hobos

I got to thinking that Super Chief Sam was a good information source, but I had trouble with one of his facts. He is sure those hot shot freights he used to love to ride on the old Santa Fe from “Hutch” Kansas to Albuquerque and on to the west cost are now gone. “No freights on there at all now.”says Sam. The absence of mixed freights is, of course, bad news for hobos. The Union Pacific, for instance, runs mostly coal drags between Denver and Grand Junction. The BNSF got trackage rights there under some sort of anti-trust agreement, but they only run a couple of mixed trains a day. Those BNSF trains are good for hobos, featuring empty box cars and even some side enclosed auto carriers. The rest of the trains are mostly U.P. Coal cars. You can ride a coal car, but it’s a drag.

No Super Chief to Colorado Central Country?

I did not believe Sam. No freights on the old main line of the Santa Fe Railroad! Well, confirmation comes from the office of our U.S. Senator, Mark Udall. Since the merger of the Santa Fe and the Burlington, all the freight runs from Hutchinson down through Amarillo, Texas to Albuquerque. No freight is left running over Glorietta Pass and Raton Pass and on down to Lamy (the stop for Santa Fe) and Albuquerque. Fortunately, the AMTRAK version of the Super Chief still makes that gorgeous run. Readers of Colorado Central will be happy to know that our closest AMTRAK stop, one I’ve used, is still operating at Trinidad. In fact, normally around 340 passengers board on that 281 mile segment the BNSF has abandoned for freight. The Colorado congressional delegation, or at least most of them, will fight to keep this AMTRAK service open. That doesn’t help out hobos though. Sam, after all, was named for this route. He’ll have to go through Amarillo now.

Careful in the Moffat tunnel

The other two hobos I interviewed for this article are less “full time” than Sam. They both work more or less regularly on the western slope and in California’s Central Valley when casual jobs are open. They are true hobos though, and own only what’s on their backs. In the winter they head for Arizona and used to catch the Mexican fruit cars (empties down, full back) before the border got so hot. They’ve often gone through the Moffat tunnel. It is the only way through the Rockies. “Just keep your bandanna wet and over your face and you’ll be fine.” is their advice. I worry about that though. A couple of years ago a brakeman went down in that tunnel when his train got stopped in there. It’s a long tunnel. There are fans, but diesel exhaust can build up fast. These two hobos don’t let little things like that bother them I guess. I hope our two new hobos will be careful.

A book to read before you go

A pretty good source of information is Ted Conover’s Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America’s Hobos. It’s still in print and any of our local bookstores could order it. In fact, I once saw it on the shelf up in Leadville at the Book Mine and also at The Book Haven in Salida. Unfortunately it was written over ten years ago and a lot has changed for hobos since then. Back in my brakeman days we’d never bother the hobos. Their life seemed a heck of a lot like our own. We all smelled about the same, were as cold in the winter and as hot in the summer. We often had a few beers in the same spots, too (sometimes waiting for 8:00 a.m. in the line). That was the railroad Conover wrote about.

Today train crews are under the gun to report hobos to the bulls. Now container cars are replacing the friendly old box cars, and local cops sometimes shag out the hobo jungles. Worse, well-meaning authorities sometimes trap hobos and make them go to classes for the homeless and take showers. Heck, they aren’t homeless, the railroad is their home.

The Big Rock Candy Mountain

Hobos are on their way to the Big Rock Candy Mountain, where I hope to get myself one day. That’s where, as my uncle Wen used to sing, “the bluebird sings by the crystal springs.” Our two novice hobos will surely find that at the Big Rock Candy Mountain “you never change your socks and little streams of alkihol come tricklin’ down the rocks.” Good luck to those two guys who plan to go hoboin’. I bet Colorado Central will forward this copy. As the song says, “I’ll see you all this coming fall at the Big Rock Candy Mountain.”