Now first of all I should say this; I’m six feet tall, between a hundred and eighty and two hundred pounds depending on how motivated I am to exercise, and in years gone by exercise involved tae kwon do, hapkido, and the like. If you’re a woman nine inches shorter, sixty pounds lighter, and equipped with nothing more than a piercing squeal when threatened this is not a place you should go.
This being said, every single one of those folks you see standing by the side of the road has been interviewed at least once by a police officer in the previous twenty four hours and searched a bit within the previous few days. The only ones I perceive as potentially dangerous are the members of the Freight Train Riders of America. These guys actually hop trains, which is vanishingly rare these days, and they definitely qualify as a continuing criminal enterprise.
If you see a man with a bandana around his neck held by a silver clasp he is probably FTRA. There are apparently different subsets of this bunch and the ones I meet most often in the Midwest call their group The Wrecking Crew. They’re not very communicative as a rule so what I know of them I’ve gleaned from other folks from the road. I always straighten them up when they get in – I see the clasp, I look right at it and say "So ... you’re FTRA?" I spend a few moments envisioning administering a good beating while I study their faces and the point is taken. Alone by the side of the road they’re not so bad, but for a group of them on a rail siding coming upon a stranger murder isn’t out of the question; I know one fellow who was killed less than a year ago and FTRA are the primary suspects.
I think the folks I meet fall into three broad categories; drunks, the mentally ill, and those who are in some fashion "interesting". Oh, and all three of these may serve the role of the harbinger, which we’ll explore later on. The first two groups are sad social problems we face as a society, and we’ll leave them be. The interesting ones make a good tale ...
I worked in a homeless shelter in college and I became acquainted with the various types of world travelers. The first two I’d call friends were Roy Don Knots and Albert Smith. Roy was a Vietnam veteran who’d been in Khe San during the Tet offensive and Al was a veteran as well, with a full time residence in the form of a ratty trailer in Ocala, Florida. Both were thirty years in my senior when I met them at the shelter and they wised me up pretty quick once they saw that I didn’t look down on them for their life choices. Roy drank, Al didn’t, and both were in their fifties. I saw them here and there through the 1990s but both have dropped from sight. I’m guessing they’re both dead – the road sorts for fitness, good judgment, and it takes its toll.
I lost touch with the road for a long time, planting myself in Omaha in 1994 and seldom stirring for the next decade. Divorce and work combined to snapped me up in 2005 and sent me everywhere from Albany to Honolulu. I had money in my pocket but you wouldn’t have to scratch too hard to get through the professional road warrior veneer. The kids I met in Pioneer Square in Portland were far more interesting than any woman in an airport bar hoping to conceal the tan line from her wedding band.
Here are two of my favorites, or rather six of my favorites in two batches.
Bram, Jordan, and Malice
Joel, Amanda, and Dusty
Each were an extraordinary batch – Bram and Jordan were both experienced train hoppers at the ripe old age of twenty one, and Joel and Amanda were Christian. I don’t mean annoying, preachy, smiley face fascist Christian, I mean they were the real deal. And the best part of this story? I found Joel, Amanda, and Dusty by the side of the road in Las Vegas, New Mexico, a thousand miles away and a year later than the time and place I’d picked up Bram, Jordan, and Malice. When presented with their photo Joel immediately said "Who is that with Bram and Malice?" Joel had learned train hopping from those two the year before, not long after I’d given them a ride.
Malice gets an A+ for style and function with her little multipack harness, and deserves a closer look:
Bram, Jordan, and Malice were a visual treat over a thirty minute jaunt. Joel, Amanda, Dusty, and I rode together for two days, all the way from Las Vegas, New Mexico, to Omaha, Nebraska. My time with them deserves a diary all its own, and perhaps I’ll get to it one day during this trip when some current event intersects with the deep faith these two expressed in their every action.
I think that was the second longest ride I’ve ever given. I neglected to snap a picture of the long distance champion, but I’ll tell the story. I was returning from New Mexico, passing through Amarillo, Texas, and I saw a scary brown person by the side of the road. I pulled over, picked him up, and we got to talking as we made our way north and east towards Nebraska. He was a feed mill worker, sober, well groomed, and articulate. He’d saved up for an airplane ticket so he could fly to Providence, Rhode Island to see his daughter graduate from college, then he discovered he’d misplaced the ticket. He had a week off and he wasn’t going to miss the first member of his family to graduate from college, so he was standing by the side of the road with his bag, hoping for a good ride.
I had a massive amount of paying work to get done and he had a long way to go. After an hour I was satisfied he wasn’t a drunk or a nutjob; I got him to drive so I could work. I had a cellular carrier that provided internet and I managed to get off a couple of emails to my administrative assistant as we passed through the various towns. You could have knocked Gilbert down with a feather when I thanked him for allowing me to work while he drove and told him he had a plane ticket from Kansas City to Rhode Island. I was returning to New Mexico the next week and I hate leaving things half finished so I adjusted my schedule a bit, picked him up in K.C., and dropped him at his door in Amarillo. One ride, 3,830 miles, and the sweetest bit was this: His daughter didn’t think he was going to make it, and not only did he get there, but he arrived just before her and got to surprise her getting of her flight. She’d been on an internship in Florida and was flying back in for the ceremony, as I recall.
It’s not all sweetness and light out here. RIP Garret Kyle (right), dead at age twenty. His body was found neatly split in half on the railroad tracks in Portland ten days after he, I, and Mike Mineo spent a nice day hiking in Portland’s Forest Park. His father and the rest of his family were in agony as they knew nothing of his last days and were envisioning the worst. When I heard Garret’s death I contacted him, we spent a few minutes on the phone, and I then sat down and wrote a long letter. I am told that the story of hiking, buying he and Mike dinner, and attending a poetry reading at Powell’s Bookstore later that evening was a great comfort to the family. You take your opportunities to do a kindness where and when they come, but all in all this was one experience I’d not care to repeat. I saw much of myself at that age in Garret and the mischief he was finding on the streets of Portland.
I’ve only given one moderately interesting ride so far this year. Meet Jude, age unknown, diagnosis almost certainly schizophrenia. I found him by the side of the road between Gettysburg and Michaux State Forest, and I hauled him a dozen miles. He was somebody, once. He told me that and I believe him; mental illness had stolen away his life before but the education always shows. Jude, he almost broke out in one of those harbinger moments, but he just couldn’t quite get there. He has left me with something, but I’m not sure I understand it yet. I left him with three cans of vegetables and a plastic jar of sunflower seeds, for which he was very grateful.
Dictionary.com has this to say about the word harbinger:
- a person who goes ahead and makes known the approach of another; herald.
- anything that foreshadows a future event; omen; sign: Frost is a harbinger of winter.
- a person sent in advance of troops, a royal train, etc., to provide or secure lodgings and other accommodations.
–verb (used with object)
- to act as harbinger to; herald the coming of.
I use this word in the sense Stephen Donaldson does in his Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. The harbinger appears for Covenant each time before he slips across the line from his mundane world into The Land. I can’t do the series justice in a few short words here, but I’ll say that it has the same scope and vision as Tolkien displayed in The Lord of the Rings, albeit with a much darker tone.
Among the hundreds I’ve given rides a handful gave me something in return; a psychic headbutt in the form of wise statements that were directly applicable to my life. The most recent was a chronic alcoholic my age whom I found in downtown Idaho Springs, Colorado. He was going to Salt Lake, I was headed for Las Vegas, and we chatted the whole five hundred miles or so down off the great divide to the place where I-70 dead ends with a choice of north or south bound I-15. A dozen times during the trip he’d turn to me and say something about my life, speaking in a mode fifty years out of fashion.
He’d grown up in Pennsylvania and he was in no sense educated; the speech was that of someone raised in a household where the adults either spoke German or had parents who did. I very much got the feeling I was talking to a younger version of one of my uncles from my mother’s side. I let him out and a week later all that he’d warned of came crashing down around me. No, nothing worth a diary, and we’ll speak no more of it except to say that had I heeded his warning I’d have had a little less egg on my face in August of 2007.
Travelers in all shapes and sizes but not a thief in site, you say? Quite so ... the thieves you should be watching are employed by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Salomon Brothers, and the now defunct Bears Stearns, along with many, many more like them. The mortgage grifters, they’re going to make a lot more side of the road travelers this year, and you, too, will have a chance to do a kindness unto such folk ... unless misfortune should fall on you, in which case you might very well be joining them.
