The breeze blew up out of the southwest and Friday I found myself on the road towards Vermont. I was going to see a friend play in a concert at the Vermont Academy in Saxtons River, then on to visit Kossack mataliandy but I had some time to kill before the show and I’d been wanting to see Brattleboro, of which I’d heard a great deal.
The city itself is quite beautiful, full of old buildings and nestled in the middle of a valley full of mature forest, but on the street I happened to meet a proper rucksack wanderer, in a fashion that Kerouac himself would have recognized. We had a nice chat and a nice stroll about the city during which he shared his fascinating, and at times harrowing story.
Scott, in his early twenties, hails from San Francisco. I found him in Harmony Lot, a community managed parking lot(!) in the midst of downtown Brattleboro. He knows a bit of guitar but he’d just acquired this banjo with the intent to train himself up enough to make a living playing on the street.
I sat down with he and another fellow who promptly hit me up for spare change. I was still quite clean at this point in the trip so I was out of place but I demurred; the guy had that whole alcohol/drug thing going on and I don’t care to contribute to such things. He quickly lost interest when I just sat down and patiently watched Scott play, so pretty soon we were left alone. Once that happened I dropped the disoriented, crazy person act I sometimes display in such interactions, and we got down to business.
I quizzed him about where he was from (San Francisco), how he came to be in Brattleboro (train riding, a bit of a surprise that), and where he was going next (nowhere, or maybe Burlington; he’d heard it was cool). He didn’t mind a few photos and I gave him a dollar ... but it was a 1921 Morgan silver, worth maybe $14. He’d never seen such a thing and promptly pocketed it as a good luck piece.
We were talking about learning the banjo and I noticed a book in the zippered pouch that held his chord book and I asked him about it. I was delighted to find that it was a copy of Jack Kerouac’s collected works. I’d just recently finished Dharma Bums, which Scott had read three times, and I just acquired On The Road. Scott opines that Dharma Bums is the pick of the litter but we’ll have to see. On The Road must wait until I finish reading Walden.
Our shared interests being, well, shared, and the real silver coin weighting Scott’s pocket, we decided we’d go in search of a little lunch. He’d never had Lebanese and we found a little place right across from the entrance of the community parking lot. The food was great and we got a window seat so we could check out the Brattleboro residents as they passed.
Scott had mentioned he was a train hopper and I’ve been keen to learn about this for quite some time. I’d been asking since I first made friends with Roy Knots all those years ago and I received hints and cautions, but never a proper schooling. Scott broke it wide open for me, showing me a photocopy of something called "Crew Change Guide 2006", which I’ve just obtained via BitTorrent while authoring this diary. This hobo published tome is a listing of every place a train stops for the night with advice on how to get on them. I’ve been Googling a bit and it looks like I’m not the first educated professional with a taste for the road. One of these guys is in New England – I’ve already sent the email tendrils moving to see if I can look him up for a little train ride, or maybe Scott will take me; we exchanged email and phone numbers.
Scott has a girlfriend named Tina who lives in Maryland. They used to be on the road together ... but she slipped and fell under a train in Seattle last summer, losing her right leg below the knee. They were together when it happened but he didn’t want to talk details, but instead told me how much love her father showed when he appeared there to visit a few weeks ago. They really do think they’re indestructible at that age, don’t they? It only gets a little bit more real than that; the one on the right in this photo, Garrett Kyle, was sliced in half by a train ten days after I shot this. The guy on the left is Mike Mineo, a budding folk guitar player I met in Portland’s Pioneer Square. I wrote Garrett’s family a nice letter describing the day I spent with he and Mike, visiting Forest Park, having dinner, and going to a show at Powell’s Bookstore. I’m told it was a great comfort to them hearing that the street is not an unkind place.
OK, I’ve just reread that paragraph above and I’m recalling my shaky ankle, my right rotator cuff, the bulged disk in my neck, and the other things that come from having made my way to the back side of forty. Maybe my desire for a train ride is a curious sort of rubber tramp midlife crisis???
A lot more happened in my short time in Vermont, but I’m not going to overload you guys, and this bit stands all on its own.