![]() “My mother wants me to work on their horse farm in Maryland, maybe meet some of these horsewomen who board their animals at their barn.” He’s a hobo and a writer, but they would prefer to have him off the road. He told me this after he told a woman passing by on the sidewalk that she looked great even without make-up. I can shower at the Y, you can pay $3-15 to take a shower. Cumberland Farms throws away the whole sandwich in the plastic wrap. No safe comfortable home each night–instead, a new adventure. Such are the experiences of living a hobo’s life, on the outside of what most people in ‘civilization’ are used to. You can tell where you are by smelling things….rubber and plastic in Akron or Wonder Bread in Cleveland.” You can fall asleep with all of that corn going by as you travel by rail. “Iowa is a sea of corn, you can actually see the curvature of the earth from up on top of the grain elevators. Northampton is a great hobo city, it’s so easy to make money panhandling,” he said. “Some people with great apartments do nothing but stand there and beg. He gets by with these short term jobs, but he’s not above holding out a beggar’s cup either. Not Too Proud to Beg Sitting outside of the cafe, Rapid T relaxes during one of his journeys. You have to stand in line at 4 in the morning and hope to get picked, “It’s mostly hazardous work that no one wants to do.” They offer short term work in plastic mills, recycling, sorting cardboard, etc. Tonight he said he’d go back down to West Springfield to catch a freight or stay overnight in a laundromat. Rapid T uses Google Earth to scope out railyard layouts and says it’s helpful for somebody who does what he does. But I think that’s part of the thrill and the reason they keep going out. Other times, well, railroad police do catch and prosecute hundreds for these violations. “A lot of times the conductor will be cool with us riding back there, and he will be fine. “The west coast police are much tougher than the east, the people are a lot more conservative. But he’s been to Montana and Portland and LA on freight trains. First to Huntington, West Virginia and doing mostly east coast trips. Since he left college he’s been traveling the rails. He’s 38 and took a couple of years to go to Ohio State studying education, in 2008. “A good can picker can make more than $50 a day,” I make more than the people who work for you.” He prefers ‘canning’ to beg with a cup. He lives on about $300 a month and picks cans from the trash. He uses his wits and the internet to get by, finding, for example, the schedule for when trains depart on obscure railroad websites. He stayed in a shelter in Northampton MA and said it was just like a youth hostel. He told me more about living cheap, using the college bus system and the Pioneer Valley’s networks of shelters and free services. It was those early days of watching trains pass by that gave him the inspiration to live the hobo life. He has Asbergers, ‘it’s the opposite of ADD, I find things I like to study that doesn’t really fit with most college courses.’ But the study of railroads is coming back. When he was a young kid he studied trains and was in a train enthusiast’s club. “There is a little room you can get to from the outside, it’s a great place to sleep and you can fit your bike in there.” He told me about the life of a freight train rider…the secret is the grain car. He used to stay in hostels but now said they are hard to find. He’ll ride his bike up there, look at the East Deerfield train yard, and to find out where he will be leaving from when he takes another train. He plans to travel to Greenfield today and get some free dental work done at a clinic he heard about at the Northampton shelter. ![]() Rapid T bummed a cup of coffee from me and told me about his life on the rails. One CBS TV show estimated that there are at least 1000 fulltime hobos riding rails across the US today. They hop into freight trains and live the lives of the old-time hobos, never settling down and living meagerly but totally on the road. There are many more people than you would think who get around this way, he said. He told me that he was called a Rail Fan and that he hops freight trains to get around all over the country. He had a bicycle with a pair of boots dangling over the handlebars. He was unshaven and carrying a box of crushed Miller Lite cans. I met a man outside of our cafe in South Deerfield named Rapid T. Freight Hopping and Living the Life of a Hoboīy Max Hartshorne Hobo Stories: Rapid T rides the rails on freight trains as a hobo around the Eastern US.
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