Hitchers Begin as Train Jumpers

Hitchers begin as train jumpers. Well, at least that is how it began for us. Vagabond dreams. It’s a lifestyle choice, I guess. It starts as talk, big talk, while sitting on the white plush carpet of your first shared apartment, the one I manipulated my way into at just barely 19 years old. All night discussions about the good old boys, their poetry and word ramblings, travelling with nothing but a sack and some old walking shoes. Romantic. It was there under Coltrane’s watchful eye, large and majestic looking down on us from the wall above the turntable that convos of hitting the road commenced—sometimes acid free and sometimes with a passed jug of wine.

First stop, the 1:07 AM train going west. Slow moving through shit town that time of night. It was like that train new someone needed to get out. Needed that clean air that waited on down the track. For us it was about freedom. Freedom from working class. Freedom from having to get married because of living in sin like that. And freedom from school. We were university students for crying out loud. Not great students. Smart ass students. We are smarter than you students. Pretentious. But we were smart. Talk sessions-philosophy, physics, theory. We had it down. Discussions so deep I sometimes felt like a fraud. And I was to an extent, but I was learning and going with it all. It seemed that nothing was off limits.

And nothing was off limits back then. Acid parties and orgies. Late night musicology debates over U2’s changing philosophy into nothingness—at least for me, and coffee jams. We let garbage pile up on the back landing before taking it two flights down and buzzed friends in all hours of the night. Our neighbors fucking hated us. And with good reason. But the cops only came once. We had thrown a little party for Jerry’s 20^th. It was intimate, I remember eight. A nice meal, a lot of drinking, and music—always music. Poi Dog Pondering got us going, taking off clothes, dancing naked in the dark with window open. Most likely wouldn’t have been an issue if it weren’t for those beautiful floor to ceiling windows that we could not afford to cover. Or maybe the neighbors had enough by that point. Whatever it was doesn’t matter because only one of us got pinched that night. Sean took the heat for it and we bailed him out. Soon after that my father was informed that there was a file out on us. Why? We were just a bunch of college kids fucking around, right? I thought he was just trying to scare us into in-the-box living, but years later the file was mentioned when an overaged mishap occurred with one of us. Maybe it was good that we decided to pack up what little shit we had and hit the road for a while.

So, when it came up—because when the Beats are taken to heart this all becomes inevitable-- We waited for the train outside the two flats and mill town shanties, gray shingle-sided like rows of roofs taped to the fronts of houses. Lights are out. It is sleeping hours and the freight trains that wiz by in the middle of the night no longer wake babies or second-shifters. Generations of industrial waste cleaners make their dime here, plant their gardens and reap what has been sown here. We are quiet sitting in a two-door Geo Metro, parked just down from the crossing gates, sipping on a bottle of red, getting our nerves up. Well, it wasn’t my nerve. I was just the driver. Tina was back at the apartment with menstrual cramps waiting for the call. Hopefully, this would work out and no one would die. You always knew when the train was coming, the soft sound of the driving wheels rolling over the track, each rotation noted as it creeps ever closer. In those quiet hours the sound can travel for miles, its tempo helping a whole town drift off into sleep. But we were young, sleep was not a commodity, it was a hindrance. Fresh and highly influenced by what we read, what we listened to, and where we longed to be—somewhere other than here.

Jerry and Sean led the expedition. Others followed, but they were the masterminds. The Cassidy to his Ginsberg type of bull shit. The sit in a room and try to finish each other’s thoughts kind of crap. Sometimes it worked and sometimes we were impressed. I was asked much later, after we all split, if I was jealous of that relationship. Nah, I just figured they would fuck at some point and get it out of the way, but that never happened. Instead, it nearly came to blows—all that frustration coming out in typical aggressive fashion—but that is for later.

We waited for the train outside the two flats and mill town shanties, gray shingle-sided like rows of roofs taped to the fronts of houses. Lights out—it is sleeping hours. Freight trains wiz by in the middle of the night, not waking babies or second-shifters. Generations of industrial waste cleaners make their dime here, plant their gardens and reap what has been sown here. We sit quietly in Sean’s two-door Geo Metro, parked just down from the crossing gates, sipping on a bottle of red, getting our nerves up. Well, it wasn’t my nerve. I was just the driver. Tina, back at the apartment with menstrual cramps waiting for the call. Hopefully, this would work out and no one would die. Because you could die doing this, you know. The train was coming, the soft sound of the driving wheels rolling over the track, each rotation noted as it crept ever closer. In those quiet hours the sound can travel for miles, its tempo helping a whole town drift off into sleep. But we were young, sleep was not a commodity, it was a hindrance. Fresh and highly influenced by what we read, what we listened to, and where we longed to be—somewhere other than here.

Jerry and Sean led the expedition. Others wanted to follow the masterminds of fresh, new ideas. Those fresh, new ideas taken from second-hand paperbacks. The Cassidy to his Ginsberg type of bull shit. The sit in a room and try to finish each other’s thoughts kind of crap. Sometimes we were impressed. Most times we weren’t invited. I was asked much later, after we all split, if I was jealous of that relationship. Nah, I just figured they would fuck at some point and get it out of the way, but that never happened. Instead, it nearly came to blows—all that frustration coming out in typical aggressive fashion.