Go East, Young Man! (epilogue)

There was a difference, however, between the oldtimers I met that weekend in Britt and the tramps I meet on the rails in the West — but it didn't really manifest itself until I got back home. There was almost no complaining or assigning blame for why it was that they chose to ride the rails. Maybe there was at the beginning, but by now it wasn't doing them any good, or they got tired of hearing it, maybe because it reminded them of another generation of tramps who made excuses for things that didn't exist. They knew that they were a dying breed, and saw that no one would learn from them, no matter how hard they tried to hand down the craft and lore of hopping freights.

Sort of like telling a child not to play in the street, and knowing that they will anyway. We all think that we rode freights at "just the right time", knowing that we had it easier than the generation before and after us. I did have a hard time imagining myself transported back to the 30's when hordes of riders used the freights for both a home and work environment, but that's the way it should be. I couldn't just pop into their lives like it was a dream, where I'd know that soon I'd wake up and be safe at home, instead of freezing on the rails. Neither could they imagine themselves just riding "for fun", as I did. But they sure had some interesting stories to tell...

It didn't take long, though, for the giddiness of visiting the Hobo Disneyland to fade away, and I knew that we were all welcomed and treated like Kings for one weekend a year, and after that weekend we better be someone else's problem. After the heat/humidity, water-like beer, mosquitoes, and hearing "Wabash Cannonbal" for the thousandth time, there was no mistaking that it was time to get out of Dodge, so I begged a ride in an already crowded car back to Mason City, and began another adventure, this one requiring much less planning and organization than the last. Figuring that the beer in Iowa was half as strong as normal, I simply bought twice as much as I thought I'd need, which made for a slow waddle back out to the tracks, where I caught the same version of the train I came down on the next morning. I was still in un-charted territory, but the beer helped blur the endless non-scenery I passed on the way down to the Union Pacific mainline, where I managed to get a ride on an autorack train that was headed for Oakland! I could have ridden the same train all the way back in the comfort of the bed of a brand new Chevrolet Suburban pickup truck, but after the crappy beer I needed to stock up somewhere with some real alcohol.

Finally reaching the last of the water-beer, I tried to figure out just where I'd de-train to re-stock. Never having been in this part of the country before, I wasn't sure just which states had real beer or not, but upon reaching Nebraska I decided to give it a try, as much as I hated to leave my smooth-riding truck bed. Entering some large city, we began the slow crawl through what seemed like certainly the longest, if not the biggest freightyard I'd ever been in. So this was North Platte I found out, and I reluctantly climbed down from the train and made my way out of the yard. On the north end was a major highway, and I came to a gas station/convenience store after a few blocks of very uncomfortable walking in the stupid heat. Being on "train time", I had forgotten just what day of the week it was, and I immediately noticed a sign outside the store saying that it had alcohol for sale on Sunday. Did they only have it for sale on Sunday? Looking at my watch confirmed that it was, indeed Sunday, but I felt a little cautious as I entered the store, which had some almost lethally cold air conditioning going on. Pausing, I wondered if the combination of the freezing cold temperature of the fan-propelled air, mixed with my sweat-soaked body, would result in hypothermia setting in before I could get back to the yard.

To my surprise I was told by the clerk that there was a law prohibiting alcohol sales in the state on Sunday, but, since the store was adjacent to some interstate highway, they were able to sell to out-of-state people who happened to be driving through. Thankfull that I'd left my pack outside, I showed her my California drivers license, inquired about what highways went where, and walked out with two six-packs of extremely cold real beer. I couldn't even wait to get back to the yard, which, at this point, was across a nettle-infested field, so I gingerly found a spot to sit down in the shade of a scrawny willow tree and inhaled a beer.

Burping so hard I almost fell over, I hefted my pack and entered the departure yard, where a westbound loaded grain train was airing up. Again climbing onto the back of a grainer, I stuffed the beers in the cubbyhole and waited for the train to leave. Again feeling the need for a beer, I climbed into the hole myself to get out of the burning sun and downed another slightly warmer beer. Rats! I had no way to keep them cold, and the warmer they got the more they tasted like the beer in Iowa, so another one was powered down. At this point the train began to pull out of the yard, so I remained in the hole in case the Bull was watching. As we picked up speed and some mild rocking began, the rapidly-consumed beers began to fill my gut with "fizzyness", which tended to inflate me like a balloon. I had visions of the equivalent of an air bag deploying inside a small car, and I would be pinned inside the cubbyhole, unable to escape. Another explosive burp reduced my girth considerably, and I climbed out into the cooler air that was blowing by as we got up to track speed.

Periods of sleeping and waking with no regard for day or night made the rest of the trip seem like I was on cruise control, with me and my gear staying the same but the scenery and trains changing in the background. I do remember switching from my grainer to a piggyback in Cheyenne, then another piggyback in Salt Lake when I found out my train was headed to LA, not Oakland. An un-eventful trip across Nevada at night, the ride over the Sierra Nevada range and the Feather River Canyon at dawn, and bailing out in blessed dry heat in Stockton finished my trip. Just as I was torn between going the rest of the way to Oakland by train or the disgusting Greyhound, a yard worker told me that an Oakland train would be coming by soon to change crews on the main, and I had a nice, cool ride to Oakland on another piggyback. The only casualty of the trip, aside from the nettle sores still burning my legs, was the t-shirt I had worn almost continuously for 14 days — I just couldn't wear it anymore now that I was back in "public", so with pomp and circumstance I peeled it off like a sticky band-aid and placed it on the floor of a boxcar in storage, where it probably resides to this day.