That’s Why I’m Ridin’ the Rails

“Hoboin’ is my game
B & O’s my middle name
I’m goin’ where that whistle wails
And that’s why I’m ridin’ the rails” – Ridin’ the Rails (N. Claflin/ A. Paley) © Sire Records

So goes the opening verse of “Ridin’ the Rails”, a song included in the 1990 Warren Beatty directed film, Dick Tracy. Based on the comic strip of the same name which made its debut in the Detroit Mirror in October 1931, the movie is likewise set in the 1930s. Most of the songs included in the film’s soundtrack are styled after the music of that era.

Though “Ridin’ the Rails” is essentially a novelty tune, and doesn’t appear prominently in the film, I happen to be a fan of the recording and its jazzy tone. I’ve always admired the mellow voice of k. d. lang and the harmonies of Take 6 are impeccable. The video, featuring lang and the vocal group, is highly stylized, with the vocalists’ performances interspersed with clips from the Beatty film.

“Hoboken, New York, PA
60 seconds is all I’ll stay
Keeps me outta county jails
And that’s why I’m ridin’ the rails” – Ridin’ the Rails (N. Claflin/ A. Paley)

Popular culture has greatly romanticized the vagabond tradition of “hopping a freight” to get from one place to another. Although this mode of travel has always been illegal, and inherently dangerous, there remains no shortage of practitioners, even today, when video surveillance, and tightened rail yard security have made surreptitiously climbing aboard a freight train all the more difficult.

Back in the day, when hoboes first began “catching out” on freight trains, there were no other means of transport that offered the chance to travel great distances in short periods of time. Many made the choice to ride the rails out of necessity, while others may have been drawn by the allure of something forbidden, or just as a means of escaping the drudgery of routine life.

“Oh, leave Kentucky
Or the fields of Alabam’
Roomin’ with a box of nails
Or peanuts and yams
Got no next of kin
And there’s no one in my will
Only thing I’m scared of

Is standin’ still” – Ridin’ the Rails (N. Claflin/ A. Paley)

Many notable figures of popular culture spent time riding the rails while engaging in the hobo way of life. This list includes Louis L’Amour, George Orwell, Carl Sandburg, Woody Guthrie, Robert Mitchum, and Jack Kerouac, to name a few. Jack London, who spent 30 days in jail in New York for vagrancy, and accompanied Kelly’s Army across the country, wrote about his hobo experiences in his short memoir, The Road.

As to his reasons for choosing to pursue the transient lifestyle of the bindle-stiff, or “stiff”, as London calls them, he writes in The Road:

“Every once in a while, in newspapers, magazines, and biographical dictionaries, I run upon sketches of my life, wherein, delicately phrased, I learn that it was in order to study sociology that I became a tramp. This is very nice and thoughtful of the biographers, but it is inaccurate. I became a tramp – well, because of the life that was in me, of the wanderlust in my blood that would not let me rest. Sociology was merely incidental; it came afterward, in the same manner, that a wet skin follows a ducking. I went on ‘The Road’ because I couldn’t keep away from it; because I hadn’t the price of the railroad fare in my jeans; because I was so made that I couldn’t work all my life on ‘one same shift’; because – well, just because it was easier to than not to.”

London is clear in expressing that just getting from one place to another is not always the primary inducement to riding the rails.

“I’ll ride ’til I’m dead
Boxcar’s my only bed
That’s home when all else fails
That’s why I’m ridin’ the rails” – Ridin’ the Rails (N. Claflin/ A. Paley)

Author, William T. Vollman, in his train-hopping paean, Riding Toward Everywhere, details his experiences with “catching out”, sometimes alone, sometimes with his more experienced friend, Steve. His is a modern commentary on the hobo traditions, where security is tighter, and the trains move considerably faster than in days of old. Some notable quotes from Vollman’s book:

“Freight train rides are parables”

“On the iron horse, I can experience the state of unlimited expansion”

“I saw it, and then it was gone”

“ . . . we clickety-clacked away into our dreams”

“More hours went by, as empty as the tracks themselves”

“’Someone’s hiding’, he chuckled, like a wicked giant in a fairy tale” (while hiding in the darkness from a yard “bull”)

“I am free and for some indefinite period, which while it lasts is as good as forever, my own sad life, with its rules, necessities and railroad bulls, will not be able to catch me”

“When we reached the head locomotive we saw that it was dark; the engineer must have gone home long since; our decision to leave this cold train was thus proven to be in the same spirit of prudence which is manifested by the lice that leave a corpse. What proud parasites we were!”

Vollman also laments that riding the rails is not as easy as it once was – “The technology is changing, so there are fewer boxcars and more container cars,” he says. “Everything is ridable to an expert, but . . . there are no experts.”

“Brushfire Billy
And his buddies, Ned and Slim
Nine years back in Provo
Was the last I saw of him
Brakeman, leave me be
Let this hobo rest his bones
Sleep will overtake me
When that diesel moans” – Ridin’ the Rails (N. Claflin/ A. Paley)

Eddy Joe Cotton (real name Zebu Recchia) is an author, hobo poet, and ringleader of the Yard Dogs Road Show. As a nineteen-year-old, he set out tramping from his father’s home in Denver, Colorado. He details his freight hopping experiences in his bestselling book, Hobo: A Young Man’s Thoughts on Trains and Tramping in America. Though the world of tramps & hoboes is most often dirty, seedy & coarse, all of which is reflected in his memoir, Cotton renders his tales in a decidedly poetic tone:

“In the silence between trains, you can hear your toes wiggle in your boots. I had gone a thousand miles on one pair of socks. There was a turkey vulture up in the air, looking for ghosts. On the hills where the tracks disappeared a cold rain fell like needles and the hidden sun glowed silver through the broken clouds. I lay back on my bedroll and closed my eyes”

“Black diesel billowed up from the head end of the train. There were four monster locomotives up there, pulling boxcars like sled dogs and coughing smoke out of their big diesel smoke-stacks. The bark of those diesel engines held the cry of a million pistons and cracked the silence in the Wyoming prairie apart”

“I rolled up in my poncho, lay down on the floor of the car, and watched rusty paint flakes dance in the corner. I daydreamed of carefree America: casino coffee . . . white motel sheets, showers with soap, and shingled roofs. I knew that when those foothills ate the sun our boxcar would freeze solid again, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it”

“In this business of tramping, it’s impossible to hold onto anybody or anything, and as a result, I have become a lonely man”

“That country’s long and wide
The Santa Fe’s my bride
I’ll hop her when she sails
That’s why I’m ridin’ the rails” – Ridin’ the Rails (N. Claflin/ A. Paley)

Pete Aadland, executive director of the rail safety charity California Operation Lifeline that promotes safety on the rails, dismisses the notion that train hopping today provides an authentically American experience or any real connection with the spirit of the 1930s.

“There was no work, there was no food, so tens of thousands of men would use the railroads to get to where they could, maybe find a job,” he says.

“That lure, I think, probably remains today. But I would say that it’s not romantic, it’s illegal and it’s dangerous.”

“Losing limbs is very common,” he says. “Loads can shift when you’re inside of a car. Doors can close and lock – you starve and die of thirst.”

And yet, as long as there are trains rollin’ down a track to some destination somewhere, and as long as there are dreamers longing for an adventure, surely there will be hoboes & tramps riding the rails to . . . . .

Wherever!

“I’m ridin’, I’m slidin’
I won’t last too long
Got a bandana and a whistle for a song
There ain’t no wheels on the floor of a jail
That’s why I’m ridin’ the rails” – Ridin’ the Rails (N. Claflin/ A. Paley) © Sire Records

That’s why they’re ridin’ the rails!

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20756990

The Road, by Jack London

Riding Toward Everywhere, by William T. Vollman

Hobo, by Eddy Joe Cotton

All photos sourced through internet searches, none belong to the author.