Reason for a Change-Mitch’s Blog

Yesterday on the way to the Woody show, I parked my bike by the railroad track north of 12th St. A coal train came by, but with gondola and tanker cars, and it was heading west, unlike the all coal trains that run from the strip mines in western Indiana to the Indianapolis power plants. I asssumed that the string of cars was local, the coal perhaps going to the IU power plant. I was jus absorbing the feeling, the meaning of the trains, hoping to use it in my performance that nite. It just kept coming and when I saw the gondola car I remembered the time I had had hopped a frieght in Bakersfield, California, heading back to the midwest. So I parked my bike, ran alongside the gondola, grabbed the ladder and hopped up. I remembered the other times I had hopped a frieght, the last a short trip from Iowa City to neighboring Coralville. I suddenly remembered that the easy part was getting on, jumping off a moving freight is much harder. So thought about what I had to do, one foot immediately after the other, I would be moving at 15mph when I hit the ground. I was lucky, I hit with my left foot, the right went sailing out in front, and miraculously, I was still upright and moving more slowly by the third step. My heart was racing, so were my feet. This really brought back the memories.

The time was 1967, not really knowing what I was doing, I had hopped on a flatcar with heavy machinery strapped to it. Leaving Bakersfield, I had little choice, as there were no open boxcars, which is what I was I had heard and read about, but I was not to be stopped, I was on the way home to the midwest. It was plenty hot, and I was heading into the desert, so who needs a boxcar?

That night I learned a life lesson regarding altitude and temperature. As the freight moved out east into the mountains, the air became thinner and thinner. The higher we got the colder it became. For some reason, the freight stopped for several hours at what seemed to be the highest part of the mountains. I slept and shivered through the long night, and just before daylight, the train began move down grade into the Arizona desert.

The next morning the train stopped right in the middle of a grapfruit orchard. I hopped off the flatbed car and grabbed a few, but wouldn’t you know it, that’s right when I heard the clunk, clunk, clunk of the train starting up. I ran back and got on my car, but my heart was racing.

I had my pack on the train, and did not want to loose my few possessions. This same pack had accompanied me across the White Mountains in New Hampshire and across windy lakes in Vermont, and I had just traveled to and lived in San Francisco with what was with me.

Much later that afternoon, the train stopped in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, and did not move for over an hour. Being the impatient sort, I spotted I-10 several hundred yards or so across the desert, so I headed out to hitchhike Certainly not as exciting as frieght hopping, but faster, I hoped. I finally got to the freeway, climbed the enbankment, and stuck out my thumb. Wouldn’t you know it, I again heard the thunk of the train starting up. I again shouldered my pack and began running back to the train. Nearly exhausted, I ran alongside a gondola car, and as the ladder on the back of the car came by, I swung on and up the ladder. That’s when my adventure and education began.

On the gondola car were several bedraggled men. One was looking very hungover in a corner, but the other were standing with their arms draped over the wall of the car, watching the scenery go by. The guy nearest me, walked over, I must have been a sight with hair to my shoulders, carrying Euro hiking pack with clean jeans and shirt (that old saw about dirty hippies was way off, it you had that much hair, you shampooed on a regular basis.)

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