Boxcar Radical

by Martin Murie

Western foothills of the Sierras, a warm afternoon, traffic sparse and nobody stopping. The woman of the house near where I'd taken my stand came out and chatted a while, sympathized, suggested I might try catching the next train east. The idea was completely new to me, though the railroad yard was within sight. I thanked her, said maybe I would.

Time passed, evening approaching. I picked up my pack and walked to the edge of the yard where an old man sat quietly at ease. I asked when the next train might arrive. He told me, then quickly switched into a short lecture on my future, my career. "Young guy like you, don't get into this kind of life unless you have to. You've still got a chance. Hopping freights is not what you think it is." I wondered about his career, where he was from, what had happened, but since he'd given himself the role of experienced elder, I felt it would be impertinent to ask.

I told him that, until today, I'd never given freights a moment's thought. Highway hitching was my style. I was just trying to get home. He offered a few more words about my future. It wasn't long before we heard a laboring locomotive. It loomed up in the gap in the hills opening to gentler land of golden California. The locomotive kept moving till it had lined up a long string of boxcars, then hissed, sighed, ground to a halt. Suddenly, from nowhere, five or six men were climbing to the top of a boxcar. They lounged there, placidly waiting; they looked as complacent and secure as the most pampered, moneyed Pullman passenger. Maybe more so. The switchman and brakeman paid them not the slightest attention as they went about the job of getting the train ready for the Sierra crossing. I was to learn later in my "career" of freight hopping that trainmen were generally indifferent or helpful to hobos. It was the town and city bull with gun on belt that the traveling man had to look out for. I'm talking old times here, close enough to the Great Depression when whole families crowded the tops of trains, traveling west,

My mentor and I joined the loungers. Up the rungs of a metal ladder to the top of the car. Nothing to it. The locomotive came alive again and with a long rattle of couplings we were under way. A wonderful trip, low evening sunlight on canyon walls, trees and brush shining, crevices and contours of rock and talus highlighted as the train clicked its way, slowly gaining altitude.

A thin, medium-sized man sitting near me was in a talkative mood. More than that, he was a prophet, choosing me as the most likely prospect. Perhaps he'd already done what he could to raise the spirits of his companions. His prophecy had nothing to do with religion, far from it. Nor was he an IWW union man bringing the glad news: one big union. Not a communist either, but a radical just the same. Technocracy was his creed. We were on the edge of great change; the economy would be governed rationally by experts. The man was excited, gathering even more fervor as he answered my questions, laying out the many ways our lives would change as we shifted from dog-eat-dog to cooperation. There would be justice, everybody would live well because the wealth of the world would be distributed rationally instead of by way of profiteering. Life can be so much better, for all of us. It was news to me, that injustice was not only rampant — we all knew that — but that we might do more than adapt, we could change the whole arrangement. The idea that the very roots of society could be shifted, that was the news, for me, and I warmed up to it. No, I'll be honest — more than warmth: fire. I was thrilled. Gliding along, the shuffle of the couplings in their syncopated rhythm, the beauty of the mountains, weren't these fueling that fire? I'm sure of it.

Darkness fell, my technocracy comrade talked on. Greed running rampant in our society will end — it will end soon, we will live to see it. The laboring train neared the pass, surmounted it, dipped into the long downhaul into Nevada. Conversation died as we hugged ourselves to endure the windchill. The glorious ride was over, now the payment.

The next time I was in San Francisco I found the Technocracy office. Shiny brochures were available. I began to read, the vision died. Rule by experts, bloodless descriptions of paradise. Where was the participation and the joy of my comrade on the boxcar, his eagerness to spread the word, fight the good fight for the good life? Technocracy fell apart, dust and ashes.

Now you expect a sad ending, of disillusion? No. On the freight that evening I was privileged to travel with a man who lived a certainty that our way of life is not the only way. That's what I took away, the real stuff, spoken from one human to another. About a year later, on my way to another switching yard, I met a wobbly who had the certainty, but it was tempered, his was a stoic awareness: the struggle is hard, but the way we treat each other these days is not only unacceptable, it will not last.

There is a way out, we will come to it.

* * *

The high top of a moving boxcar is the way to see the world, if the weather's right. It's no wonder we have such cramped views of our great land as we travel from one place to another gripped by bucket seats, peering through windows tinted and curved, the sky blocked out by a metal roof. Or jammed into an aircraft, worried and watching a wing wobble. A bike, motored or otherwise, isn't much better — you have to drive or pump and watch treacherous traffic. There's simply nothing to compare with the freight-hopping way, when it's good. But it's very often bad, and dangerous. I've kept in mind the fervent advice of my mentor as we waited for that Sierra freight: "Don't get into this way of life if you don't have to.