so said gordon lightfoot in 1968, and those words have never lost their significance. the open rails have been a source of inspiration and escape for generations, ever since the rails were lain down. many men have made careers by extension of the rails; bluesmen have sung the praises of escapology, photographers have attempted to capture the sweeping significance - and innate beauty - of the railroad, and a lucky few have made the rails their lifetime's legacy.
the first motion picture in history was a railroading caper. the first delta bluesmen to be put on vinyl crowed in ironic melancholy about what the open rails symbolized. great artists have found their calling in discovering and capturing the elusive but omnipresent essence of the freight train - witness tom martin's 'the engineer'. an underground culture has worked its way into our society, with train aficionados - from HO scale to the real thing - numbering in the thousands.
yet there are so many stories which cannot be known, stories nobody remains to tell. they are those of the lonesome hobos of old, who found no comfort in this world other than the steady and reassuring thrumming of sttel wheels upon steel rails beneath their feet. individuals who took solace in their solitary state, who found the greatest stories of their lives didn't need to have an audience. the last of the true hoboes, blackie, died in new jersey in 1979; his legacy has been documented in books and movies. he lived reclusively in a shack by a river in the backwoods when he wasn't on the rails. while his existence of absolute poverty is not necessarily my own, it in in this indomitable spirit that i found myself on the rails in 2002, after a lifelong near-obsession with the railroad.
i may well be the last canadian hobo in the east - i've talked to rail crews who've never met another in their years on the rails. and despite my research in the underground hobo groups on the web - comprised of those who do it and those who dare to dream - i've never met another eastern canadian who belonged to either category. this is my experience. |
