You know you’ve fantasized about it. Running away from home, hopping the first freight you see, and embracing all the adventure that such a life entails: living rent-free by your wits, crisscrossing the countryside in an open boxcar, appreciating its majesty as it whips by at seventy per. Professional hoboism. One conjures up imagery of a hitchhiking bindlestiff armed with cardboard sign, sob story, stick and red bundle, a patchy-clothed bearded derelict with a jug of XXX in one hand and a banjo in the other spinning yarns around a campfire to fellow down-and-outers, guys with names like “Freddie The Freeloader,” “Stinky-Eyed Pete,” “Boxcar Willie.”
Of course, such associations are likely drawn from Depression-era newsreel footage and classic Hollywood depictions of the vagabond archetype such as Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp; your average working square couldn’t tell a grainer from a cannonball. So what would riding the rails really be like? There’s only one way to find out for sure, of course, but because you may not want to gamble your lucrative server position at the fair trade coffee shop or assistant managerial gig at Whole Earth (with great opportunity for advancement), the best proxy available to the curious is documentary film. For by examining the transient lifestyle through its cinematic exponents, we can begin to see beyond our childlike fascination with hobos and get at the heart of hoboing, that distinctly American invention steeped in grand nomadic tradition and freewheeling lore. So until you save up enough to take that year off you’ve been promising yourself to bum around America while writing your memoirs, Mr. William Hunter S. Kerouac, let these celluloid postcards from society’s fringe vicariously satiate your wanderlust.
First up, we’ll begin with some background on the practice of trainhopping, as traced by directors Lovell & Uys in RIDING THE RAILS (1997). A fairly straightforward historical doc in the Ken Burns-ian mold, it features much harmonica music over black-and-white footage of Great Depression ‘bo’s looking forlorn, socially dispossessed, and generally on the verge of starvation and/or homicidal psychosis. Trainhopping as a form of alternative transportation was first popularized, we learn, by Civil War soldiers trying to return home, or those looking to the fabled West for California’s promise of bounteous land, jobs a-plenty, streets paved with platinum, etc. The film features numerous interviews with former rail jockeys who were actually there in the ‘20s and ‘30s, and who relate alternately fascinating and touching tales of the reality of hoboing. Whether it’s mastering the art of riding prone atop a train (a.k.a. “going possum”) in a lightning storm, learning the finer points of how to cook “jungle stew,” or playing cat-and-mouse with Johnny Law, the film manages to illustrate the allure of freedom and independence the lifestyle offers without glazing over the tribulations and misery so often absent from more romanticized mainstream portrayals. All in all, a fine introduction to life on the road and the origins of trainhopping.
The second entry in the hobo marathon is TRAIN ON THE BRAIN (2000). We are treated to the female perspective on the subject as capricious Canadian filmmaker Alison Murray quits her cushy London day job in favor of hitting the rails. What follows is an odyssey of hardship, friendship, and finding beauty in unexpected places. Sporting little more than a sleeping bag and a handheld camera, Murray ambitiously attempts to ride from Canada to Iowa in order to experience the National Hobo Convention held annually on the second weekend in August in the hamlet of Britt. Throughout her journey, she encounters a rogue’s gallery of colorful characters who live in the margins of civilization, haunting highway overpasses and rail yard shadows, ever-vigilant for that next iron horse to freedom. A raw portrait of freight riding from a modern day hobo’s eye view, its thrills and dangers are rendered visceral and immediate. After dealing with wrong turns, sketchy travel companions and police brutality, she finally makes it to the convention, and it’s just the spectacle you’d imagine. There’s a parade complete with marching pot-and-pan hobo band, anarchist gutter punks mixing with grizzled veterans, and the crowning of the King and Queen of the Hoboes, all creating an atmosphere of camaraderie and the chance for the upright townsfolk to interact with the substrata denizens. Anyone flirting with the idea of train hopping would enjoy this highly personal and poignant snapshot of modern hoboism.
On to a narrative entry in the hobo canon: BOXCAR BERTHA (1972). “American in the ‘30s was a free country. Bertha was just a little bit freer than most.” Purportedly a dramatization of the life of the eponymous 1930s folk hero as documented in her autobiography Sister of the Road, the book was in fact the invention of a physician named Ben Reitman. Not that it matters much, as one quickly gets the feeling that the film version retains fidelity only to the source material’s most salacious passages. “Life made her an outcast… Love made her an outlaw,” the trailer exclaims. “She had a taste for lovin’, and an empty boxcar for a boudoir!” Shot in 24 days on a budget of $600,000 financed by prolific B-movie auteur Roger Corman, it stars Barbara Hershey as the titular tramp with an itchy trigger-finger alongside the ubiquitous David Carradine as her radical partner in crime, and boasts the dual distinction of featuring the two leads in un-simulated on-screen intercourse and of being Martin Scorsese’s directorial debut. A few of his trademarks are evident, such as the stylized editing and hyper-sanguinary dénouement, but apparently after showing this to friend John Cassavettes, Scorsese was told, “You just spent a year of your life making shit!” In fine exploitation tradition, the film schizophrenically chastises both racial and sexual violence and inequalities of the times one moment while objectifying it’s nude, gun-wielding protagonist’s body the next. While good for a lark, it’s most lasting contribution to the moving image its leading to the filming of MEAN STREETS.
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