Hobo Jungle

[webenda]

I still have a vague dream to see Mexico some day...

There is no place like it. You should go.
http://archaeology.asu.edu/tm/pages2/mtm19.htm

[webenda]

D,

Color does wonders for the Nova photo. Did you do that by hand or in the computer?

[Mitch]

I spent one night in the brig, (jail), on the U.S.Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There will be no recanting of that sad tale on the internet.

[Daisy]

Wayne, love the Mexican guy!

I did this one with Photoshop. What a car.

[2railjon]

Excellent writing, Tramp!! Consider this though....Consuming a brew an hour while driving you would be hard pressed to evade some type of law enforcement altercation be it East, West, South, or North. Come to think of it, you were probably treated better then if you were pulled over by a New Jersey State Trooper. Been there, done that.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

....if you were pulled over by a New Jersey State Trooper.

After 49 years of driving throughout NJ, PA, and NY, I must agree w/ you by adding that troopers in those states are not to be triiffled with. They are about serious business, having to deal w/ some serious miscreants, no doubt. Yet, I have found that extending sincere courtesy to them - and rightly so - goes a long way.

[Mitch]

I don't know about that, Murph. In 13.5 years of over-the-road truckin', I managed to get a cigar box full of tickets. When the cop comes up to the truck, and you say, "Hi, how ya doin?" and he's says "I was doing just fine until you broke the law", you know he's got attitude, so you might as well give him a ration of shit. Always worked for me. I got stopped on I-270 goin' north around St. Louis once in Missouri, and I thought the cop was gonna kill himself trying to catch me. It was rush hour in the morning, and he'd been sittin' on the shoulder, we're bumper to bumper, and he pulls me over and starts on me about following too close, and that I couldn't stop the truck if I had to. Although the flatbed trailer I was pullin' was full front to back and about 6 ft. high loaded with hot tops, I only had 18,000 pounds on. I told the cop I could stop on a dime and leave 9 cents change. That pissed him off and he started on me like a Marine Drill Instructor, threatening me with taking me to court right then. I said fine! Let's get it the hell over with, I gotta git to Kansas City. After all that, the ***** wrote me a warning ticket!

[webenda]

Oh, oh... cop stories.

I never could figure out why sometimes they give me a ticket and sometimes they do not. For example, sometime around 1970 I was driving an XK-E north on Woodruff Ave (posted limit 35 mph) through Bellflower, CA. After passing Alondra there is no cross traffic for about a mile. I dropped down two gears and accelerated. There is a little jog in the road about halfway to Rosecrans. I went through the jog at 80 and saw a motorcycle cop on the opposite side of the street... putting his ticket book back into the steel saddle bag. He alerted immediately, so I just stepped on the brake to stop and take my ticket. I got stopped right across from where he had been. I watched in my rearview mirror as he made a U-turn while accelerating for the chase. He had almost completed his U-turn when he saw me, parked at the curb... not moving.. right in his path. He jammed on his brakes and low-sided. I thought, “Oh, oh... he is probably going to shoot me.” He got himself up real slow, looked himself over, picked up the bike and placed it on its side stand. Then he walked real slow up to the Jag. and asked to see my driver's license. I had it in my hand already* so just handed it to him. He walked back to the bike, talked on the radio for a few minutes, came back, handed me my license and said, "We both know how fast you were going, COOL IT!." He went back to his bike and left.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

I don't know about that, Murph. In 13.5 years of over-the-road truckin', I managed to get a cigar box full of tickets. ...!

Ok. Ok. If we're gonna tell war-stories n' all, then I will confess this one.
It's 1972, approx. 2 or 3 a.m. late Saturday night/Sunday morning, and I'm driving my new '72 Pontiac Gran Prix back to Cortland from Syracuse. One of the nice things about that car was that it was great fun -a REAL RUSH - to put the pedal to the floor and hold it there. For a while. Until the speedometer read 110 or 120, and stayed there. I'd open all the windows in the car and feel the good, summer, fresh farm air rushing in and out.

Well, as luck would have it, as I came 'round the last curve on Rt81 S. coming to the Homer exit, I saw a state police car resting on the shoulder, lights off. It seemed, in the split-second it took me to pass him, that he might have dozed off and was awakened by my whoosh and/or his equipment for detecting speeders.

In an instant, I knew I was going waaaay too fast to slow down and look all innocent. Plus, I remembered, for some strange reason, my mother telling me that when you want to hide a tree, hide it in a forest. I remembered a used car lot just off that exit. I rounded the turn-off nearly on two wheels and raced for that car lot, figuring it would take a second or two for the trooper to collect himself and make chase.

I knew the used car lot had no chain across its entrance. I zipped into the lot and knifed the car in among the vehicles standing in the front row For Sale; turned off the car, and hunkered down as small as I could get under the steering wheel. In a few seconds, I could hear the trooper's car, with its lights a-flashin', roar by. He kept going and never did backtrack. I slept there 'til daybreak, too afraid to move.

After sun-up, I went for pancakes at a local diner. A trooper was sitting there, sipping his coffee. I didn't know if he were my trooper, and I wasn't askin'.
True story.
Aaahhhh youth.
(Can I get in trouble for telling that story now? )

[webenda]

(Can I get in trouble for telling that story now? )

Murph,

No.

SOL varies from state to state and for what civil action or crime it is.
For New York, the time period during which legal action can be taken is:

o Personal Injury: 3 years.
o Fraud: 6 years.
o Libel / Slander / Defamation: 1 year.
o Injury to Personal Property: 3 years.
o Product Liability: 3 years.
o Contracts: 6 years.
o Robbery: 5 years
o Speeding: 1 year. (CPL 30.10 [2] [d] if you wish to look it up.)

Sleep easy tonight.

P.S. If you recieve a ticket, SOL clock ends when you handed the ticket. Putting off paying it for over one year just makes it worse.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Wayne, You're a helpful man. I've noticed that, time and time again, on this forum, with you investing significant effort in being kind to others. Your friends who know you in person must consider you a blessing in their lives.

Though my question was more tongue-in-cheek and rather rhetorical, which I am sure you knew, you still provided information that could have been helpful.

And no, I certainly would not "look it up" myself, to verify what you have provided here. I have the feeling that if you say a thing, a person can take that to the bank.
Thanks again.
Murph

[JIM2223]

Yes Murph...Wayne is a good man.

Jim

[The Dirt]

Here's a poem for you guys, one that Tramp wrote about his travels by rail, this one when he was making his way west in 1982, at the age of 25. One of my most favorite pieces of writing. Hope you won't mind reading it again. I put it back up here because there's been some new developments.
___________


ONE DAY

Can a Nuts . . 30
Beer . . . . . . . 25
Schoop . . . . . 35
Shot . . . . . . . 65

Let me speak of the past:
Let me walk into a freight yard
Into the afternoon summer sun,
Across the sandy heat, the stench of tar,
Of creosote, a tired diesel shunting,
The thistle and the gravel;
Middle of the country—1980
Awaiting a 10 PM call westbound.
Let me walk through the open door,
Under the neon of the Dewey Hotel and Bar
(Last true track-side workingman's bar),
Let me hoist a schoop of cold Point,
Let the barman pour out a can of peanuts
Scooped from the wooden barrel,
Let me scatter the shells on the floor,
Let me feel the breeze through the door,
Let someone buy me a shot of whiskey
Because my smile is as clean as a shout;
Let me just sit there and drink,
The stacked cases of beer at the back
Almost reaching the ceiling.
Let me wait for the first outbound freight
Of a western run. And then
I will stumble out to the yard
And board a wood-floored empty boxcar
And sit against my pack in the door as a
Thunderstorm arrives across the darkness.
And as the freight rumbles toward the west
I will lean against the side of the doorway
That cool rainy wind against my face
And I will see the red and green neon
Of the Dewey Hotel and Bar sign
Dancing in the wet night street.


___________

Beautiful!

Here's the developments, thanks to Tramp's incredible prescience in carrying a camera on his travels, as he did when he followed the hood of a beat-up Nova down south.


.


Well, maybe two years ago, knowing how much I loved this poem, Tramp sent me a scan of a polaroid he took of the Dewey in the afternoon sun.





That picture got me sufficiently wound-up to write to folks in Wisconsin in an effort to procure more pictures. I guess a barroom isn't on many people's lists of memorable photos, and I had little luck, though I did get a response from one gentleman who went to the trouble to take two pictures of the building, the Dewey having sadly passed into railroad history.








And the best for last. Tramp recently found, in an old journal, two more pictures, this of the Dewey at night, hand-inscribed with the exact time in history, neon agleam and the doorway lamp beckoning...





...and Tramp's pack sitting in the old steel boxcar doorway, the doorway from which he would later see the Dewey's neon receding in the night.



Too cool! Enjoy!

[webenda]

Too cool indeed.

[webenda]

Wayne, You're a helpful man. I've noticed that, time and time again, on this forum, with you investing significant effort in being kind to others. Your friends who know you in person must consider you a blessing in their lives.

Though my question was more tongue-in-cheek and rather rhetorical, which I am sure you knew, you still provided information that could have been helpful.

And no, I certainly would not "look it up" myself, to verify what you have provided here. I have the feeling that if you say a thing, a person can take that to the bank.
Thanks again.
Murph

Murph,

Thank you for the kind words, but I am afraid that they describe someone else.

I knew you were not serious, but had to look up statue of limitations (SOL) before giving you the standard seven year answer. I thought SOL was seven years for all litigation except murder. Was I ever wrong. Thank you for sparking my interest enough to find out the truth.

No, sorry, you cannot always take it to the bank. For one thing, just because I give references to where I find the information does not make it true. Lots of lies make it onto the internet, into print, are taught in schools and are generally thought to be true. I too can be dupped.

And, sometimes my tongue is in my cheek. (Like when I accused Pappy of true lies.)
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=8634&p=126767#p126767
Since edited to remove the accusation.

I wonder if Pappy clicked on my "profile" and marked me as "foe"? Just what does the "friend/foe" switch do anyway? I think I will click on Murph = foe just to see what happens. (I hope it is not like sticking pins in an effigy.)