I perfer the lanai, thank you. The fog is covering Torrey Pines, but there was a straight shot of clear air to the sight of the green flash. Nice.
San
Hobo Jungle
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San Diegan
All advice appreciated. I'm awaiting a fire fly.
Last edited by Tramp on Tue Jul 19, 2005 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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P&R Pete
No fireflies yet, fer cryin' out loud?
If I thought they'd survive the trip, I'd send you a hundred or two.
We have cicadas during the day, and those nighttime bugs along the edge of the fields that go *zzt-zzt-zzt-zzt-zzt-zzt* faster than you can say it.
No katydids yet at night, though my youngest son has brought an adolescent one in the house. Soon.
If I thought they'd survive the trip, I'd send you a hundred or two.
We have cicadas during the day, and those nighttime bugs along the edge of the fields that go *zzt-zzt-zzt-zzt-zzt-zzt* faster than you can say it.
No katydids yet at night, though my youngest son has brought an adolescent one in the house. Soon.
Yellow cat stretched and nuzzled with his damaged ear, his purr chugging like a diesel locomotive idling in a freight yard. Sometimes Jimmy couldn’t believe he’d actually ridden freights. As he lay still, the dark room cozy with the steam heat ticking, a siren passing over Scoggton’s center bridge, he remembered how it had been. That vastness of land. He’d never imagined the country could be so huge and so barren. He closed his eyes and saw the wheat fields of Minnesota, the burnt fields’ black stripes against the blazing yellow of the ripe ones. And the wind. He heard the wind banging the boxcar door, felt the car sway. And the resonant silence between the blusters of wind, the freight waiting on a siding for the passage of a faster through-train, a hot-shot. He saw the black grid of the telephone poles that paralleled the rail bed and collected at the horizon. The immense blue sky stretching like a clear sound over the earth, a few thin clouds like passing whispers. He’d never felt so alone. Not lonely, just small and alone—his mom in the White Mountains probably worrying about him, his blood father supposedly on the West Coast, and Jimmy in-between. He’d been excited by his own courage, by the image of himself in that boxcar in the middle of nowhere. He was afraid too, but the feeling that he was really doing something, taking control of his life, eclipsed everything else.
James Hakken? Who was his father? Hakken. All he really had was a name. Hakken. Like tomato everyone pronounced it differently. Hakken. It was like chopping something up. And wasn’t that part of who he’d become? He wrenched off the covers, cats leaping, then staring at him, eyes cautious. He went to his turret and looked out over the dark town. Maybe a beer? No, he was drinking too much. Instead he went into the narrow bathroom, brushed and flossed, brushed again. Then he moved to his computer and opened his book.
One afternoon, a harsh wind is blowing across the plains, the boxcar door banging, the freight waiting on a siding. Tumbleweed rolls by, a grain elevator wavers in the distance.
Jimmy loved the wavers because that’s just how it had looked, as if the sunlight were a thin liquid, the flat horizon a mirage lake.
I smoke my corncob pipe in the doorway, the smoke whipping out of the pipe’s bowl. Way up the line, along the gravel roadbed, I see someone walking toward me. As he gets closer, I see he’s carrying a battered suitcase and a plastic jug. He wears an orange wool hat, a “tuque” we call them in New Hampshire. His busted up tan boots are outside his pants, and his padded nylon vest has holes, his stubble white. I’ve never seen a hobo clean-shaved and never with a beard.
Jimmy still didn’t understand how they’d managed it. It wasn’t as if they had those electric stubble razors that became so popular from the Miami TV show.
He slows for a moment when he sees me, then stops under me as I stand there.
“Got any smoke?” he says.
I nod. Every hobo I meet wants tobacco, but for it, I learn things.
“Mind if I come up?” he says.
If he hadn’t asked, and he tried to get in, I could’ve kicked him in the head. That’s hobo code. Your boxcar is your home. He hands me the suitcase and jug. The car rides so high I got to help him up. His hand is like a piece of bark.
“Thanks, son. I was riding forward a few cars backa the units, the exhaust was bugging me. Where you headed?”
“West,” I say.
“Me, too.” This is obvious stuff, but all part of polite hobo code. Hobos are different than bums and tramps. A few days later I watched two men almost kill each other fighting over who was a hobo and who was a bum. Class systems were everywhere.
I get out some pipe tobacco from my pack and offer it to him. He grins with no teeth.
“You don’t have a pipe?” I ask him. “Or papers?” I get him my cigarette papers. There is no way I want that mouth on one of my pipes. He makes up a smoke. Guy doesn’t even have a match. Once it’s lit, he puffs the thing with great pleasure. Hobos love booze and smokes. He works it down until his fingers must be burnt. But maybe his bark don’t burn.
Jimmy decided that last line was stupid, though it had seemed funny when he first wrote it. He highlighted and deleted it.
He works it down until his fingers must be burnt. “Gettin' cold,” he says. And it is. We’re just under the Canadian border.
We hear a diesel horn and I look out the door at the approaching headlight of the highball. The hobo tugs on my sleeve. “Stand back, son.” I do just as the other train roars by. After it passes he turns to me. “You can get sucked right out the door if yer not careful. Seen a man die that way.”
In a few minutes the hump comes down at us, and we brace ourselves for the jolt. A long freight starting up has a wicked hump as the slack gets pulled out of the couplers. Getting ready for it becomes second nature after a while, once you’ve been knocked on your *** a few times.
Pete, fence? I rototilled about 10 acres today. You woulda loved this machine. Damn thing was something only LUKE could run sensibly.
James Hakken? Who was his father? Hakken. All he really had was a name. Hakken. Like tomato everyone pronounced it differently. Hakken. It was like chopping something up. And wasn’t that part of who he’d become? He wrenched off the covers, cats leaping, then staring at him, eyes cautious. He went to his turret and looked out over the dark town. Maybe a beer? No, he was drinking too much. Instead he went into the narrow bathroom, brushed and flossed, brushed again. Then he moved to his computer and opened his book.
One afternoon, a harsh wind is blowing across the plains, the boxcar door banging, the freight waiting on a siding. Tumbleweed rolls by, a grain elevator wavers in the distance.
Jimmy loved the wavers because that’s just how it had looked, as if the sunlight were a thin liquid, the flat horizon a mirage lake.
I smoke my corncob pipe in the doorway, the smoke whipping out of the pipe’s bowl. Way up the line, along the gravel roadbed, I see someone walking toward me. As he gets closer, I see he’s carrying a battered suitcase and a plastic jug. He wears an orange wool hat, a “tuque” we call them in New Hampshire. His busted up tan boots are outside his pants, and his padded nylon vest has holes, his stubble white. I’ve never seen a hobo clean-shaved and never with a beard.
Jimmy still didn’t understand how they’d managed it. It wasn’t as if they had those electric stubble razors that became so popular from the Miami TV show.
He slows for a moment when he sees me, then stops under me as I stand there.
“Got any smoke?” he says.
I nod. Every hobo I meet wants tobacco, but for it, I learn things.
“Mind if I come up?” he says.
If he hadn’t asked, and he tried to get in, I could’ve kicked him in the head. That’s hobo code. Your boxcar is your home. He hands me the suitcase and jug. The car rides so high I got to help him up. His hand is like a piece of bark.
“Thanks, son. I was riding forward a few cars backa the units, the exhaust was bugging me. Where you headed?”
“West,” I say.
“Me, too.” This is obvious stuff, but all part of polite hobo code. Hobos are different than bums and tramps. A few days later I watched two men almost kill each other fighting over who was a hobo and who was a bum. Class systems were everywhere.
I get out some pipe tobacco from my pack and offer it to him. He grins with no teeth.
“You don’t have a pipe?” I ask him. “Or papers?” I get him my cigarette papers. There is no way I want that mouth on one of my pipes. He makes up a smoke. Guy doesn’t even have a match. Once it’s lit, he puffs the thing with great pleasure. Hobos love booze and smokes. He works it down until his fingers must be burnt. But maybe his bark don’t burn.
Jimmy decided that last line was stupid, though it had seemed funny when he first wrote it. He highlighted and deleted it.
He works it down until his fingers must be burnt. “Gettin' cold,” he says. And it is. We’re just under the Canadian border.
We hear a diesel horn and I look out the door at the approaching headlight of the highball. The hobo tugs on my sleeve. “Stand back, son.” I do just as the other train roars by. After it passes he turns to me. “You can get sucked right out the door if yer not careful. Seen a man die that way.”
In a few minutes the hump comes down at us, and we brace ourselves for the jolt. A long freight starting up has a wicked hump as the slack gets pulled out of the couplers. Getting ready for it becomes second nature after a while, once you’ve been knocked on your *** a few times.
Pete, fence? I rototilled about 10 acres today. You woulda loved this machine. Damn thing was something only LUKE could run sensibly.
Nuth'in better than setting in the yard, cold beer in hand, playing with trains...
Too (O)ld for (n)scale by (30)years.
http://raspberrygulch.org
http://raspberrygulch.org
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P&R Pete
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P&R Pete
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San Diegan
Damn, Turk. To think we drank every last drop of the Idaho Gold (TM). This camp has been in sore need of a moonshiner ever since Dufus went and got hitched and Jon's beer recipe didn't pan out 'cuz of wort or something like that.
Found something new locally. http://www.whistlestopbar.com
Curiously, it's Gen-Y, with a curious mixture of cowboy, motown (group called "BOOTY BASSMENT"), Inde Cinema, and a very scary "ALL LEVELS KNITTING HAPPY HOUR KNIT MASTER JEN + DJ TONY".
Only in San Diego.
San
PS: It's in an area of town called "South Park", i.e., south of Balboa Park. Used to be the exclusive territory of the boogers, but these days you could gentrify an outhouse and sell it as a starter home.
Found something new locally. http://www.whistlestopbar.com
Curiously, it's Gen-Y, with a curious mixture of cowboy, motown (group called "BOOTY BASSMENT"), Inde Cinema, and a very scary "ALL LEVELS KNITTING HAPPY HOUR KNIT MASTER JEN + DJ TONY".
Only in San Diego.
San
PS: It's in an area of town called "South Park", i.e., south of Balboa Park. Used to be the exclusive territory of the boogers, but these days you could gentrify an outhouse and sell it as a starter home.
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