95% of what most of you think about the current state of our economy is something someone told you. Either something you read – in a book or magazine, or even more frequently, on the Internet, or something you hear on the radio, or passively absorbed through television. You get the picture; it’s not based in your reality. It’s just talking heads and academics tossing down platitudes and divergent opinions to be regurgitated by un thinking parrots.

If you have stuff, you worry about losing your stuff. If you don’t have stuff, you worry about being able to afford the stuff you don’t have. My friend Paul used to say that everyone is poor at a different level and that is true for most of us. I’ve heard the super rich complain that they can’t afford to keep that vacation house because of the damn taxes, with the same emotional fervor as the working class guy talking about his hours being cut and he can’t afford gas for his car or cigarettes. I certainly don’t mean to trivialize poverty, and obviously, the two examples are not the same, or are they?

I’ve been crisscrossing the continental U.S. since before I care to remember, and I can tell you that economies are individualized, for the most part. The key factor in economic success is expectation. If you expect to have nothing and you get something, your economy is good. Conversely, if you expect to have everything and you lose something, your economy is bad. When things aren’t as we wish, we need to blame someone or something and that is where “The Economy” comes in. It is impersonal and easy to blame. Unfortunately, it really doesn’t exist, nor care.

Consider the following two statements: “Everything I have is in my backpack, that is all I need.” That is an individual economy. The markets can implode and I will still have everything in my backpack. “Everything I need is in my accumulated wealth, scattered in little pieces called “investments” across 7 continents. “ That, too is an individual economy, only everything you have is controlled by a collective steered by politicians and fund managers influenced by academics and talking heads who are influenced by other academics and talking heads.

I’m no economist, that is clear, but perhaps we are best served by jettisoning those “economies” which have no basis in our daily realities.

Everything I have is in my backpack.

Tex KT Near Des Moines, IA May 4, 2012

Oaxaca, Mexico.  

Hitched a ride with some rubber tramps.  These aren’t your ordinary snow birds, heading south to beat old man winter in luxury cruiser-like, million dollar RV’s.  Rubber tramps live in vans, RV’s.  Rubber tramps live in their DIY trailers, vans and campers, year round.  They can tell stories. 

I met this group in Texas and was able to slip into the big chimichanga that is Mexico, without passport or much cash.  I guess they are so busy watching to make sure no one gets in, that they don’t much care who gets out.  It’s been a fun few weeks.   They like me, because I can basically match them, story for story. 

We have been parked near the ocean, Pochutla, I think,  for a few days and last night someone brought a 2 gallon jug of tequilla.  We cooked over an open fire and drank, while we listened to the surf. There was much merryment.  I woke in the early evening to shouts and expletives.  Somehow during the night my host had either driven us into the ocean, or the ocean had risen to meet us in a very bad parking place.  The van was ruined, but I saved my pack.

Another story to be told around a tramp fire someday.  I’m as brown as the natives and I think I like it here.

Tex.

Made it to the outskirts of Nashville.  I’ve been here 50 times since I started roaming - there’s no character to these cities anymore, they all look like the same suburban wasteland.  Minding my own, behind an abandoned tire factory building.  A kid in his 20’s (a “tagger” by the looks of the paint on his fingers) struck up a conversation with me about riding the rails.  I get this a lot.  I guess I look like a f**n tour guide or something.  I have the story down pat, so I pretty much tell him what I tell all the younger kids.  I doubt most of them have the stomach for the road, but there are a few regulars out there. PDX, Painter, Z BOOY and others whose marks I run across.  here is what I tell anyone that asks:

I tried to avoid riding in the Deep South, back in the day, because the police in the South had such an attitude about hippies. I hear that they are a lot more laid back these days (compared to the ’70s, of course) but the increased surveillance created by 9/11 is a big problem.

Intermodal freight has always been considered “hot” cargo. They watch IM trains a lot closer than regular general merchandise revenue trains. Keep this in mind.

The best IM well cars for trainhopping, in my opinion, are TTX 48’s, preferably with a shorter container loaded, or if it’s a stack, look for a short container with a longer container up top. This creates a “porch” on one end of the lower container.

Do NOT catch a TTX 53—there is no floor in the well, just steel girders to support the bottom of the container. Do not try to ride an “unrideable car”— a spine car, a 53, a chemical tanker, etc.

My preference is a Canadian grainer, preferably a Cadillac grainer with the raised bulkhead around the porch, allowing you to hide better. A good second choice would be a boxcar with both doors open (rare, these days) or an empty gondola car. These days, I do not ride piggybacks. There is too much surveillance going on, and TOFC’s do not have any really good places to hide.

I am adamantly opposed to catching on the fly unless the train is moving EXTREMELY SLOWLY. Catching a rolling train is very dangerous. I did it when I was “young and dumb,” but I would never catch on the fly today. It is unnecessary, 90% of the time. If your catch-out spot absolutely forces you to catch on the fly, you need to use your head and find a better catch-out.

Who knows if they listen, but for some, train travel is an alluring siren, beckoning them to the freedom of the open rails.

Tex KT

Yesterday afternoon I had a terrible dream.

I’ve been stuck in Hutchinson, KS for a couple months. It’s been the longest time I’ve spent in one place since I worked as a logger on the Portland coast in ‘95. I’m staying with a women I met in a grocery store parking lot. Jai-ree has been pretty good too me. It seems like everyone feels like the need someone when they don’t have anyone, then when they have to spend each day with them, the road looks better and better.

But, I digress, this dream, was a soft white color. I was riding a bike, but couldn’t seem to get anywhere, so I asked Jai-ree to push me and her hands went through me, like smoke. I woke up with a dry mouth, in a cold sweat, like waking up in the sun with cheap wine hangover. What did this dream mean? I’ve spent a lot of time around Nam vets and they have crazy dreams where they wake up and want to kill everyone. It is my understanding that those kinds of dreams are triggered by negative emotional memory feedback. If that is the case, then I feel like my dream was caused by Post Traumatic Stress inflicted by this self-imposed incarceratory state.

I was lured in by her free-internet, beer and a shower. I don’t belong here. She keeps talking about the Kansas State Fair and all the memories for her and her family. I’ve been on the road since before I was 18. My memories keep moving. I think it is time for my memories to go somewhere else.

As I sit in a small public library in Caruthersville, MO, I am reflecting mainly on two things. The first is the relief from this ungodly heat that the library offers to a tramp whose money is in short supply, and the second is what a gift public libraries are.  

Contrary to popular belief, Ben Franklin didn’t start the public library in America.  He charged money for his.  The first FREE public library in America was established in Peterborough, NH in 1833.  Libraries have been accused of being a socialist institution, but for the downtrodden and disenfranchised, they are a great social equalizer, filled with otherwise unaccessible treasures.  I pity the fool who doesn’t recognize this.

Today, I was greeted, by a nice, older lady, who, despite my appearance (and I’m sure my odiferous tendency) was friendly and conversant, even offering me a glass of water or coffee.  After reading USA Today and The Caruthersville Democrat Argus, I cooled off, shed my boots and relaxed with a nice literary find “Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America”by Todd De Pastin.  I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of tramps. 

According to DePastin, it has been said that the hobo works and wanders, the tramp drinks and wanders and the bum just drinks.  But the historical truth is that the tramp, hobo and bum represent 3 stages of American homelessness.  Tramp was a label given to displaced Civil War soldiars and victims, while hobos were a more political and organized group, usually primed by great recessions like the one from 1893-97. The term bum wasn’t popular until after WWII.  

The book is an interesting and entertaining narrative.  The bottom line is this:  Tramps, or whatever you want to call us,  will exist as long as wanderlust, resourcefulness, and the god given tendencies of a free spirit are fiery tendrils fanned by unemployment, psychology and unintended circumstance.  My kind of tramp is a dying breed, lumped into the category of “homeless”, which evokes images of poor, mental beggars on urban street corners, when in reality, we are waferers, wanderers, ramblers, gypsies.  At one time revered and celebrated, and finally scorned, as a wild earth grew tamed.  

Tramp out.  

Tex Kott

Doctors and hospitals are as inaccessible as an Island resort for me and my brothers.   I recently developed an infection in my foot.  I sliced the top of my toe off - nail and all.  It bled for a couple hours.  I made a simple tourniquet from a shoe lace, and that helped.  I wasn’t near any water, so I washed it out with beer. After about 3 days, my entire foot was swollen and infected.  

“You should go to a doctor.” everyone said, but you have to be damn near dead for an emergency room to take you in, without identification or a health card.  It got to where I couldn’t walk.  So I turned to the most desperate of all things for a tramp - panhandling.  

On the 4th night after I cut my foot, I developed a terrible fever and dreamed about my mother and aunt Licha.  We were peeling apples to make applesauce - I cut my finger with the peeler and woke up. I faded in and out and woke to a kind younger man a volunteer who helps the homeless.   He had called a lady who was a volunteer nurse.  They took me to a shelter, cleaned and dressed my wound and gave me medicine. After 3 days in bed, I was feeling much better and left the shelter.  

I’ve seen tramps die from minor sickness, food poisoning and infection that could have been prevented with a simple visit to a doctor.  Tramps are often heard to say “I don’t need a doctor.”  But really we all need help once-in-awhile.  I’ve also seen people in polite society go to the doctor for everything from nagging back pain to elective toe surgery. 

What’s the point this rambling old tramp is trying to make you ask?  Well, it’s simple as seen from a road’s eye view.  There’s them that needs and them that gots.  The gots are fixated on comfort, like the “Princess and the Pea”.  The needs are concerned with survival.  The gots need to walk a mile in tramp shoes.

Near Interstate 80, Somewhere in Indiana

Waste.

I live on what others throw away. Today, I found half-frozen hamburger patties in a dumpster behind a burger joint. They were only 1 week past the expiration date. I stuffed them into a plastic bag and took them to the edge of a construction site and started a fire with some 2 x4’s. I cooked the burgers on a tin pie pan. You paid $7 for the same thing.

I can almost always count on finding food in the dumpsters behind grocery stores, or behind fast food restaurants. The clothes I wear, right down to my Nike shoes were all considered trash by someone else. Kind of like me - and I like it that way.

Without much effort, I’ve found money, books, tools, laptop computers, candy, whiskey, cigars, love letters, credit cards, appliances, jewlery, televisions, paintings, trophies (who throws away a trophy?), broken (but repairable) guitars and everything else you can think of. I once found a case of “tag-a-long” Girl Scout Cookies. I guess someone bought them to be nice, and didn’t want to eat them.

Our trash is a snapshot of us and our bloated, waste-oozing lives and once you live off the grid, you appreciate the grand grossness of it all. Tramps are a model in sustainability. We create little interference with our environment. We take what we need - we need what we take - no more, no less.

This morning, some kids, laughed at the sight of me, trolling through a rusty dumpster. I smiled, and laughed back at them. Even the monkey in the zoo knows, when you point at someone, 3 fingers are pointing right back at you.

Tex KOTT

June 13, 2011 Chicago, IL

The world hates you if you don’t have a credit card.  For the tramp traveler, its a cash or trade world.   The conveniences of a plastic money card; car rental, hotel rooms, and spending beyond your means, are lost on someone who carries his home on his back.  

For the possession-encumbered, the credit card is a plastic security blanket.  

 To the tramp the credit obsessed world is an illusion which dulls the senses and creates a sense of belonging where there is none.  Brother, can you spare a dime?

Tex KOTT

June 2, 2011 Somewhere, Iowa

The best part of being a tramp traveler is making friends all over the place. The other best part is leaving those friends behind.  A few days ago I rendezvoused with some fellow travelers. We had a great time, the stories flowed like the wine and beer we shared.  On a blurry morning we said our goodbyes.  For the homebound, this parting is especially cruel, because they feel left behind - left out - resentful that their scenery doesn’t change.  The electricity and laughter that interrupted their daily drudgery is whisked away, leaving silence.  For the traveler, each day is new again.

I hope to make South Dakota by tomorrow morning.

The paint is peeling on the walls

echos of lost voices in the hall

White clapboard four square

Lace curtains and a crystal kerosene lamp

Daddy drove the lumber wagon

to meet the train

those were the old times

Now nothing left is new

the depression wasn’t as depressing

as the Reagan years

I used to go to coffee with the ladies from church

Most of them are gone now

and I stay home

my daughter visits me every week

in between, I read large print books

 and  watch the kids on bikes,

outside the big window,

with the wavy old glass.

It seems it’s all gone past so quickly

with a wink and a nod

Those were the old times

Now nothing left is new

Tex KOTT

Somewhere in Missouri - May 26, 2011

As I’ve traveled I’ve seen the mostly back side of these North American cities and towns, I’ve seen things that most people won’t see.  When I come into town, there are no welcome signs or tourist stops.  Sometimes I feel like I’m behind the facade of a movie set - the place where no one can see you.   Today I’m in a town in Missouri – not sure of the name.  Trying to get to Iowa to meet up with a few tramp brothers. 

People think that tramps are train travelers, like hobos, but we’ll move anyway we can - bike, car, truck, plane or train.  Anymore, it’s not like some glamorous damn black and white John Ford movie from the 1930’s and 40’s.  Tramping is dangerous, crafty business.  Do you know what the difference between a hobo and a tramp is?  Neither of us have homes, but hobos are looking for work, tramps are avoiding it. 

I travel. Mostly in the U.S., but sometimes into Canada, although that isn’t as easy as it used to be with all the Homeland Security bullshit.   I’ve spent time in Mexico, but that isn’t for me.  My lifestyle is dangerous enough without all that desperate poverty and random gang violence.

I don’t own a cellphone.  I don’t own a watch.  Everyone else does, and that is good enough for me.  I play guitar - sometimes for money - sometimes to entertain the other itinerants that I meet on the road.  I swear this guitar has saved my life many times.  Things get tense.  Like seagulls scrabbling over scraps, but they never stab the guy singing and playing guitar.

I get on the inter-web via public libraries.  They’re giving me the look right now.  Time for this dirty tramp to move on.  If I hitch a northbound, I’ll make Iowa by daylight.

Tex KOTT