Hobo Rails: May 1995
There is something even more valiant than victory. Something much more gallant found in the person who goes down swinging. Something extraordinary about the resolve to simply keep on keepin’ on.
When an ebullient 18-year-old, with a corncob pipe clenched between his teeth, winked at me and, racing after a moving boxcar, called out “at least I’ll go down swinging,” it was hard not to believe that he would get a lucky shot in before he hit the mat, and somehow at least get a split decision in the prize fight of life. With an adolescent Mickey Rooney charm and an old-school James Cagney tenacity, Smoothy personified the sonnets and fables of hoboism and magically made them his own. A boy who could have lit up the silver screen as a rising star as easily as crawled out from sleeping in a haystack, ready to wander into whatever came next. More character and charisma than any teenager I had ever known.
The term “hobo” became prevalent in the late 1860s, as the U.S. Civil War came to an end, referring to soldiers who were “homeward bound.” Most often, by riding the nearly fifty thousand miles of train rail that had been built throughout the United States. By the time World War One ended and the Great Depression had begun, tens of thousands of homeless men, women and children were riding the extensive and rapidly growing web of rails that criss-crossed Canada and the U.S.
As the dramatic history of North America’s railways unfolded, hobo culture cultivated its own special folklore. The early twentieth century perceptions (built on both truth and legend) of scary strangers outrunning criminal pasts had widened to include a subculture of harmless wandering homeless people, predominantly men, who would fix a barn door, cobble a pair of shoes or play a bit of banjo in exchange for a piece of pie and a night of shut-eye in the back shed before moving on in the morning.
Smoothy knew the history of these kindred spirits well. And he was committed to their tradition, spirit and unwritten code. While I knew him for less than one full day, I learned more about hobos and rail-runners in that time than I had heard, or imagined, in my life: calculating the timing of a safe jump, how to land and tumble from a moving freight car, shimming a sliding door so it looks locked but isn’t, rolling your belongings so they won’t spill in a foot chase, and building smoke-free fires in small enclosures. While kids his age book-learned academic sciences, he figured out the sciences he required on his own. Rather than feeling stuck with his lot in life, he embraced it.
The rest of society would find his lifestyle disturbing. To the general population, his modus operandi would be considered somewhere between nomad, scavenger and pirate. But still, I found him more alive than most people I knew. And in some obscure way, more noble. While countless teenagers were sprawled out on couches for countless hours, watching reruns and testing out the newest mind-numbing video games, stuffing their faces with snack cakes and high-octane cola, this boy lived the breathtaking and heart-wrenching escapade of real-life survival on his own terms. Smoothy made his peril an adventure and turned his crushed young life into a storybook.
I met Smoothy beneath the long shadow of the CN Tower. There, less than two blocks west of Toronto’s Union Station, is a fabulous and often overlooked memorial facing the nine parallel tracks that bleed into a wild weave entering the boarding stations. It was erected in honour of the seventeen thousand-plus workers from the province of Kwangtung (now Guangdong), China who came to Canada to work on the treacherous western section of the Canadian Pacific Railway. More than four thousand lost their lives in the process. The memorial has always had a special place in my heart and imagination because of the beautiful and tragic words on its mounted plaque. In particular, “With no means of going back to China when their labour was no longer needed, thousands drifted in near destitution along the completed track. All of them remain nameless in the history of Canada.”
One of the secret joys of street work is discovering the interesting nooks and crannies of the city—the missed sites and out-of-the-way offerings only appreciated by those moving slowly. Every city has a rich history that can only be realized on foot. Small monuments and brass plaques sadly undervalued in the now, but thoughtfully set in place with tears and best intentions. One of the unexpected perks of being a street worker is having the opportunity to stumble across them, and the time to enjoy them.
As I stood beneath the wooden beams of this tall memorial, looking over the steep concrete embankment onto the tracks, the rich smell of pipe smoke washed over me. I looked from side to side, but there was no one in sight. Still, the unmistakable smell did not subside. Finally, some fifty meters to my right, I spotted a red and white bag tied to a big stick bouncing off the metal balustrade. Immediately after, a pair of white knuckles emerged, clinging to the railing. Then an elbow. Then the top of tartan cap. Every few seconds I could hear the sounds of faint grunting. Then another elbow and two scrawny shoulders appeared. And finally, with a giant thrust, he tumbled over the barrier. He had found the only place along the corridor where a person could take a running jump from the ditch and shimmy their way out of the railway yard. He stood up slowly, brushed the dust from his pants, shook off his cap, secured the pipe between his teeth with pride and, shouldering his belongings like a soldier with a rifle, he began towards me.
“Hey-ho” was the first thing out of his mouth once he reached me. While I was startled by the way he popped out of nowhere, he was nonchalant, acting as though he had been expecting me there, and without pause began rambling to me—a total stranger—about the joys of pipe smoking. Something jovial and sincere about how the calming effects far outweigh the physical consequences. He was hilarious.
After several nods, chuckles and an affirming smile, I introduced myself. He responded brightly, “And my name is Smoothy. Spelled however you like, as long as you say it kindly.”
“Don’t care much for the city,” he went on, without hesitation. “Believe it or not, it’s harder for me to fit in in a big city of three million than it is in a small town of three hundred. It ain’t the numbers, y’see. Fitting in ain’t about numbers.”
I wrote the words on my hand, then and there, to be sure I would not forget them. Fitting in ain’t about numbers. All my years of attending youth development conferences and special courses, and no one had said anything as profound as this young drifter in his first five minutes.
I spent the rest of the day with Smoothy. A great gift of a day, stuffed with intriguing stories, and plenty of belly laughs. We sat in the shade of two dozen pine trees, meticulously dropped in rows at the corner of Spadina Avenue and Blue Jays Way, drank grape soda and ate Ritz crackers. Picnic items compliments of Smoothy, mysteriously prearranged for today’s leg of his adventure.
He could sputter out five or six run-on sentences in a row, laugh for an additional ten seconds and take a long drag from his pipe before ever needing to inhale. Every story was buttoned up with countless elbow nudges and just-between-you-and-me winks. And still, somewhere in the telling of each saga, a hint of hurt would poke its head out and duck away as though afraid of the light. His leprechaun smile and quick wit were both his defense and his offense. But wrapped tightly by a patchwork quilt of one-liners, puns and semi-famous quotes was the concealed travelogue of a boy running from a pain too great to stop and face.
When I asked his real name, he told me “Smoothy is my real name. My ma gave me a different one, but she never knew me, so it didn’t stick. But some old prairie dog hobos gave me this one, glad to meet me when I showed up with tobacco, apple moonshine and a box of Fudgeos to share.” He spoke as though reading from an old movie script. He never did tell me his real name. Or, for that matter, where he had originally come from.
Growing up next to train tracks in Weston, I had always had affection for the sights and sounds of the rails. I spent an entire childhood hacking around with my friends on the tracks—laying out pennies and chestnuts to be crushed, playing chicken on the overpasses and sneaking onto open boxcars. For me, the clatter of passing trains and the whistle blowing was a comforting sound. It still
