Riding with Adolph Bolmeijer
It's been about 30 years since Adolph Bolmeijer asked me to show him how to . It was the winter of (I believe) 1976/77. A paid reading of my own work had been arranged for me at in , California, and my only transportation at the time was and . Adolph wanted to go along
There was only one time that I'd ever traveled on the freights with anyone else, and that was the first time I rode, from , Washington to . I think I was 17, but I don't remember the year for sure. After hitchhiking around, I found myself in Wenatchee with no money. While we were both smoking a cigarett in a park, an old guy, a hitchhiker, in his mid 20s said that he would like to try riding freight trains.
Even though I'd never done it, I told him that I'd show him how (in addition to audacity, I figured that I had a pretty good idea because my grandfather was a freight conductor and used to take me on the caboose with him sometimes). We got on an empty , on a train sitting in the station, ready to head west -- anyway, that was our guess. Usually flatcars were full of milled lumber - a dangerous ride if you don't know the tricks (told to me by a brakeman later in my career), but more comfortable than an empty flatcar because the load gives you shelter.
It was a harsh, cold, and dirty ride, but I loved every minute of it, right up through and over the then down along the into Seattle. At one point, my trainee said that he wished we had some . We were both dying for a smoke. A train was coming from the other direction, so I leaned off the flatcar to watch it go by. On the other train, someone was standing on a flatcar. He yelled, "tobacco!" and threw a pouch onto our car. It was tobacco and rolling papers!! In the middle of the Cascades on a freight train! We couldn't believe it. We fell down laughing. Thereafter, Freight trains were my . Sort of. Well, not really. It was always a harsh dirty ride of one sort or another, hot or cold or one right after the other. But I was drawn to it.
Adolph was (I don't know if he's still alive or not) a who at the time was feeling very competitive with me because I'd won some minor college award that he'd coveted. His father was and his mother . The conflict of the colonizer and the colonized played itself out in him nearly continuously. He was brilliant, but a few steps into the deep end.
For some reason, I said ok. We left hitchhiking from , California and headed toward Chico. In , after buying a quart of , ( or , I think) we caught a train. Our first train was dull to me, but exciting to Adolf, understandably so because it was his first ride. Things became progressively more interesting, though.
We arrived in the freight yard the next morning and waited all day for a train going our way. We smoked and drank , and I read a lot of to him, mostly from Personae but also quite a bit from The Cantos. Although we had no food, we were fairly content. It was a cool day, but not cold.
Then a train came through headed north - and it had an empty box car!!! We jumped on. Before the train left the station, we were pulled out of the boxcar by a group of . That figures. The only time I ever found an empty box car and I get caught. They confiscated our whiskey and took us into the office and threatened to call the cops. I was very polite and recondite, so they let us go with a warning never to trespass on Southern Pacific property again. On the way out, I stole our whiskey back.
Since we couldn't hang out on SP land any more, we went over to land and hid in the bushes, watching the bulls drive up and down. During several hours, we learned their patterns. When night came, a north bound train stopped. We waited for the bulls to go to the far end of the train then ran up to an that was full of pickup trucks and climbed into the bed of one of the pickups.
When the train pulled out, we covered up as best as we could. All either of us had were light jackets and a couple of extra shirts. We put them all on, and fell asleep, intending to disembark in . When we woke up, it was snowing hard and we were on (I believe) the eastern slope of . There was a pretty big , but we could see nothing but , , and more .
Missing Redding wasn't a big deal, because I'd allowed plenty of time to get to Chico. At just about first light, the train stopped in , Oregon. We climbed off, half frozen and hungry. We had a couple of left, so we went into a bar and had . I don't remember the details of how we got there, but it was adjacent to the freight yard. That's where Adolph took this picture of me. I had just turned 22. Adolph took a lot of photographs on the trip, but this is the only one he gave me.
That's the context of Adolph's photo, but I might as well tell the rest.
On skid row in Klammath Falls we found a and prayed for breakfast. They also gave us greatcoats. We went to a supermarket and walked around with a shopping basked, filling it up and at the same time filling our pockets with wine and food. We took the basket to the counter and acted surprised and upset that we forgot our money and said we'd be right back. We took our booty to a park and ate and got drunk. The scam was likely my idea, because I'd managed to survive on the road with no money from the age of 15.
We spent the night in the mission, to the chagrin of the other inmates. I found a and wouldn't stop playing and singing into the night until there was practically a riot to stop me.
At first light in the morning, we made it to the freight yard for the trip back down to Redding. It was bitterly cold, and climbing around on the iron cars with a heavy bag full of books (I always traveled with books) was challenging since our fingers froze to the metal. But we found a Fiat on a car carrier and sat in it. It wasn't much warmer, but it was out of the wind.
As the train pulled into , we were both sitting on the front outside of the carrier looking for a water faucet. We spotted one and were just about to jump off to run to it to get some water when about 10 bulls and/or cops (never was sure) with a variety of guns (hand guns and shotguns) aimed at us and told us to get off very slowly, which we did.
They brought us to the Jail (the old one, pre-1988) in , California. In court, the judge admonished us, but I did all the talking (as usual since I'm a blabbermouth and not afraid of much). The judge said, "you won't ride freight trains anymore, right?". I laughed at him and said something to the effect of, "Are you out of your mind? Of course we are. It's an American tradition." So he threw the book at us, which was only 5 days (instead of the usual 2) in the county jail or a fine. Since we had no money, it was 5 days.
In the jail, I practically started a riot over reading material. All they gave us to read were the lowest brow of low brow . I asked for something better. They told me to shut up. So, I took a pile of novels and one by one lit them on fire and threw them out into the catwalk. All the rest of the cells started doing the same thing. We had quite a little bonfire going. Strange thing was that nothing happened. It just burned out.
The next morning, a guard walked up to me and started laying into me about it, telling me that if I ever wanted to get out of there I'd better straighten out and me telling him to go to hell and laughing at him. He was getting pretty mad when one of the prisoners said, "he wasn't the only hombre". The guard immediately backed down and left. This was because the prisoner speaking was a felon of some kind who had escaped from and was being brought back after having been caught. The interesting thing was that all of the inmates and guards gave him some kind of respect, as though he were a professional and the rest of us only amateurs, including the guards!
So, without further incident, we walked out one evening into the snow with no money after 5 days in lockup. But time was getting tight for my reading at Chico. It was 2 days away. We stood outside a liquor store and panhandled. I almost never ever panhandled, but we were really desperate. It was snowing. A kind young man gave us $5 and we bought a half gallon of cheap wine and some bread and slept in a snow bank. In the morning, we got a ride to Chico, where we stayed with some friends of some friends of my mother. They were very kind to us.
The next afternoon was my reading at Chico. Adolph decided not to come along, but rather to travel on home, which was fine with me. I have always preferred traveling alone.
My procedure for reading at the time was: drink 1 pint of , run 2 miles, drink a lot of water, then have a cup of coffee. I was exhausted from the trip, so I decided not to run the 2 miles, but I did drink the pint of gin. The reading was a complete disaster. I was so drunk and tired that I couldn't control my voice. I found myself listening to myself as though I were someone else. I was reading in a sing song manner and couldn't stop.
The next thing I remember was being in the office of the college president, waiting to get paid. After that, I was walking across the campus and a man in a suit, flushed and angry, thrust $50 into my hand and said, "we don't usually pay poets, you know". I was puzzled, but too sick and tired to follow up on it.
When I returned to Thousand Oaks, the man who had set up the reading (who shall remain nameless out of respect for him) said, "I hear you were a real asshole up in Chico."
I said, "yeah, I really blew the reading".
He said, " you vomited on the president's desk."
You may have an idea of how I felt when I heard this. I ran crying (figuratively) to my mentor, (whom I name out of respect for him). He said, "those people worship . If Bukowski had done that, they would have framed it and put a plaque next to it. You're better than Bukowski, so fuck 'em."
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