Speaker 1: Just heads up. This episode has a lot going on, violent,
Speaker 1: strong language, guns. It's a train yard, after all, I
Speaker 1: can't second. It can't be driving around with the cops,
Speaker 1: so that sometimes and I'm trying to figure out of town.
Speaker 1: I asked the cops to show me around today. That
Speaker 1: town is Colton, California, train Town, USA, as it says
Speaker 1: on the city Seal. When I asked the Colton Police
Speaker 1: Department for a ride along, they assigned Lieutenant Raymondendez, a
Speaker 1: nineteen year veteran, to show me around. We're in the
Speaker 1: south part of Colton, east of Rancho Avenue right here,
Speaker 1: which is a main thoroughfare. I've asked Lieutenant Menendez to
Speaker 1: take me to Southside Colton, the neighborhood next to the
Speaker 1: train yard where hoboes from all over the country mix
Speaker 1: it up. And Menendez says he's met plenty of writers
Speaker 1: by virtue that our city has trains running through both north,
Speaker 1: south and east west, which is obviously conducive to having
Speaker 1: people jumping off the train and visiting our city and
Speaker 1: not really knowing where they're at when they get off
Speaker 1: the train. So it's kind of an interesting contact. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Colton is like a lot of train towns around the country,
Speaker 1: but I had heard it was a rougher place than
Speaker 1: most for a hobo, a place where gangs ruled, and
Speaker 1: hobos had to be extra careful if you're a tramp here.
Speaker 1: They just they come down here for their initiation rights
Speaker 1: or whatever, and they just they mess people up. He
Speaker 1: beat the ship out of them, and then he went
Speaker 1: and stole a bunch of ships for me, like the
Speaker 1: Who's who goes and riding trains. Eventually going to come
Speaker 1: to ranch over and this is about as good Medendez
Speaker 1: steers us to Pepper Street, a narrow strip of land
Speaker 1: overlooking the train yard, dotted with hobo tents. And then
Speaker 1: I just saw a little camp over here. We're here,
Speaker 1: but oh right, look there is a camp right there.
Speaker 1: It's not a huge source of crime, this hobo encampment. No, no,
Speaker 1: we try not to have big in caps at home.
Speaker 1: This is when I start wondering if I'm getting a
Speaker 1: straight story from Menendez. I'd heard Colton was the wild West,
Speaker 1: a place where the extremes of hobo life were right
Speaker 1: out in the open, and those extreme state back to
Speaker 1: Colton's corrupt beginnings. But according to Lieutenant Menendez, Colton isn't
Speaker 1: like that at all. It's just another small town with
Speaker 1: small town problems. So who was telling the truth? Where
Speaker 1: the hobo's exaggerating or was Menendez blow and smoke? And
Speaker 1: how the hobo survived here? I'm Donel Morton and this
Speaker 1: is city of the Rails. After Mike sent me a
Speaker 1: copy of the Crew Change, that hobo guide book, I'd
Speaker 1: looked up the city I had heard so much about.
Speaker 1: The Crew Change describes Colton is wide open and recommends
Speaker 1: dark hours best. It's a hub city for the railroad
Speaker 1: and for hoboes. Josh Brack, a long time writer who
Speaker 1: I met through another trap, told me every writer at
Speaker 1: some point ended up in this patch of sand fifty
Speaker 1: miles east of l A like Colton, Like who gives
Speaker 1: the funk about Colton, California? Right? Like, like what the
Speaker 1: fun was Colton? But me, to a train rider west,
Speaker 1: Colton is a fucking capital city. The place was so
Speaker 1: rough that hobo's bragged about surviving it. And I heard
Speaker 1: about one tough guy who had s sc south side
Speaker 1: Colton tattooed on his neck. And Colton I used to
Speaker 1: sleep with the act by my sleeping bag, like everybody's
Speaker 1: gonna get thrown, and everybody's gonna fistfight like hard, like
Speaker 1: people were going to beat the ship out of each
Speaker 1: other like Paul might. If I wanted to know what
Speaker 1: Ruby and her friends were dealing with town to town,
Speaker 1: I could see the worst of it in Colton, you
Speaker 1: know I think that. So here I was with a tenant, Menendez,
Speaker 1: in the Durango. I asked him to show me places
Speaker 1: where train riders hopped out. I could tell he was
Speaker 1: choosing his words carefully. So we're actually the ten here
Speaker 1: at Rancho Um. And then I will take you to
Speaker 1: the main switching yard off of Pepper. Pepper and Rancho
Speaker 1: are two main bridges where city streets crossed over the
Speaker 1: train tracks in Colton. We can get a bird's eye
Speaker 1: view from Pepper. Josh told me a lot went down
Speaker 1: under those bridges. It was like one of the most ridiculous,
Speaker 1: like you will come across the craziest fucking tramps. Rancho
Speaker 1: Bridge used to be like the most dangium splot. The
Speaker 1: who's who both riding trains is like eventually going to
Speaker 1: come to ranch over yourself. And this is an old
Speaker 1: old bridge. So there's the truck so I was with
Speaker 1: Menendez at Rancho, but he wasn't given me much. Oh,
Speaker 1: and I can see there's a chain link fence up there,
Speaker 1: but it's got to cut in it. So if you
Speaker 1: were gonna if the train was stopped there, you could
Speaker 1: go through that cut and get on the train potentially. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Colton is a small town with a population of about
Speaker 1: fifty thou seems unlikely that a veteran cop wouldn't know
Speaker 1: what went down there. So far, Menendez wouldn't give me
Speaker 1: a straight yes or no about anything, but I hoped
Speaker 1: he would at least know about this I'd heard. Colton
Speaker 1: isn't just a hub for hoboes in the railroad. It's
Speaker 1: also a gang battleground. The area south of the train yard,
Speaker 1: south Side Coulton has a notorious gang, the Colton City
Speaker 1: Crips or Three C's, has territory running right up to
Speaker 1: the edge of the train yard. One hobo told me
Speaker 1: the Colton gangs are so infamous that there are songs
Speaker 1: written about them south Side in the plate with east Side,
Speaker 1: and if they know the fra The Colton branch of
Speaker 1: the Crips was so violent that part of the city
Speaker 1: was under a gang injunction for more than a decade,
Speaker 1: ending in cold and like totally like this tolo like
Speaker 1: baflo local town. Like I guess they think you're a punk.
Speaker 1: Like they'll try you, like they'll try to like fucking
Speaker 1: basically like fuck your girl and like take your ship
Speaker 1: and like make you by from them. So I asked
Speaker 1: the tenant, Menendez, about the gangs in Coulton. If the
Speaker 1: gang violence was as bad as i'd heard, I figured
Speaker 1: you'd have a few stories to Um, let's get back
Speaker 1: to the gang's ansers. We're about to go to southside Coulton. Um,
Speaker 1: how bad was the gang problem before? I honestly don't know. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that Um. I think they had
Speaker 1: their fair share of shootings and violence and and turf wars. Um,
Speaker 1: but maybe no more than any other city or smaller city. UM,
Speaker 1: nothing that would stand out more than anything else. UM.
Speaker 1: With each question ev aided, I grew more and more
Speaker 1: suspicious of Menendez. I'd heard that the gangs in Colton
Speaker 1: fought turf wars and sometimes hobos were targeted as part
Speaker 1: of their initiation rights, and I had met one Zoe.
Speaker 1: He took me through the Roseville Yard introduced me to
Speaker 1: her friend Lee, who grew up around Colton, and for Lee,
Speaker 1: the turf wars and initiation rights weren't a rumor, they
Speaker 1: were a reality. That was my home yard. When I
Speaker 1: left Colton, I was leaving home. When when I rolled
Speaker 1: into Colton, I was coming home. I would hang out
Speaker 1: around Rancho Pepper or the yard if I was feeling
Speaker 1: it that night, but usually I would try to wait
Speaker 1: around and outside of the yard. It felt a little better.
Speaker 1: As a local, Lee believed he knew how not to
Speaker 1: get tangled up with the street gangs of the south
Speaker 1: side Riverside County. So it's very true. It's a different
Speaker 1: street politics. There's rules. What are those rules? Keep your
Speaker 1: head down, I don't know. Just don't cost trouble, you know.
Speaker 1: The old timers just say hey man. Every now and
Speaker 1: again there's a beat down or killing and they come
Speaker 1: down here for their initiation rights or whatever. And these
Speaker 1: attacks happened in the past few months and uh the
Speaker 1: past few years steadily. Lee experienced this firsthand. Six years ago,
Speaker 1: he found himself on the wrong side of the Southside
Speaker 1: Culton gang. He was in the train yard with a
Speaker 1: friend when a gang member came up like three in
Speaker 1: the morning. Let me just roll by and shot you. Well,
Speaker 1: he puts it to my face through the chain link
Speaker 1: fence and he pulls the trigger and it just goes
Speaker 1: click click, and then he cocks it or gets it
Speaker 1: right or whatever, and then it turned to blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and he just unloaded on me and he struck me twice.
Speaker 1: The bullet passed in and out of my hat twice
Speaker 1: and grazed my head, and the other one went through
Speaker 1: my back, through my lungs and my ribs and came
Speaker 1: out of my chest. Lee ran for his life as
Speaker 1: the gang member chased after him, still firing off rounds.
Speaker 1: As I was running, blood was just dripping out of
Speaker 1: my mouth and breathing blood, and it just didn't really
Speaker 1: know where it came from. Little see the sparks flying
Speaker 1: all around me. I thought maybe they're gonna finish me off,
Speaker 1: because they were running after me, still firing. Once the
Speaker 1: shots rang out and we ran, a getaway car screeched
Speaker 1: up to pick him up, and the woman that he
Speaker 1: was with was cheering them on and saying, yeah, I
Speaker 1: get them and choose us, laughing, And he just shot
Speaker 1: me in the head and shot me in the tor show.
Speaker 1: We stumbled to a nearby house and got a guy
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood to call him an ambulance. And yet
Speaker 1: it somehow gets worse. Once Lee arrives at the hospital,
Speaker 1: he was hooked up to half a dozen machines with
Speaker 1: his stomach stitch together. When the Colton cops arrived, they
Speaker 1: asked him some routine questions, but didn't take Lee's assault seriously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they interviewed me in the hospital, told me they didn't
Speaker 1: believe the witness, my friend who was also being fired upon,
Speaker 1: and uh, they just wrote a couple of things down,
Speaker 1: rolled their eyes and laughed. I never heard from him again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It just basically was swept under the rug.
Speaker 1: Just the home police report. I don't I don't know.
Speaker 1: It seems like the police wanted to pretend the Hobos
Speaker 1: and the violence and Colton didn't exist. But I tried
Speaker 1: Menendez one last time. I'd made a public record request
Speaker 1: for LEAs police report, so I pulled it up on
Speaker 1: my phone and started reading. Transported to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center,
Speaker 1: where he was treated for his wounds. Witnesses were contacted
Speaker 1: and evidence was booked into the Colton Police Department. No
Speaker 1: suspects were contacted. So there's a lot. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot it's missing here, there's a lot that's redacted. The
Speaker 1: truth is, I don't know, and I don't think that,
Speaker 1: like you had said before, there was some initiation and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to get into the gang. I think you
Speaker 1: said that they had to kill or beat up a
Speaker 1: train rider or something. I've never heard that in the
Speaker 1: years I've been here. Um, now, does south Side Colton
Speaker 1: Gang exist? Yes? Have we had any activity in years
Speaker 1: with respect to them and train riders? I can't think
Speaker 1: of any within the past fifteen plus years. I just,
Speaker 1: I honestly think that's probably an urban legend. Nineteen years
Speaker 1: on the force years is a detective and Lieutenant Menendez
Speaker 1: said he didn't know much about the gangs, but that
Speaker 1: bullet that went through Lee in the train yard wasn't
Speaker 1: a myth. So no justice for Lee and no getting
Speaker 1: shot apparently wasn't worth investigating. Hobos are on the lowest
Speaker 1: run of the ladder, ignored, doubted, and discounted, But this
Speaker 1: issue of not being seen or heard isn't so black
Speaker 1: and white. Of course, ly deserves justice, but choosing to
Speaker 1: live a life apart away from scrutiny and society comes
Speaker 1: at a cost. Hobo's don't trust the cops and one
Speaker 1: of them gets beat up in a fight. Mostly they
Speaker 1: nurse their own wounds rather than go to the hospital,
Speaker 1: and people can be shunned if they call the cops. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: hopefully that helped. It did help? Yes, thanks? Menendez was
Speaker 1: not much help to me then or later. Before I left.
Speaker 1: He said he'd connect me to more knowledgeable detectives, even
Speaker 1: retired ones who knew more about the gang beat, but
Speaker 1: he ignored me as soon as we parted ways. It
Speaker 1: was clear and Colton, the hoboes and the cops both
Speaker 1: wanted to pretend the other didn't exist. A fight between
Speaker 1: vagabonds and gang members. Both of them went to stay
Speaker 1: in the shadows. Just how do you follow up with
Speaker 1: a witness who could be states away tomorrow? But even still,
Speaker 1: if you get shot, you want the police to take
Speaker 1: you seriously. On this trip, I was starting to see
Speaker 1: the cost of life in the Shadows, that people in
Speaker 1: power value your life and wouldn't do a whole lot
Speaker 1: to help you protect it. But I had more people
Speaker 1: to talk to in train Town, USA, even if Menendez
Speaker 1: hadn't heard them. I heard wild stories about hobo life
Speaker 1: and Colton, and about the life of Colton himself and Colton.
Speaker 1: I kept thinking about Lee and how if he'd been
Speaker 1: a high school student instead of a hobo, maybe the
Speaker 1: cops would have taken his shooting more seriously. But Colton
Speaker 1: has always been a place where the powerful decide who's
Speaker 1: in and who's out. Lieutena. Menendez told me during our
Speaker 1: ride along that Colton was one of the few places
Speaker 1: where the tracks of rival railroads Union Pacific in BNSF crossed.
Speaker 1: That made Colton and battleground. Back in eighteen seventy, the
Speaker 1: two railroads paid armed security to battle it out at
Speaker 1: the spot where the tracks crossed, so Colton was born
Speaker 1: in conflict. After my time with Menendez, I stopped by
Speaker 1: the San Bernardino Historical Society, a little Victorian near the rails,
Speaker 1: to ask their president, Nick Catalbo, how Colton came to be.
Speaker 1: I feel like I know you. Starting out, many railroad
Speaker 1: towns were just little stopping places along the tracks where
Speaker 1: the engine could get more wood and water to continue
Speaker 1: on their journey. Those places never amounted too much, but
Speaker 1: a place where two railroad tracks crossed. That was a
Speaker 1: place where there might be some trouble. This part of
Speaker 1: the California Desert isn't much. It's not the beach ball
Speaker 1: vision of the Golden State. It's the edge of the
Speaker 1: Mojave Desert, an hour east of Los Angeles, a piece
Speaker 1: of land that wasn't worth very much to anyone until
Speaker 1: the railroad came after the Civil War. The railroads were
Speaker 1: the high tech of their time. They could bring the
Speaker 1: country together and create a faster, more connected world. At
Speaker 1: least that was the hype of the people who ran
Speaker 1: the railroad. And just like tech, a lot of money
Speaker 1: was made by the founders and a lot of money
Speaker 1: was lost by the average joe who wanted in on
Speaker 1: the deal. The founding of Colton is a good example
Speaker 1: of these schemes. The story in Coulton starts after the
Speaker 1: Central Pacific finishes the first transcontinental railroad through the center
Speaker 1: of the country, and the race is on to build
Speaker 1: another one in the South. In the early eighteen seventies,
Speaker 1: Southern Pacific Railroad was running eastbound from Los Angeles, and
Speaker 1: their their role was to connect with the eastern lines
Speaker 1: as they laid track east across the California Desert. They
Speaker 1: sold off the locations of the train stations and rail
Speaker 1: yards to the highest bidders. Oh yeah, there's always money
Speaker 1: involved somehow, you know, somehow, the railroads, they're working with
Speaker 1: the cities and these land speculators, real estate barons. So
Speaker 1: Samberdandino was the only city out here. So Sambordino, they
Speaker 1: really wanted Southern Pacific to run through their town, and
Speaker 1: they had a spot already, really wanted us to happen.
Speaker 1: The wealthy landowners of San Bernardino County as Southern Pacific
Speaker 1: executive David Daddy Colton, how much it would cost them
Speaker 1: to get a train yard. David Colton, an experienced railroad man,
Speaker 1: gave them an exact number. They said that they can
Speaker 1: work out a deal. If the supporters from Sanardino would
Speaker 1: buy a hundred thousand dollars worth of Southern Pacific bonds,
Speaker 1: this could happen, but there's still no guarantee that would
Speaker 1: actually go into San Fardino. A hundred thousand dollars back
Speaker 1: then would be three million today. So that the people
Speaker 1: in Sanmardino said no, So they turned down the hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: and that's why the Southern Pacific continued on in a
Speaker 1: straight route by bypassing this city, and what feels like
Speaker 1: a middle finger to San Bernardino, Southern Pacific plunk the
Speaker 1: train station down in the dusty clearing just four miles away.
Speaker 1: They named it after David Dowdy Colton, who was at
Speaker 1: the vice president. So that's how you get Colton. So
Speaker 1: Colton was established, Semonino lost out, and thus Colton is
Speaker 1: born at the will of the mighty Southern Pacific Railroad
Speaker 1: and the cherry on top vice President. David Daddy Colton
Speaker 1: never breathed a single breath of that desert air he
Speaker 1: died in and the town had already been, uh, you know, established.
Speaker 1: But I don't believe he had ever visited his namesake.
Speaker 1: Even if he never stepped foot of the town. It's
Speaker 1: no coincidence Colton was named after David Daddy. At the time,
Speaker 1: he was a big deal in the railroad world. He
Speaker 1: was the go to guy for the Big Four, the
Speaker 1: corrupt group of Robert Barons who founded the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Speaker 1: He might recognize some of their names, especially if you
Speaker 1: live in California. Stanford Huntington's Crocker and Hopkins. David Daddy
Speaker 1: Colton became so critical to their operations that he was
Speaker 1: adopted as the fifth member of the Big Four. At
Speaker 1: one time, the Big Four was the Big Five, and
Speaker 1: David Colton was the fifth Guy. Stanford historian Richard White
Speaker 1: told me about the rise and fall of David Colton.
Speaker 1: Colton was a big guy, broad shouldered, with bright red hair,
Speaker 1: the kind of bloviator who, after he earned the honorary
Speaker 1: title of General, demanded that everyone after that call him
Speaker 1: the General. He was an insider, one of the original
Speaker 1: lobbyists who spread money around Washington, d C. For the
Speaker 1: Big Four. He winded and dying congressman at the Willard
Speaker 1: Hotel trying to get them to grant tax breaks or
Speaker 1: subsidized construction. And then there were his illegal activities. David Colton,
Speaker 1: in fact, was an embezzler and was embezzling money out
Speaker 1: in ways that the Big Four were all too familiar with.
Speaker 1: They did it to other people, but they didn't do
Speaker 1: it to themselves. This is where Colton got greedy. He
Speaker 1: broke the cardinal rule of the Big Four. We cheat
Speaker 1: other people, we don't cheat each other. David Colton cheated
Speaker 1: the Big Four. Once they began looking at the books,
Speaker 1: they realized how how much money Colton had taken. They
Speaker 1: will um go after Colton. Colton will die. The story
Speaker 1: goes that early in October of eight seventy eight, David
Speaker 1: Colton's carriage pulled up in front of his mansion on
Speaker 1: Knob Hill in San Francisco. He was slimped in the back,
Speaker 1: beating nearly to death. The driver said Colton had fallen
Speaker 1: off a horse, but it was obvious that no fall
Speaker 1: could have done that. And that's not where the Big
Speaker 1: Four stopped. They're not gonna let his wife keep it.
Speaker 1: They didn't go after his wife, and they pretty much
Speaker 1: break his wife, bring the money back in, and David
Speaker 1: Colton is going to be expunged from the corporation. After
Speaker 1: David Colton died, the Big Four bankrupted his estate, seized
Speaker 1: his house, and threw his widow out into the street.
Speaker 1: And then one of the biggest of the Big Four,
Speaker 1: Collis P. Huntington's, moved into it. You don't mess with
Speaker 1: the railroads. Colton tried and paid for it. So David
Speaker 1: Colton is a brook even among crooks. He's the proof
Speaker 1: of the adage to live outside the law, you must
Speaker 1: be honest, at least with each other. That's the man
Speaker 1: that Colton, California is named after, a crook betrayed by
Speaker 1: his fellow crooks. It maybe honor among thieves and among hoboes,
Speaker 1: but apparently not Robber Barrens. I was starting to appreciate
Speaker 1: this during my trip to Colton. How once you were
Speaker 1: no longer useful, like David Dawdy Colton, he became an outsider,
Speaker 1: someone who was powerless and vulnerable. Maybe you chose this position,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's thrust upon you, but either way, you're
Speaker 1: on your own. The Hoboes and Colton knew this better
Speaker 1: than anyone. Maybe my sympathy for this part of hobo
Speaker 1: life was convenient timing. As I was learning about what
Speaker 1: it meant to be an outsider, I was becoming one myself.
Speaker 1: My place in the world suddenly was in free fall.
Speaker 1: Seven months after Ruby left, I found out my book
Speaker 1: The Single Mom Effect had been rejected after I missed
Speaker 1: my first deadline. The book had been knocked around and
Speaker 1: landed on the desk of an edit or, my third
Speaker 1: who hated single moms. In her rejection, she wrote, You've
Speaker 1: wasted a considerable amount of sympathy on the problems of
Speaker 1: poor women. And when are these women going to start
Speaker 1: accepting responsibility for their unplanned, unwanted children. Okay, got it.
Speaker 1: After that rejection, reality set in. When the publisher buys
Speaker 1: your manuscript, they advanced you part of the money, and
Speaker 1: when they cancel it, they want that money back. Well,
Speaker 1: mine was long gone. With that and my credit card bills,
Speaker 1: I was circling the financial drain. I was a hundred
Speaker 1: and forty dollars in debt. The afternoon I got the rejection.
Speaker 1: I sat at my dining room table, looking out at
Speaker 1: the view of the lake. I could feel the last
Speaker 1: pillars of my identity falling away. I was a writer,
Speaker 1: or had been. And I was a mom, and I
Speaker 1: used to think I was a pretty good one. And
Speaker 1: I was the woman who hosted dinner parties in my
Speaker 1: beautiful apartment, but clearly not for much longer. Here in
Speaker 1: the dining room, I felt how big institutions, big corporations
Speaker 1: could destroy your sense of your value in the world
Speaker 1: in one rough move, and the decision could be up
Speaker 1: to one person. So who's in and who's out? I
Speaker 1: read about this very idea and the single mom effect,
Speaker 1: no wonder it got canceled. One of the chapters was
Speaker 1: set in a housing project in Oklahoma, and it was
Speaker 1: all about surviving as an outsider. The bonds single moms
Speaker 1: created there kept them above water and built a stronger community.
Speaker 1: If one mom needed money for her electricity bill, she
Speaker 1: could get it from one of the other moms, And
Speaker 1: if another mom needed some high hill shoes for a date,
Speaker 1: she knew who she could borrow them from. Now I
Speaker 1: was beginning to see my circumstances as connected to these
Speaker 1: savvy single moms and to the bonds that travelers made
Speaker 1: on the rails. What came first as outsiders was a
Speaker 1: different kind of debt, one they owed to each other
Speaker 1: and always assume that depending on other people, not our
Speaker 1: financial and legal systems, was a gamble. But I spent
Speaker 1: my whole life striving and where had that landed me?
Speaker 1: So as I sat at my dining room table, I
Speaker 1: almost couldn't believe the thoughts I was entertaining that with
Speaker 1: the Hobos and Ruby's friends said about stepping away from
Speaker 1: the status quo actually seemed logical. Were you really that
Speaker 1: much more at risk when you reject all of that?
Speaker 1: All outsider groups have something in common, going against the grain,
Speaker 1: surviving despite those are the stories. I've always been drawn to,
Speaker 1: the stories of alliances between outsiders, like the single moms
Speaker 1: banding together. That same camaraderie exists in the hobo community
Speaker 1: and in Colton, I was going to see the extreme
Speaker 1: forms that camaraderie could take. Oh. My trips to the
Speaker 1: train yards and the conversations I've been having with hobo's
Speaker 1: ever since we be left had sucked me into the
Speaker 1: city of the rails. But it wasn't until Colton that
Speaker 1: I saw its harshest realities. To survive into town like Coulton,
Speaker 1: hobo's had to rely on each other for protection. There
Speaker 1: was a coat, they made alliances and enforced their values
Speaker 1: with vigilante justice. Just having a traveling family and knowing
Speaker 1: where the squads were may not be enough to make
Speaker 1: it in Colton. Like Richard White said, when you live
Speaker 1: outside the law, you have to be honest at least
Speaker 1: with each other, and if you're a hobo in a
Speaker 1: town like Colton, that honesty takes extreme forms. Well. Sylvia, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sylvia was one of the train hoppers I spoke with
Speaker 1: while investigating Colton. I got her number through Lee, the
Speaker 1: hobo who got shot near the Colton Yard. Did he
Speaker 1: tell you what I'm up to? One of the stories
Speaker 1: Sylvia told me about Coulton Stuck with Me showed just
Speaker 1: how far hoboes will go to protect each other. Sylvia
Speaker 1: described the cold winter night when she and her boyfriend
Speaker 1: got off the train at the edge of the West
Speaker 1: Colton Yard and immediately started looking for other people at
Speaker 1: the usual hobo spots. So we were going down to Rancho.
Speaker 1: She's like, smoke coming from underneath the bridge. They needed
Speaker 1: a warm place to camp, so they approached from out
Speaker 1: of the darkness, trying to get a sense of the situation.
Speaker 1: When they saw that smoke, they walked toward it. There's
Speaker 1: fire going He stopped, like whatever, sucking homebomb because he
Speaker 1: was burning railroad sides underneath the bridge. Sylvia sized him up,
Speaker 1: sim he was probably a local burning wood from the
Speaker 1: rail yard. But she and her boyfriend were about to
Speaker 1: be in another legend of the train world. She was like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: like you guys, just get off. That train comes from
Speaker 1: the north and it's like, yeah, what's up, dude. He
Speaker 1: was like, watch out, there's some dude or around here
Speaker 1: going around killing people, and I was like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't give a funk, We're just trying to get out
Speaker 1: of the rain. Dude. We finally got underneath the bridge
Speaker 1: and it's dirty Mike, the same dirty Mike who pulled
Speaker 1: a gun in camp before looking for his friend's lost dog.
Speaker 1: Mike was testing Sylvia and her boyfriend, but they weren't
Speaker 1: the kind of people who scared easily. They passed Mike's test.
Speaker 1: Then we introduced ourselves and then we just like lung
Speaker 1: out and then like we had like ten bucks to
Speaker 1: go get beer, and we bought beer and just hung
Speaker 1: out with him. But as they huddled around the fire
Speaker 1: with Mike, Sylvia saw that this wild man enforced his
Speaker 1: own idea of justice. Sylvia had a terrible cold, and
Speaker 1: Mike took matters into his own hands. I was like,
Speaker 1: super Ship, I had a really bad fever, and like
Speaker 1: he was pissed that my boyfriend at the time went
Speaker 1: to paying care of me, and he beat the ship
Speaker 1: out of him and then he went and stole, like
Speaker 1: day cool Nichael Vick a bunch of ship for me
Speaker 1: for me to get better. This was part of the
Speaker 1: hobo code. If a man was traveling with a woman
Speaker 1: and didn't take care of her. Another writer would remind
Speaker 1: him of his responsibilities. You're not going to do that,
Speaker 1: but you'll get fucking greenlighted. Green Lighted means the word
Speaker 1: got around that you should be beaten or worse on site,
Speaker 1: especially if your girl you're like a real fucking like
Speaker 1: train writer and like like you did her and like
Speaker 1: something bad happened to her, or like she gets great
Speaker 1: and you don't stand up for her, like you'll get greenlighted,
Speaker 1: like they're gonna like her friends are gonna fuck you up.
Speaker 1: Travelers rarely called the cops on each other when something
Speaker 1: goes wrong because they can't be certain the cops would
Speaker 1: side with them. Maybe they'd all get arrested, so they
Speaker 1: police each other. It was as simple as that. Sylvia's
Speaker 1: boyfriend wasn't taking care of her, so dirty My showed
Speaker 1: him he better change his ways, and the next day
Speaker 1: Dirty Might kept looking out for Sylvia. I went to
Speaker 1: bed by the fire, woke up about like I don't know,
Speaker 1: three or four o'clock. I went and like welu a
Speaker 1: sign flying a sign as hobo speak for panhandling. Sylvia
Speaker 1: didn't know she was standing on someone else's turf and
Speaker 1: tome Bomb comes up and was like, what the funk
Speaker 1: are you doing? This is my fucking fly spot. And
Speaker 1: I was like, no, dude, like it's my turn fly,
Speaker 1: like you weren't here, and he's like, I've been here
Speaker 1: ten years, and I was like, I don't get full
Speaker 1: long you've been here. I just trying to make enough
Speaker 1: for a half gallon or twelve bucks. Got tiger mark
Speaker 1: and then I'll be done. Are homeless in the train yard,
Speaker 1: many of them older retired hoboes. They defended their turf.
Speaker 1: They guy yelling at Sylvia got physical and then he's
Speaker 1: like no and grabbed my shine and I was like
Speaker 1: you should fucking do that, dude. He's like, you're a
Speaker 1: girl by yourself. What the fuck you gonna do about it?
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh yeah, motherfucker, and I yelled
Speaker 1: dirty Mike's name. She comes growning up. She's the dude
Speaker 1: has my sign and you fucking punches them, throws them
Speaker 1: over the off ramps. He goes flying down the hill
Speaker 1: and then like, I get my sign back and then
Speaker 1: we were friends ever since. But surprisingly mossed about that
Speaker 1: story outside of a guy getting tossed over an off ramp.
Speaker 1: Is just how quickly Mike decides to help Sylvia. She
Speaker 1: was a total stranger to him, but just hours after
Speaker 1: meeting her, he's stealing meds and fighting a home bum
Speaker 1: to protect her. But that helped came with some expectations.
Speaker 1: Sylvia told me she knew that she'd need to pay
Speaker 1: Mike back. We're all hanging out underneath the bridge, so
Speaker 1: I think there was like kind of us underneath Rancho.
Speaker 1: We're all just like hanging out. Then Mike had found
Speaker 1: out that I do stick and poach, and I had
Speaker 1: a bunch of needles and ink on me and he
Speaker 1: was like, hey, you should do train tracks on my face.
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, sure, whatever, I don't care.
Speaker 1: And then he was like really like pissed me off
Speaker 1: that day, And I really didn't want to do a tattoo,
Speaker 1: but Sylvia owed Mike, so she agreed. She took out
Speaker 1: her bundle of needles and her pot of ink and
Speaker 1: sat down by the fire. So I was just like
Speaker 1: pretty much doing a tattoo to hurt him. We're shent
Speaker 1: down and he just had his face on my lap,
Speaker 1: but I was just tattooing his face to try and
Speaker 1: track down a space while from like his eyebrow down
Speaker 1: his cheeks. I did that. Even though Sylvia didn't feel
Speaker 1: like tattooing this maniac resting his face in her lap,
Speaker 1: she knew she had to do it to keep a
Speaker 1: good reputation, and reputation was everything in the train hopping community.
Speaker 1: Lee told me the same thing. You had to size
Speaker 1: each other up, pay each other back, and spread the
Speaker 1: word when people didn't do right by you. That's how
Speaker 1: we check each other, you know, gossip in storytelling, it's
Speaker 1: like how we weed people out. Like, no matter where
Speaker 1: you're at on the totem pol, there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: different little way that humans are weaning out the worst
Speaker 1: of mankind and the good will of man fucking manifest.
Speaker 1: Surviving on the edges unsupported by society, you have to
Speaker 1: be resourceful. Knows all about this. He's been off the
Speaker 1: rails for a while and keeps his distance from the
Speaker 1: regular world, meaning he has to support himself in an
Speaker 1: unconventional way. Instead of writing, Lee decided he'd strike gold.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much the only thing that keeps me off
Speaker 1: the rails right now is searching for goal. Zoe and
Speaker 1: I met Lee outside a country store in Oroville, Spanish
Speaker 1: for gold Town, where he lives in the summer. He
Speaker 1: wanted to show me some places most people never see.
Speaker 1: We hiked underneath the freeway covered with graffiti and down
Speaker 1: a steep hill to a spot where trains cool their
Speaker 1: breaks after sending the Sierras. Jonathan Esposito had described this
Speaker 1: place to me. Lee was crashing at a friend's place
Speaker 1: and spent a lot of summer nights camping out by
Speaker 1: the streams where he searched for gold in the old
Speaker 1: veins in northern California. In the winter, he head south
Speaker 1: mining gold, platinum, and gemstones in the desert out past
Speaker 1: Joshua Tree, where he sleeps under his truck in the
Speaker 1: heat of the day. There was actually being a hobo
Speaker 1: that brought Lee here in the first place, well, hopping
Speaker 1: trains and uh coming out to this part of the
Speaker 1: country for seasonal work. Started meeting a lot of the
Speaker 1: locals out here, and it's just a part of their heritage,
Speaker 1: and they shared their culture and their their methods with me.
Speaker 1: Lee met old guys mining the public lands in the Sierras,
Speaker 1: using the same methods miners from the gold rush did
Speaker 1: running water through a sluice and examining the heavy pieces
Speaker 1: that sink to the bottom for spects of gold, and
Speaker 1: just like hopping a train. Lee started as an apprentice.
Speaker 1: It's not too many young people into it. Kind of
Speaker 1: a grum field van hobby. Uh Miners don't like talking
Speaker 1: to each other all the time. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: weird thing. And Lee told me, all the easy gold
Speaker 1: is gone, so if he's gonna make enough to get by,
Speaker 1: he has to look carefully. I found as much as
Speaker 1: like six hundred dollars in a weekend, but sometimes in
Speaker 1: a day, you know, it could just be a matter
Speaker 1: of sense or a couple of dollars. But it's a
Speaker 1: lot of work. What did you call that snowflakes? Or
Speaker 1: what I call a fly poop? The really tiny, invisible
Speaker 1: gold is the fly poop. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, that could be your bread and butter. So
Speaker 1: I I got to recover the small stuff and the
Speaker 1: big stuff. But Lee told me he wasn't frantic about
Speaker 1: his yield. From the hours he spent huddled over the sluice,
Speaker 1: he could be delighted by even the tiniest speck of
Speaker 1: fly poop. He sold the biggest pieces he mind and
Speaker 1: melted down the rest to make jewelry. And the thing
Speaker 1: I like about Lee is how he sees the world
Speaker 1: living this way. Lisie's potential everywhere. It is a lot
Speaker 1: of work. It's a process start to finish, and that's
Speaker 1: why it's not for everybody. Or that's also why everybody
Speaker 1: doesn't know that they're surrounded by gold everywhere, because we're
Speaker 1: sitting here right now. It's like we're surrounded by gold.
Speaker 1: It's all over. It's just a process to get it out.
Speaker 1: You gotta work it out of the ground, you know,
Speaker 1: either out of the soil or the wrongs. And Colton
Speaker 1: I was beginning to see how the rails changed people,
Speaker 1: and sometimes change them in ways that meant they couldn't
Speaker 1: come back to regular life. Life on the rails was naked,
Speaker 1: not covered by platitudes and promises. To step inside the
Speaker 1: train yard is to realign your sense of power and
Speaker 1: your sense of honor. I kept thinking about least sleeping
Speaker 1: under his truck in the desert. That's how far he
Speaker 1: went to stay away from the false promises of life
Speaker 1: on our side of the tracks, until the day my
Speaker 1: book got canceled I'd been an insider. Now I was
Speaker 1: becoming an outsider just like Ruby. But I still wanted
Speaker 1: her back. How do you bring an outsider back in
Speaker 1: and how do you at them to stay? I had
Speaker 1: a chance to find out when Christmas rolled around. Ruby's
Speaker 1: father was trying to figure out how to get her
Speaker 1: to come home for the holidays. But it was a
Speaker 1: logistical crisis. She lost her I D so she couldn't
Speaker 1: take a plane or a train. He finabled her an
Speaker 1: Amtrak ticket from Houston, but she had already left and
Speaker 1: gone to Austin. On top of that, I knew there
Speaker 1: was more trouble in Ruby's life on the rails than
Speaker 1: she was letting on. Right around Thanksgiving, I found hospital
Speaker 1: bills in the mail addressed to Ruby. I ripped one open,
Speaker 1: not a bill, but a receipt for medication. I called
Speaker 1: a nurse friend to ask about the drugs, strong antibiotics.
Speaker 1: Ruby must have had a pretty serious infection, my friend said,
Speaker 1: emergency injun carrot A County hospital. This is my first
Speaker 1: evidence of Ruby slipping into the cracks. What was going
Speaker 1: on with her? My heart sank thinking about just how
Speaker 1: hard it was to get someone off the rails. But
Speaker 1: if father was able to get her a bus ticket,
Speaker 1: and Ruby was taking the Greyhound from Austin to Oakland.
Speaker 1: She was coming home for Christmas. This guy knew her,
Speaker 1: he was one of the elders in that eighteen Street gig.
Speaker 1: And then she's gone. And during that time she became
Speaker 1: someone that I didn't know anything. I slept in the
Speaker 1: backyard with the dogs, just like being inside. I felt claustrophobic.
Speaker 1: Come back here, be here tomorrow night, and I'll have
Speaker 1: her here. That's what he said. I'm looking for my daughter.
Speaker 1: I walked through the fires at hell. That's next episode
Speaker 1: on City of the Rails, said Mocka, just drinking gastle.
Speaker 1: Look what you've done. City of the Rails is written
Speaker 1: and hosted by me than el Morton and developed in
Speaker 1: partnership between Flip Turn Studios and I Heart Podcasts. Have
Speaker 1: a Colton story. I think we got it all wrong.
Speaker 1: Call in and tell us you might just end up
Speaker 1: on the show. The number is seven oh seven six five,
Speaker 1: three oh three three nine. And thank you to everyone
Speaker 1: who's been calling us. We listened to every message and
Speaker 1: they really give us a boost. I want to help
Speaker 1: us out. You can do it. Very quickly by leaving
Speaker 1: us a rating or review wherever you're listening to. This
Speaker 1: will help more people find the show and it means
Speaker 1: a lot to us. I want to follow along. Find
Speaker 1: us on Instagram at flip turn Pods. Our team is
Speaker 1: executive producer and showrunner Julian Weller and executive producer Mark Keeley.
Speaker 1: Julian will Always have Colton and the World's Largest Pancake,
Speaker 1: Senior producer and editing master abooz Afar and producers Emily
Speaker 1: maronof Sina Ozaki and Zoey Denkla, who do not like
Speaker 1: the fact that I keep calling them my lady squad. Well,
Speaker 1: I've got the microphone, so you're outvoted. The lady squad
Speaker 1: knows how tough some of this was to write, and
Speaker 1: they were with me every step of the way, battling
Speaker 1: it out and keeping the gin in the freezer for
Speaker 1: when things got glum. So grateful to you three and
Speaker 1: I will never forget you and the production support from
Speaker 1: Marcy di Pina. Original music every episode by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Our theme music is Wayfaring Stranger, performed by Profane Sass.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Scott Mischot at Flail Records. Our logo is
Speaker 1: by Lucy Quinia and uses a photograph by Mike Brody,
Speaker 1: the roving now phoneless photographer and at I Heart thanks
Speaker 1: to Nikki Etre and Bethan Macaluso. We'll be back next
Speaker 1: week in the days of Christmas past and also the
Speaker 1: fires of Hell on City of the Rails.