Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 02:35:19 -0400
From: carl_mason@comcast.net
Subject: HOBO TEEN - 3

Copyright 2006 by Carl Mason

All rights reserved.  Other than downloading one copy for strictly personal
enjoyment, no part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, except for reviews, without
the written permission of the author.  However based on real events and
places, "Hobo Teen" is strictly fictional.  Any resemblance to actual
events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.  As
in real life, however, the sexual themes unfold gradually.  Comments on the
story are appreciated and may be addressed to the author at
carl_mason@comcast.net

This story contains descriptions of sexual contact between males, both
adults and teenagers.  As such, it is homoerotic fiction designed for the
personal enjoyment of legal, hopefully mature, adults.  If you are not of
legal age to read such material, if those in power and/or those whom you
trust treat it as illegal, or if it would create unresolvable moral
dilemmas in your life, please leave.  Finally, remember that maturity
generally demands safe sex.

This story is highly indebted for its inspiration and many of its details
to the book Riding the Rails; Teenagers on the Move During the Great
Depression by Errol Lincoln Uys.  New York: Routledge, 2003, and the
award-winning documentary film by Michael Uys and Lexy Lovell, Riding the
Rails, produced by WGBH Educational Foundation, Boston, 2005.


CHAPTER 3

(Revisiting Chapter 2)

As the young man from Gloucester mumbled to his new pal, he so wanted to
return the favor. Nevertheless, stark naked, cuddled under the blanket in
the arms of a handsome (naked) buddy, warm, and unbelievably satisfied
sexually - albeit exhausted physically and emotionally - he fell asleep
almost immediately.  As a matter of fact, he didn't stir until Archie poked
him into consciousness, telling him that they would soon be entering New
York Central's Selkirk freight yards about a dozen miles south of Albany.
(Author's Note: Though it struggled to maintain its identity, the Boston
and Albany came under the control of New York Central in 1900.)

(Continuing Our Story - Into the Jungle!)

As the freight rolled into the giant Selkirk Yard, Cy blinked in near
disbelief as he sat beside Archie in the doorway of the B&A boxcar.  He had
never seen so many trains or, in truth, so much activity in his life!
While the boys couldn't see the whole yard from their vantage point, it was
located in a large flat area some six miles long and a mile wide.  Archie
explained to the newbie that there were receiving tracks where incoming
trains were delivered, classification tracks, and advance tracks, where
they were made into outgoing trains.  The yard was capable of holding over
8,000 railway cars!

The engine terminal included two round houses, each with its own
electrically-powered turntable, and each with its own hot air ventilation
fan system.  Each had ash pits and a modern concrete coal storage chute
consisting of two 600-ton bins served by conveyers.  Adjacent to the
roundhouses was an administration building, a machine shop, storehouse, and
oil storage house.  A nearby power house contained three 400- horsepower
boilers, electrical transformers, air compressors and water pumps for fire
protection.  The Yard had its own water supply system, with a 16-inch main
connecting a large pumphouse located on the Hudson River, with
5000,000-gallon storage tanks located at each end of the yard.  A railroad
YMCA stood near the east end.

As the train slowed even further, Archie interrupted his terse travelogue,
telling Cy to stick close, stay low, and keep quiet.  When the freight
stopped, Cy followed his buddy down off the boxcar.  Out of the corner of
his eye, the Gloucester boy could see that other boxcars, as well as
gondolas and flatcars, were disgorging hoboes.  Some even crawled down from
between cars!  Clearly, they hadn't been the only non-paying passengers on
that freight!  Cy received no more than a kaleidoscopic impression, for the
others were scattering in every direction and he was fully involved in
keeping up with his companion.  Stick close, stay low, and keep quiet!
Right...

Suddenly, Cy realized that he was outside the Yard, walking down a rural
dirt road in the bright sunlight beside a widely grinning Archie.  "Yeah!"
the boy from Bangor yelled, punching his fist high into the air.  "The
bulls can't catch us!"  "Golly," responded his breathless partner, "I can't
believe how many people were riding that freight."  "Oh, that was nothing!"
Archie yelled, dancing around a bit on the road.  "When one of those long
freight trains stops out West, you'd think that the Twentieth Century
Limited (the New York Central's most famous streamliner) was detraining its
passengers!"  "We going to stop at that YMCA tonight?" Cy babbled on.
"Nah, we can do better than that!" Archie laughed as he stirred up the dust
shadow-boxing, bobbing and weaving around his new friend.

About a mile further along the road, the two boys came to a sleepy little
village.  It wasn't much: one paved street shaded by great elms, a few
stores and other businesses and, here and there, a number of houses.  "The
moment we get to where we're goin', Cy, we'll be told to come back here.
Might as well take care of it now," said the redheaded one in a low voice.
"What's that, Archie?" his junior partner whispered.  "Well, one of the old
guys will yell, "You two young'uns head back to town and hit the stem!'
That means we have to come back here and try to get some food for the
mulligan pot...the stew pot.  Give me a quarter.  I'll put it with one of
mine.  Look sad and tired."  At that point, Archie, closely followed by Cy,
walked into a butcher shop and spoke to the old man behind the counter.
"Afternoon, sir.  We're really tired, but we did earn some money today.
How many of those scraps would you give us for 25 cents?"  Turning to the
tray beside his cutting board, the butcher held up a handful of meat
scraps.  "Ah, we're real hungry, sir, How many would you give us for 50
cents?"  With a look of resignation - and some grandfatherly concern for
the boys - the butcher used both hands to hold up nearly three times his
original offer.  "Thank you, SIR!" both boys cried out spontaneously and
departed with their rich haul.  Once outside, Archie held out a nickle to
his friend, saying, "Take this over there to that greengrocer and see what
you can get for it.  Don t forget, tired and sad!"  Within a few minutes,
Cy came back with a satisfied look on his face.  "These aren't the best,
Archie.  Matter of fact they were going to feed them to the hogs tomorrow.
But look!"  Opening his shirt, Cy dragged out three carrots, two small
potatoes, and a big onion.  Archie laughed and said that Cy was going to
make a pretty good " bo."

A couple of miles beyond the village, the young Mainer (i.e., person from
the State of Maine) left the road and took off across a field.  Just beyond
the tree line, the boys encountered a nice looking guy in his early
twenties.  "Yo, Bangor Rat!" he whooped.  "Good to see you again!"  "Bangor
Rat?" whispered Cy, a strange look on his face.  "Yeah, that's my handle,"
Archie answered.  "All guys have one.  How am I going to introduce you?"
Cy thought for a second and mumbled, " Shark'.  That's the name of a famous
fishing boat outta Gloucester," he explained hurriedly.  After the two
older boys had fallen into a bear hug and pounded each other's backs for a
few moments, Bangor Rat introduced Shark as a good friend and a good bo -
and then introduced "HiYo" as another good friend whom he had met over a
year ago in Ohio.  As they walked down the gentle slope well-shaded by old
trees, Cy was all eyes...and ears.  Lawdy, there must have been a couple
hundred hoboes in camp! Their bedrolls were scattered all over the place.
At the bottom of the slope, they found a good-sized stream and what
appeared to be the center of things.  There were a few semi-permanent huts
made out of every kind of flotsam and jetsam; a mammoth can of stew bubbled
over a large cooking fire.

"Hey, Bangor Rat," a really old geezer wheezed.  You two young'uns get back
to the village and hit the stem!"  "Already taken care of, Blinky," Archie
chortled.  "Come over here, Shark, and give that stuff to the best cook
this side of the Mississippi!"  Accepting the meat scraps and vegetables
(which he promptly added to the pot), Blinky snorted, "Oh, yeah. It's going
to be a good mulligan tonight!  HiYo, Nebraska Fats is off somewhere.
Would you help these two bos to find a good place to stow their bedrolls?"
Before taking off back towards the tree line, HiYo did help the boys to
locate a really nice level spot, shaded and somewhat isolated, plus
indicating where on the stream they could wash and where they had to go to
relieve themselves.

In entering the jungle, of course, the two boys encountered the second of
two great hobo institutions.  Errol Lincoln Uys, the author of the seminal
Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move during the Great Depression, wrote
that as the railroad carried the hobo from the jungles to the cities and
back again, the jungle was the place where the newbie learned the slang,
stories, songs, and values that were at the heart of hobo culture.  Some of
these jungle camps were more permanent than others, "but all shared the
element of refuge, an out-of-the-way place where the hobo could eat, sleep,
read a newspaper and wash himself before heading out again."  Indeed,
during the next couple of days - around the campfire, in conversations with
bos who readily accepted the bright young lad from Gloucester, and from
Archie - Cy learned much about the life he had adopted.  Camp amenities
(e.g., cooking gear, a line strung to dry clothes, or a mirror with which a
man might more easily shave) were to be used, but not abused.  You didn't
rob a fellow hobo (at least in camp).  You helped with the chores.  In the
surrounding area, thievery was to be kept to a minimum - maybe a piece of
food taken or vegetables taken from a garden or something off a
clothesline.  Breaking into a house or threatening people were offenses
that could bring serious penalties administered by your peers.

Cy also learned something of the dangers of hobo life - the physical
dangers of riding the rails, the danger posed by brutal railroad detectives
or bulls and local police, and the lack of in-depth support systems such as
easy access to health care or a social system that truly accepted
differences between human beings.  Rather, though few could put it into
words - or, as teenagers of the period, were particularly interested in
doing so - they realized that the surrounding culture usually viewed
poverty as indicative of sloth (one of the Seven Deadly Sins) or as a
matter of choice for which one was responsible.  Thus, it rarely
differentiated between "vagabonds" out for adventure, those who wanted/had
to work, and "bums" or drifters.  They also had to keep a weather eye
peeled for "jackrollers" and other criminals who preyed on hoboes, as well
as those "jockers" or "wolves" who preyed on young males.  (Though somewhat
outside the focus of this story, this is not to minimize the problems faced
by young women hoboes and those of color.)  In short, they were outcasts
who essentially had to take care of themselves.

That night Archie and Cy had decided that they would hit the road (or,
rather, the rails) in the morning.  They were pretty well out of money and
needed work.  Besides, the early harvests were getting underway.  Archie
had met several guys his own age who knew something of the western country
that he eventually wanted to see and decided to stay around the campfire to
talk with them.  Cy, however, had been chopping wood for cooking fires most
of the afternoon and was beat.  Quietly, he made his way across the jungle,
stripped down to his underwear shorts, and climbed in between the blankets.
Beyond noting that the jungle was quiet and dark, he must have fallen
asleep immediately, for he remembered nothing more.

Alarms were breaking out all over camp and individual campfires were being
lit as Archie returned to their sleeping site.  Nebraska Fats, Blinky, and
several other old guys (who evidently lived in the Selkirk jungle most of
the time) gathered the reports.  Four
 bos had been robbed; three - a black teen by the name of Cajun Billy,
Pauli, a quiet, slight teen who whispers had it was a girl dressed as a boy
for safety's sake, and Cy - were missing.  The six criminals who had crept
into the camp to do their dirty work had not been particularly careful.  At
least the direction of their escape was still relatively clear.

An infuriated band of hoboes quickly gathered lanterns, torches, as well as
several pistols, clubs and other weapons and set out after them.  For three
hours, they scoured the rough, wooded country on the western edge of the
jungle, almost as far as the next village.  Finally, not all that far from
the jungle, one of their bands stumbled across the camp of the jackrollers.
Archie, in the forefront of the group, entered the seemingly deserted camp
warily.  He gasped as he viewed the body of Cajun Billy hanging from a
tree.  Nude, the boy appeared to have been nearly ripped apart before being
strung up.  Murmurs broke out across the search group.  Search as they
might, no one else - friend or foe - was found until one of the bos heard a
moan off to the side of the camp.  In a small clearing, a naked Cy was
lying on his stomach in a pool of blood.  As a matter of fact, the blood
was still seeping from his torn buttocks and anus.

One of the older men who had been an Army field medic during the Great War
assisted the unconscious Gloucester lad as best he could.  He was forced to
tell Archie the he didn't know how much damage had been done and that he
could be bleeding internally.  If they didn't try to get some professional
help for the youngster, he might well die.  Leaving two of their group
behind to search for the remaining victim and retrieve Cajun Billy's body,
the little band placed Cy on a blanket and carried him to the home of the
village constable.  (Neither Pauli nor the stolen goods were ever found.)
Known as a fair man who had taken a live and let live policy towards the
hoboes in his midst, the constable loaded Cy into his old Model T and
together with Archie and the former Army medic left for the county
hospital.  When they arrived, Cy was barely alive.  At that, the physician
in charge commented loudly that they did not admit "transients" and was
turning away as the World War I veteran grasped his arm and said something
to him that the others couldn't hear.  Rather shamefaced, the doctor
reluctantly growled that Cy should be taken into the emergency room and
that Archie could wait.


To Be Continued