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Jack Kerouac glamorized the life of an American hobo

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

BOOKS

Top 10 tips fromThe Hobo Handbook

Posted By SHAWN ALFF on Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 8:56 AM

There are plenty of guidebooks for how to

 “adventure” into national parks or how to

backpack around Europe while spending

only a minor fortune, but few books provide

tips for surviving in the American jungle.

Josh Mack's The Hobo Handbook  teaches

you how to thrive with a pack, your wits,

and an eccentric sense of absolute freedom

in the concrete wilderness and along the

railways crossing the industrial landscape

like America's iron arteries. In many ways

this book strips away all the glamour that

Jack Kerouac, Jack London, and Walt

Whitman ascribed to the open road. Living

free is an art that demands a Buddhist

monk's patience and a soldier's ability to

endure extreme conditions. In addition to

the basics, like investing in synthetic

clothes that will dry faster, the book covers

some of the finer points of hoboing, like how to give yourself stitches and how to

waterproof a match with candle wax. Below are the top ten tips from The Hobo Handbook 

on how to survive as a modern vagabond searching for a double-edged kind of freedom.

-Leave your dog at home: You may dream of a road trip with your dog akin to John

Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America, but for those traveling without a

vehicle, a dog will become a burden. A dog is one more thing you have to get safely on

and off a moving train and one more thing that will give you away when hiding from the

authorities. While it may not be cruel for you to voluntarily miss a few meals, it is abuse

to subject a dog to some of the conditions you will face.

-Hitching a train: A large portion of the book is dedicated to navigating the rail yards

and safely hopping a train headed your way. Mostly though, the handbook just explains

all the things that can go wrong: you hop the wrong train and get stuck going several

hundred miles in the wrong direction, you get locked in a boxcar, you get crushed by

shifting cargo, you get stuck hanging onto the train in a precarious position for seven

hours while you are assaulted by the elements...

-Develop a skill: Hobos distinguish themselves from bums by their willingness to work.

With the agriculture industry needing fewer migrant laborers each year, having a

marketable skill will give you a leg up when searching for a job and a place to sleep.

-You are not walking into a wasteland: Living as a hobo means cutting your

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possessions down to the essentials. Even a few pounds can make all the difference when

you are forced to carry everything you own on your back. Remember that you can buy

most anything you really need in any town along your route. You do not need to stock up

with two packs of toothpaste on an industrial sized can of shaving cream. If you are

starting out in the summer, wait until late fall to buy winter clothes on the road. Assume

that everything you take will be ruined or lost.

-Be a bike hobo: The U.S. Bicycle Route System is an expanding network of official

routes linking cities via shared roadways and trails. As a general rule you can bike on any

road that is not an interstate. The benefits of biking are the exercise, you can potentially

carry more gear in your saddlebags, and you will have a better idea of when you will

arrive at your destinations. However, biking is not without its challenges. You must carry

tools to deal with whatever mechanical issues occur. You have to be more cautious aboutleaving your unsecured gear on your bike when you pop into a restaurant or go for a

swim. And while you may not get a ticket for trying to illegally ride a train, it will

probably take you more time to cover large distances.

-Share rides: Ridesharing is like hitchhiking on the information super highway.

Increasingly the Internet houses forums where thrifty travelers can connect to split gas

money or even to hitch a free ride while helping someone move. There are forums where

people post their destinations and the terms of their ride sharing agreement. Search for

likeminded travelers headed your way on websites like Craigslist, Digihitch, and

SquatthePlanet.

-Don’t forage: Unless you are an expert at living off the land, you can easily end up like

the protagonist of Into the Wild , Chris McCandless, who died of starvation after he

mistook an edible plant for a toxic one that made it impossible for him to digest food.

Many of these identification errors will leave you feeling worse and weaker than hunger

itself. Beyond that, you will probably waste more energy foraging for nuts and berries

than you will gain from eating the little you find. This is not to say that you should pass

up some obvious meals you stumble by on the road, like pecans, a few ears of corn from

an overgrown field, sunflower seeds, or even apples. Just don't count on living off the

land. Hunting probably will not work either, as drifters with guns who hunt on private

property out of season are not treated kindly by the authorities. With that said, the book

does provide a few surprising examples of road recipes like pine needle tea and dandelion

salad.

-Dealing with a vagrancy arrest:

Assuming you don’t want to wait around

a month or more in the place you were

ticketed for your court date, and

assuming your only crime is vagrancy,

you may want to plead "no contest" at

your arraignment and receive your ticket

and/or minimal jail time. If you plead

"not guilty" you will have to return to

court in a month or more, or flee and

hope the warrant never catches up with

you. Or the judge may decide you are a

flight risk and give you an excessively

large bail. This will either force you to

wait in jail or put you at the mercy of a

bail bondsman. If you do make it to

court you can get off if the officer does

not show up. Otherwise, it is your word

against a police officer's, which means

you will lose.

-Glad rags: No matter how many times

you wash your road clothes and shoes

they will take on the unmistakable musk

of transience. While this odor may be

fine for hopping trains, it will not do when interacting with people who do not have asliberated an understanding of personal hygiene as you. When you hit town, wash up and

switch to your glad rags. These will make you more presentable when you sit down next

to a cute hippy woman at a coffee shop and when you ask around for work.

-Being a hobo is not pretty: When you choose to live outside of society, you give up

the protection of society. Sleeping and eating will no longer be passive events. They will

take work. Traveling will turn into an endurance race. You will have to wait, sometimes as

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COMMENTS

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much as a few days, for the right train heading your way. Sitting in the woods eating

Power Bars and rereading a dog-eared book while stewing in your own stench may not be

what you envisioned when dreaming of setting out on a grand adventure, but waiting is

most definitely part of being a hobo, as is extreme hunger, exhaustion, loneliness, and

filthiness. The point is, be prepared.

Follow Alfie on Twitter or Facebook and email him if interested in writing about Sex

& Love.

Tags: book review, author, book, top 10, tips, Shawn Al! , John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of 

America, hobo, homeless, transient, travel, Chris McCandless, Into the Wild, Jack Kerouac, Jack London, Walt

Whitman, Craigslist, train, The Hobo Handbook, field guide, Josh Mack

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