Hobo Lifestyles #9

Hoboes under Code Orange

by Tyler Carey

When a man with a huge assault rifle boards your morning train, it's time to get the fuck out of Dodge. Actually, I got into a Dodge, and drove to New England with my girlfriend for a weekend in the country. Some of you may have already read a column of mine that starts this way. This re-visitation to this concept of escapism isn't merely just one more example of that well-known hobo indolence. Oh no, Hobo-Fans, it's just a sign of the times. During that just recently wrapped period of Orange Alert, America (specifically New York) went fucking nuts. All the trains at Long Island City, Flatbush, Jamaica, Penn and Grand Central Stations were halted during the morning commute. It would be one thing if the trains were halted so that they could all be boarded for a thorough searching, but all most were just slowed down in front of a platform with a menacing-looking guard with an even more menacing looking gun looking into the distance menacingly. This wasn't national security - this was a guerrilla theatre plug for the new Rambo movie.

I'm not one to play into what the Unknown Hobo calls the "September 11th Franchise" - that mass hysteria about prepping for attacks with duct tape, plastic wrap, and hatemongering - but, after seeing something out of a van Damme movie greet me during my morning commute, I decided that once more it was indeed time to roll to some quieter neck of the woods for a few days. My girlfriend and I settled on Northampton, Massachusetts - the old stomping grounds of more than a few of the Great Hoboes.

Northampton (or "NoHo" or "Hamp" to the natives) is an idyllic town of Victorian houses built along the edge of the Connecticut River. It lies just East of the foothills of the Berkshires, and is home to college students, young families, and many folks clinging to alternative lifestyles (e.g. tribalism, goth-ism, hippies, punks, anarchists, Presbyterians). Between its boutiques, bars, small-press bookshops, cafés and bustling night-life, it's a great place to decompress for a few.

We of course went up on the eave of the Blizzard of '03. Our lodgings were a quaint bed and breakfast on the edge of Route 9 (the tiny two-lane highway that once was the largest East-West thoroughfare in Massachusetts). The night we got to town, we had a nice healthy supper, caught some jazz, saw some old friends (including a fellow-traveler of the Hoboes from days of old, who stood up in the middle of the jazz combo's performance and started singing Cole Porter songs a capella. God bless him...), and settled in for a long winter's nap. The next morning, there were a few inches of snow on the ground. "You'd better be careful going to town," our hostess said. Jeez, was she for real? This was New England! There are guys with pick-up trucks and plow blades who eat burgers for breakfast and live for this kind of shit. We nodded and headed off to town, and parked in a garage adjacent to the large complex of stores and art galleries downtown.

Store after store seemed almost empty. "Where are all the people?" I asked my girlfriend.

"Maybe the snow drove them away," she said.

"Snow schmoe," I said. "When I lived up here, a little snow never got in my way." As I made that claim, memories of trying to put snow chains on Hobo Felix' Camaro came to mind, many classes missed due to my stalled old Dodge came to mind, many memories of intellectual pursuits abandoned for snowball fights came to mind. "Yup. Snow was just like rain, just colder," I mumbled.

We had entered the store complex at the fifth floor, from the parking garage. By the time we got down to the first floor, there were barely any customers in sight. The girl who rang me up on my last purchase of the day said, in a Shirley Temple whimper, "Thanks ever so much for coming out in this horrible, horrible blizzard!" I snorted in amusement and nodded. When I went to open the front door to the store, I saw that it had snowed over two feet between the time we parked and when we wrapped up our shopping and gallery browsing a few hours later.

"Uh," said my girlfriend, "Maybe we should think of buying some groceries, so that we have something to eat tonight at the B&B..."

"You're worried about food? Oh, please," I said, "These are tough people up here! They live for this kind of..." Before I could finish my endorsement of the hardy Yankees, a car spun out and nearly plowed down a mother walking her son across the street. "So, I would think that bagels would keep fairly well until five or six tonight. Whattya say?"

Later that evening, I mulled over what a dumb idea it was to buy bagels outside the metro area. I'm not a New York snob on very many things - bagels are probably the only thing. The spongy bread that was labeled as a kosher delight fell apart in my mouth before I even chewed, and the scallion cream cheese tasted chalky and like...well...ass.

I'd also not so wisely ignored my girlfriend's notion that we pick up a board game or something to while away the time. "Honey, we're in love. What could we possibly need to distract us from each other?" Twenty Questions is a heck of a game to play for eight hours straight, let me tell you. After ten questions, you get past the mundane crap like, "What's your favorite color?" After three or four genealogical questions, you get the feeling that the next family reunion is going to be coming up far too quickly. And then the questions just get dark. For what it's worth, I Spy can be a fun snowstorm game, too. After you've spied the same used tissue in the waste can twice, though, it's time to move on.

A few hours of pedantic third grade party games later, we both kind of sat in silence and watched the snow fall. There was no sound, anywhere. The other guests in the B&B had turned in when they realized that they weren't going anywhere for the evening. All except for the one lady who monopolized the TV in the common room, watching the weather channel and Hunter reruns, while crocheting a lap blanket for her injured biker-buddy. As the snow fell, the roof creaked, and we sat, I realized that this is what I'd come North for. I'd come to escape the stress, the anger, the fear...all the things that plagued New York, rightfully so, during the Orange Alert.

We've come to be sick about being told to "go about our lives" when wherever we turn there is a cop or a National Guardsman. The men in uniforms go appreciated when they're acting to protect us like this, but it engenders an atmosphere of apprehension. Every train ride could be your last. Every hotdog from a street-cart could be laced with some neurotoxin that has the Saddam-Hussein seal-of-approval. Every action takes on so much more importance and danger. We've all got to get away from this when the big guns come to town. You don't necessarily have to drive North and crash in a cheap B&B or Holiday Inn. You can turn off the news, turn off the lights, and watch the flakes twist about. Or you can go to a concert and hope that the artist doesn't try to incorporate some post-9/11 bullshit into the act. Or you can gather with the Hoboes for a few pints over the weekend. At the very least, try to get a few laughs, as well as some ah's and ooh's in at what our artistic folks have created to help you while away the time.

Thanks for reading, watching, listening, and being a part of this collective.

Tyler M. Carey
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, The Great Hoboes of New York
March, 2003