Ted Conover - How We Roll

 

 

A few years ago, I gave my son a book. It was a book I wrote. It was a book I wrote about riding freight trains. I had done this for a few months as an undergraduate working toward an anthropology degree. It was ethnography. I did it to learn about the people who live on trains. But it was also an adventure and it became a book written in the first person. When he was about 14, I gave him a copy because I wanted him to know a little bit more about me and see this cool thing I had done. [audience chuckle] And I waited because I couldn't assign him to read it. You can't do that with a book you've written. [audience laughter] And so, I waited and I waited.

 

And it was about four years later [audience chuckle] when, to my surprise, on a spring break, his senior year of high school, he said, "Oh, Dad, I'm reading your book about riding the rails." And I said, "Oh, what do you think?" He said, "It's good so far." And I said, "Okay." [audience chuckle] And a few more days went by, and he said, "It's awesome. It's an awesome book." And I said, "Thank you." And a couple more days went by, and he said, "Dad, you know, you wrote that book about riding the rails. Does that mean that I can ride the rails, too?" And I thought, "Shit, [audience chuckle] it's not that this question hadn't crossed my mind before that that was a possibility. It's just I hadn't pictured being put on the spot, and I couldn't say no, because that's hypocritical, right? I did it. Yes, he has the right." But I thought there must be a better answer than yes to something that's illegal and dangerous, like riding a freight train. So, I said, "Well, yes, but how about we do it together?" And he said, "Okay." [audience chuckle] 

 

And I was mostly relieved because I would get to do it with him. But I was also alarmed because I had never thought of doing that thing, but I looked forward to it. We decided we would take our trip that coming summer when we flew to Denver from New York to celebrate my dad's birthday. I grew up in Denver, and a lot of my adventures began from there. And fast forward to the day our trip begins. We are buying food for the journey. We buy PowerBars. We buy fruit, sandwiches, water in jugs, which is, if you are riding the rails, what you need, because you can go a long time between places to eat and drink. And we were going to do this like I did, except the goal wouldn't be to meet those people. It would be to enjoy each other's company and have some fun.

 

In Asa's mind, that's my son's name, Asa pictured himself catching a moving train, [audience chuckle] as happens in the movies. And in fact, that was my picture before I ever did it. But I was happy to be able to say no. The real tramps don't catch on the fly unless they have to. They sneak into the yard ahead of time and find a good place to ride and that's what we'll do. And he said, "Okay." And so, we headed to a yard I had once known quite well. But in 20 years, it had changed. 9/11 happened, fences went up, barbed wire, lights. It was a little bit scarier than it once was. That said, we snuck into the yard. There's still a hole in the fence. We found a place to ride. We waited a couple hours until a brakeman checking that train that was about to leave also discovered us and said to get out of there. [audience chuckle] And that was too bad.

 

But because it was an adventure, we checked into a motel [audience chuckle] instead of sleeping under a bridge and went out again to try the next morning. Now, for better or worse, the next morning it was too bright to sneak into the yard, so we had to wait outside a yard for a train that was leaving and, yes, catch it as it went by. So, we waited under a bridge. I had done these many times, but always kind of by myself and as a younger man also. [audience laughter] But I laid out the plan. I would wait. When the train appeared, I would be there. I would locate the car. We would jump on. I would jump. If it was all was good, then he would jump another 20 yards down the way, and we'd be on our way.

 

We waited. We waited two or three hours, and then we heard it. And this is typical of how you know the train is coming. You feel it a minute before you see it. You feel these deep base vibrations. And then you see the first part of the train. It's several engines connected, this pure energy pulling this giant metal thing forward. The engine is smoking. It came up on us. It goes by. It's picking up speed, and the cars behind it are rocking gently back and forth. They make a sound of steel wheels on the steel rail. It's incredibly exciting. We stood up, and I declared the train was going too fast [audience aww] because, well, maybe it was. [audience chuckle] But you don't want to try and catch a train going faster than you can run. And in my judgment, it was going faster than I could run. And Asa accepted that, a little disappointed.

 

We waited. We waited. Another train came. We got up. Yet again, it was going too fast. And this time, he got a little frustrated. He said, "You could have caught that." And I thought to myself, "Yes." But I said, "No.” This is the most dangerous part is catching a moving train." The third train, we had to get on, basically. [laughter] And so, we did. It was a little harder than I remembered to pull myself up on that ladder, but I succeeded. Asa did me the favor of carrying the heavy pack, but he nimbly climbed aboard, and I've got to say, it's pretty exciting. We made our little nest there on the end of what's called a bulk loader or a covered grain cart, has a platform on the end. You can kind of stay out of sight.

 

And the train rolled over a bridge, over a creek, and then through people's backyards. And I had told him we would be heading over the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake City. When I realized, we were headed north to Cheyenne, I said they must have had a change of plans. [audience chuckle] I'd lost some of my knack, but I knew I had the basics down. And again, he wasn't too concerned with that. He was just having the time of his life. We went through a crossing with the clanging bells and the arm down, and there were three young women approximately his age standing there who saw him. And he waved and they waved, and the world could not have been better. [audience laughter]

 

I just had a good feeling about this. We headed up to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and there, took advantage of another development of the last 20 years, the smartphone, which lets you actually see on this app called Google Maps, where you are when you approach a city on a train, and you can tell that that road has motels on it. And one such road was quite near where the train slowed almost to a stop. We jumped off, and it must have saved us probably four or five hours that it would have taken to go all the way into the yard and then make our way kind of in the dark back to a place to sleep. So, it was going pretty well.

 

The next day, we walked into Cheyenne looking for a train headed west. I told Asa that the last time I was here, the police had followed me every step of the way because I was with a group of guys who were riding freights, and the police will follow you sometimes. This day, they did not follow us, which led to a discussion about who the police follow and why. We then spent a long day waiting in a very hot place for a train to come by. A couple people with bedrolls did walk by and waved at us. And I said, "Asa, do you want to talk to them? Like I did?" And he said, "You know, I don't think we need to. I meet a lot of guys on the subway like that. And, [audience chuckle] I’m really dad, I'm happy just to be doing this with you."

 

And he paused and he said, "And watching how you break the law, because, [audience chuckle] honestly, I'm surprised. Your book is full of descriptions of you doing that, but you've always acted like a very law-abiding person. And it's a real surprise. I can't stop thinking about it." And I said, "Really? Because I never thought of myself that way." But I was a little sad to have become a father who's sort of the scoutmaster kind of dad, who, yes, says, "Follow those rules," instead of, "You don't need to follow all those rules. You can hop that freight train.” Anyway, he was learning these things about me, and I was learning something about who I had become.

 

We finally got a train. It was a few hours out. The train stopped in the middle of nowhere. Well, it was a small depot for refueling. The boxcar behind us had ladders up the sides. And Asa asked if he could climb the ladders and walk down the top of the train car, which was exactly the kind of thing I would have done because it's cool. [audience chuckle] And I said, "No, it's dangerous. [audience chuckle] The train could start with a jerk at any point. You'd topple off. Or maybe someone would drive by on that dirt road and see you and call the police. Let's just stay low." And then I thought, "Why am I like this?" But I was nervous. I was truly nervous. And that feeling grew as the night went on. The scenery was fantastic in the late day. You get to see these parts of the West that you can't see from highways. We were going through low, Rocky Mountains. Lots of red soil, green evergreens, beautiful clouds that built and burst into rainstorms.

 

But then it got dark, and I was focused on the wheels of the car behind us, because in the very short vision are these wheels, which is where people riding freight trains can be hurt very badly. And Asa was standing on the edge of the platform, kind of too close to the edge. And there's bars you can hold onto to steady yourself. There's ladders. I'd explain, even trains going 50 miles an hour can suddenly jerk as they pull up slack. And I just got so nervous. I got closer to him because you can't hear each other talk very well on a train going fast. There's wind, there's shaking. There's a steel-on-steel sound.

 

I said, "Asa, could you just step back a little?" And he said, "Why? Do you think, I'm being careless?" And I said, "No. Really, you've paid close attention. You know how trains work. You've listened to what I said. You're brave, but you're not reckless." This is pretty much my highest praise for anybody. But I said, "I can't explain it. I'm so nervous. If you would just stand back like a foot from the edge, I would feel so much better." And he looked at me funny and he said, "Yeah, okay, yeah, sure." And then I felt I had to explain and I said, "This is new for me. Your whole life, my job has been to keep you from getting hurt. And now, I need to let you be in charge of yourself a bit more. And I'm having some trouble with that." And he just nodded and a few seconds went by and he put his arm around me and he put his head on my shoulder. And my son, who I had spent a lifetime comforting, was comforting me as I was trying to move on in my life. And it was one of the best things-- best things I could remember happening. Thank you. Thanks a lot.