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Mitch Perry Report 9.13.11 |

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

BOOKS

Top 10 tips from The 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
Jack Kerouac glamorized the life of an American hobo
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
Steinbecks 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

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 about
leaving 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.
-Dont 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 dont 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 as
liberated 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

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 Alff, 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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