Photograph by StellaMc, iStock / Getty Images Plus

Finally, the train began to slow, and Rich said, “This is Chicago.”

I was surprised there weren’t more passengers on the truck trailer car, because I had seen plenty of people around the freight yard. Maybe they were headed west instead of east, or perhaps north or south. But I had confidence that Rich knew his trains, and that we were headed to Chicago. It wasn’t long before Rich was making his way around the car; I think he was trying to break into the trailer. I just lay still, trying to sleep and hold on and stay out of the way of the truck’s tires.

When it got light, I could see the scenery had changed: greener, a lot more trees. We were crossing over a lot of streams and even rivers. Rich told me that we would be in Chicago late that night. All three of us were feeling good. About midday, the train slowed down as it rounded some curves, and the next thing I knew, we had stopped in front of a small train station. An old guy with a khaki uniform and a holstered gun approached us and said, “Okay boys, the ride is over.” We threw our bags off and jumped down. I glanced up and saw a sign on the station that said La Plata, which I found out later was in Missouri, not too far from the Illinois border.

Pie in La Plata, a cafe in Clarence

My first thought was that the guy looked like my grandfather. He was the sheriff, fire chief and, I think, the mayor of La Plata, and he was polite with us; it felt like we were more of an inconvenience than anything else. He put us in the back seat of his car and drove us to a fire station. There was a cage in the corner next to where the fire trucks parked with a bunk bed and a couple of stools inside; I guessed it was the local jail. He put us inside and shut the door, but I noticed there was no lock on it. Then he left the area. Rich said, “The sheriff should feed us.” When he returned, we told him we were hungry and needed to clean up. He looked us over and must have thought we were not a threat, because he drove us to his house, which was only a couple of blocks away. There, he introduced us to his wife, who showed us where we would be sleeping that night and provided us with some clean towels and even some clothes, although the clothes didn’t fit too well.

Soon the sheriff’s wife had cooked up a fabulous meal, including a roast and mashed potatoes, with homemade berry pie and vanilla ice cream for dessert. I have never forgotten that meal. Later, as I was lying in bed with clean sheets outside and a full stomach inside, I thought to myself, Did I fall off the train and die? because it felt like I had arrived in heaven. The feeling carried over into the next morning, when the sheriff’s wife made us breakfast — which included the best bacon I have ever eaten — and packed us each a lunch. I wondered if they might make me a deputy and let me move in. Instead, the sheriff explained that he had talked to Santa Fe authorities and they would not be bringing any criminal charges, but we could not ride on the Santa Fe anymore. He further explained that riding on freight trains was not only against the law but extremely dangerous. Then he drove us to Macon, Missouri, stopped by the train tracks, and told us that freight trains sometimes stopped there to let other trains pass. If we hopped one, we would end up in Chicago.

After half a day, no trains had stopped. A guy from a house near the tracks came out and told us that trains rarely stopped there anymore. This made Rich mad, and for some reason he focused his anger on the messenger. That’s when I said I was going to hitchhike on along a nearby road into the center of Macon. I said goodbye to Rich and the other guy and caught a ride into town. But the trains didn’t slow down as they passed through town, and I was just as stuck as before. Then, late in the day, I saw Rich walking along the tracks. He spotted me and came over. I asked, “Where is the other guy?”

“He took off,” replied Rich. But I noticed that Rich had the other guy’s bag, and decided I needed to get away from him for good. Rich said someone had told him that we needed to get to a town called Quincy, where trains stopped for fuel and to load cargo. We headed to a road, but by nightfall, we had managed to get a ride only as far as Clarence.

We bedded down near the tracks, and Rich began to share stories about riding freight trains in the South. He said they went all over the place, that the scenery was much better than in the desert and Midwest, and that the people were really friendly. About that time, I said to Rich, “Look how slow that train is going. Is it going to stop?” He said he thought we could catch it. We both jumped up, grabbed our things and took off after the train, but it never slowed to the point where we could jump aboard, and we wound up sleeping back where we had been.

When it got light, we got up and found a little café, where we got something to eat. I recall how odd Rich and I looked in that café: two young kids surrounded by a bunch weather-worn farmers. We were definitely “objects of curiosity,” but everyone was friendly enough. Rich was as bold as usual, and he began asking people how to get to Chicago. One guy said to go to La Plata, but that wasn’t going to work for us. Another guy said he was driving to Hannibal, a city on the border of Illinois, later that day, and would give us a ride. He was as good as his word. I rode in the back of his pickup truck, and Rich rode in the cab. He was a pretty good-sized farmer, so I wasn’t too worried about Rich going off on him for some reason. We reached Hannibal, on the banks of the Mississippi, and our ride dropped us by the small freight yard.

This was new territory for Rich, just as Macon and Clarence had been, but even so, he knew that we didn’t want to try to hop a tanker car, because we might get knocked out by the fumes from whatever was inside and then fall off the train. And there were a lot of tanker cars.

As dark began to settle in, we spotted a car that looked promising — a gondola, like the one I had first boarded in San Diego. But there was one big difference between the two: this one was not empty. It was nearly full of scrap metal — big, jagged pieces of it. Rich hollered that we needed to get off, because the metal might shift and crush us, but it was too late; we were going too fast. Luckily, after 30 minutes the train stopped in another freight yard, and we jumped off. We had made it to West Quincy. Chicago felt so close. Rich said we should find a place to camp for the night and get going first thing in the morning, but I was anxious to keep going. I thought maybe we could be in Chicago by morning. He reluctantly agreed to try and find a train that night.

The long last night

Soon we spotted our ride: another one of the truck trailer cars — the only one on a long train of mostly boxcars with louver-type slats on the sides. This car had only two one-step ladders with handles, one at the front and one at the rear, but that didn’t stop us. The whole thing reminded me of taking a wave on a surfboard: paddle like crazy, pop up, get your balance, and enjoy the ride. Oh, and try not to fall off.

Rich quickly worked his way back to where I was lying. Again, I made sure I was well away from the big tires on the truck trailer, and away from the big chains that secured the trailer to the flatcar. The train started to accelerate, and soon we were rolling right along — to Chicago, I hoped.

One of the first things I noticed was that we crossed over a big waterway, which I determined later was the Mississippi River. The train made a different sound when it was on a bridge, a kind of humming. It was completely dark by then; the only lights came from the signals at the road crossings. Within just a few minutes, I began to feel something hitting my face and head. It wasn’t raining, so I thought it might be water drops coming from the truck trailer, or perhaps from the cars in front of ours. But then I wiped my face and noticed the stuff was like wet mud and smelled terrible. Once again, Rich knew what was going on: “There are animals in the cars in front of us, and that’s their waste! We have to get off!” But once again, the train was going too fast for that. We turned and faced the other direction, and covered our heads the best we could, but it didn’t seem to help much. Eventually, we became completely covered, and the smell was horrific. I thought, This is it, I’m on my last ride. I am going to pass out and fall off the train, and there is no way to escape.

There was no sleep that night, which seemed endless. Finally, the train began to slow, and Rich said, “This is Chicago.” The train stopped in a huge freight yard, and we quickly jumped off. We were totally covered in animal waste, and the smell was so bad I thought I was going to vomit. That’s when I heard the grunting and squealing of the pigs in the cars ahead of us.

Arrivals and departures 

The first order of business for both of us was to get cleaned up, but there was another thing on my mind: how to ditch Rich. I thought maybe he liked me okay, but even so, I knew he was not to be trusted. As we left the freight yard, I spied a little coffee shop that I figured must have a bathroom, so I said to Rich, “Let’s clean up in that coffee shop.” He said okay, and I told him to go ahead first. As I was standing outside on the street, I saw a taxi coming, and knew that was my chance to get away. I immediately flagged it down, got in the backseat, and told the driver, “Take me downtown” — wherever downtown was. Because of how I looked and smelled, I thought he was going to tell me to get out of his taxi, but he quickly sped away. He asked me where exactly downtown, and I said, “To the main train station.”

Soon we were at Union Station. I had spent hardly any money so far, so I was able to pay the taxi driver. I walked into the station and headed to the rest room to try and clean up. I found a mirror, and my reflection looked like someone had rolled me around in a mud puddle and let the mud dry all over me. Physically, I was a mess, but headwise I was thinking, I made it, I got all the way from San Diego to Chicago. Not in three days, but still. Except for being unbelievably filthy and smelling like a pig, I felt good.

After washing up as best I could, I headed out to find a store where I could buy a change of clothes. After that, I got something to eat, and spent the afternoon wandering around Chicago, marveling at the tall buildings. What a great story I was going to have for my surf buddies. Then it hit me: I really did not have a plan for how to get back to San Diego. I guess had been thinking I would figure something out when the time came, and now the time had come. I didn’t want to ride the freights; I had done that already. I didn’t even want to take a passenger train. Sitting on a bus for a few days didn’t seem like much fun, and besides, by that point, I had only about $20 in cash. There was no calling my parents, because they thought I was on a camping trip with some friends. If I told my dad that I was in Chicago, he would take my car, my surfboard, and my freedom for the foreseeable future.

Grandparents to the rescue. I put in a person-to-person collect call through to my mom’s parents in Hanford, California. My grandfather took the call and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Hi, it’s Jerry, I need some work.” They owned an old hotel in Hanford, and they always needed help.

“Fine, when can you get here?” I told him I could be there in a day or two, but needed some money to get there. He said, “Fine, where are you?”

“Chicago.”

There was a big pause. Then he said, “Where in Chicago?”

“Union Station.” He told me to find the nearest Western Union, and that he would send me enough money to fly to Los Angeles, and from there to Visalia, which was near Hanford. I found the Western Union, took a taxi to the airport, and caught the night flight to Los Angeles. In Visalia, my grandfather picked me up in his big fancy four-door Chrysler Imperial; it reminded me of the Caddy I had ridden in a few days earlier. He didn’t ask me anything about what I was doing in Chicago. I think he figured I was on some adventure and was happy to see me and have some help around the hotel. When we got there, he told me to clean up and get rested, because I would be working the night shift at the front desk, tie and all. One of the first people I checked in that night was a Santa Fe Railroad Bull.

My older brother was also working at the hotel, and he wanted to know what I was doing in Chicago. I told him I had a girlfriend there. He knew better. But in a couple of weeks, I was back in Imperial Beach, surfing and bragging. It was hard for anyone to beat my freight train story. To be honest, it was hard for anyone to believe it.

For quite a while after that, whenever I spotted a freight train, I would think of my journey, and wonder what it would have been like to continue on with Rich to the South — and if I would have survived.