continuing proofs America is wacko

What a curious pungent smell!

Dave that was a very enthralling and exciting story, it was probably horrible and painful at the time, but by goodness its good to have adventures like that I think. As long as no long term bad happens of course. that was your very own There and Back Again, travelling in the belly of a smoking iron dragon over the Misty Mountains.

This is why I don't travel far from my barrel- except that time I was really drunk and it rolled down that big hill.

And Eldo, um, just checking to see you were paying attention! {{{That should fool him-oh yeah you can break encryptions cant you? }}}

I'm glad the story was enjoyed. The point for posting was in response to Orwell's comments on tunnel-thinking. When told right this can be a really funny story because of my repeated stupidity/tunnel thinking. There's really no good reason I lived through this (or a bunch of similar stories from my 20's).

I see in the telling I stuck pretty close to the hard facts and left most of my thoughts and emotions out of the story, but there was a sequence that went something like:

F**k! I really need to get on this train or I'm gonna die!
F**k! I was wrong. I really need to get OFF this train or I'm gonna die!
F**k! Now I just need to get down to my pack or I'm gonna die! ...
F**k! I was wrong. I'm at my pack now and I'm still gonna die!
F**k! I need to find people, ANY people or I'm gonna die!
F**k! I've found them and nobody's doing anything!

Its funny but although I did some f***ing stupid things in my twenties I never actually meant them to be stupid at the outset, it just kind of whoops accidently happened, like the time I went to Tenerife on my own one time, I had decided I had had enough of the rain and would get some sunshine in a place with guaranteed year round sun. I knew nothing about Tenerife, I didn even know it was volcanic. I met a girl in the airport who was also like me going alone and we had one of those rare meeting of minds and sparked up an instant friendship, I found out she was a nurse from the Manchester RI.
We had not even booked anywhere to stay just a flight so we decided to stick together once we landed, we were heading for Los Cristianos and got there at 5.00 in the morning, it was your typical ghost town rolling tumbleweed barking flea bitten dog kinds place, obviously we couldnt find a soul to ask for help so we waited on the black sand beach to wait for signs of life, in that wait we met some German bikers who were camping rough in the hills as the local police had taken a distinct dislike to the amount of beer fumes coming off their bodies. They told us we could crash at their campsite until we could find a hotel room. It sounded like a cunning plan.
We trudged up the side of an extinct volcano rather like Frodo and Sam, two innocents to the slaughter, on the way there one of the bikers had a little fall into a cactus and broke his foot, my friend being a nurse told them they had to take 'Hans' to hospital to get a cast, but the bikers refused saying they had no cash to pay for diddlysquat and could my friend help them?
You dont say no to German bikers. whether they are smiling or not.
so we trudged back down the f***ing mountain and found a handy building site, where my friend found some plaster (the bikers had followed, carrying 'Hans' in a firemans lift).
we all sat on the beach and watched in awe as my friend set his foot in concrete.
much later we went to the pub, the bikers pub and were bought beer and given some funny cigarettes, the police raided the pub in a whirl of barking Alsation dogs with fangs rather too close to my face and machine guns strapped to their backs, they were also dressed in black with those Darth Vader shiny black helmets the spanish police wear, needles to say we legged it, poor old 'Hans clonking behind us on his concrete boot.
My friend and I got home and planned our next trip somewhere calm and civilized.
it was even weirder in Corfu.

Wow, I've always wanted to do some train riding, David - the height of vagabond cool in my mind. I'm honored to be at least in the electronic presence of someone who has done a lot of it.

the closest I can come is second hand, but it's such a good story I repeat it anyway even though I can claim no credit for it. A friend of mine was out drinking with some college buddies out in pennsylvania late one night. They were wandering over a bridge when they saw a train stopped below. It was a low bridge, and they decided (as only inebriates could) that it would be a fine idea to jump down on top of that train. Things here become a bit vague, and I don't know if it was only my friend who decided to jump, or they all did but with his head spinning after the jump he decided it was also a good place to take a little rest before climbing back up. Either way....

He woke up to find sunshine and wind blowing through his hair. The train had taking off and he was a couple hundred miles down the road, still riding on top like a train robber. His friends were probably under a tree somewhere still sleeping it off. This was back before every college kid had credit cards, so I think he had to call his parents to get a ticket back. I'd have loved to listen in on that one.

OH Figgy - the best meetings are unintentional, aren't they?

so true!

You simply must tell us about Corfu.

halfwise wrote:OH Figgy - the best meetings are unintentional, aren't they?

Yes, the very best.....and the very worst!

I'd like to hear about Corfu too, please! I'll even trade you another hobo story for it if you like.

By the way, the biscuit brain story seems to be a well circulated urban legend.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/accidentsmishaps/a/biscuit_brain.htm
Google will find you a thousand versions easily.

ok Corfu.
well I remained friends with the nurse and we ended up sharing digs with some other oddbods, one being a hippy architect who one memorable evening after a wee dram too many, opened the front door for me with only some mistletoe tied to his beard and a winning smile, it was a chilly evening, so I told him to dress.
anyway Corfu.
we both went for a two week holiday in Corfu and as I dont do tanning one day I was lying under an umbrella when my friend turned up with these two older chaps she had met at the beach bar. One was a cockney wide boy type from Southend with a mullet and the other was dressed like Marlon Brando in that biker film, (not the butter film) he was loud and full of it, but they both entertained us with tales of getting thrown in prison in Australia and getting nearly eaten by crocodiles in the Everglades in Florida.
The tales were a bit rum but showed a certain derring do which I respond to, anyways the Loud One started to really irritate me so I left them to it.
Days past and we all drifted in and out of view, saying hi or having drinks, whatever, and then they day came for us to leave, me and my friend were packing and then got a taxi to the airport, we were waiting by the screen thingies looking for our flight when the Loud One turns up and says to me, 'Dont get on that plane, come with me to France, I live on a boat in Provence.
So I left my friend at the airport, with the other holidaymakers from our hotel thinking I was barking mad, and got on his motorbike and travelled for four days to France via Italy. Unfortunately I ran out of cash in Nice so I telephoned my folks to send some money to the local post office near his boat. We got to his boat and no cash, it turned out that another sailor type had picked up Loud's post, had seen there was money in the letter and had nicked it. There was an awful fight, a knife was drawn and they both ended up in the sea canal, and kind of cooled off. There was a screech of tyres and about ten French policemen piled in and took Loud and his ex mate and me to the station, by all accounts the ex mate was under surveilance by the cops as he was a member of a smuggling ring, me and Loud were let out much later, free to go. I never got that bloody money back.

Ah, the joys of a traveling life! And am I correct that there seems to be a biker theme evolving in your stories, Mrs Figg.

I'm working up the promised hobo story. Hopefully it will be up later today. Back in the 80's when I was riding trains, there was still a hobo culture of tens of thousands of people. Agricultural workers, military veterans, drug traffickers, political activists, drunks, people running from families, relationships, and the law, anybody who wanted to could disappear into this underground society that covered all of North America and traveled freely across all boarders. There were unwritten rules that were as old as the railroads. It was a bit dangerous and not a place for women then. Now it's almost all gone but the stories, though there are still some old-school travelers and a collection of anarchists and crusty punks who keep the hobo candle flickering. I bump into them every now and then.

Anyway, I'm trying to write about one of the camps or "jungles" I stayed in. I'm not much of a writer though. We'll see how this goes.....

This is fleshed out from one of my old journals. I hope it's worth reading.

As Dan, my traveling partner, and I rolled into Klamath Falls OR on a freight train on a March afternoon in ‘86 we noticed the yard was fuller than any I’d ever seen, and we knew something was wrong. When our boxcar came to a stop in the railroad yard we jumped out and started walking south along the service road toward the southbound hop-out point on the other end of the yard. No need to hide.

As we approached the big overpass where the highway crossed the yard, a couple guys stood up to meet us. These were the sentries to the Jungle. It was the biggest camp I’d ever seen. There were only maybe 15 guys in camp at that time, but there was gear for 3 times that many and a dozen fire-pits in terraces going up the bank to the bridge footing.

We introduced ourselves. No names, just routes as usual. You never asked or gave names until you really knew somebody.

“We’re 2 days out of Seattle headed for Sacramento.” I said.

“Well there’s nothing rolling southbound, so you could be here a while. If you’re hungry, the pantry’s up there.”

Up under the bridge was a pallet-board shelf full of canned goods which were free for the taking. Nearby there was a pile of firewood for cooking-fires. Whenever anybody went to town, they brought back something for the camp. We learned that in town there were 2 food banks, a mission, and a famous supermarket dumpster, so nobody ever went hungry.

Once we’d spread out our gear to dry and eaten something we asked for news. It seems that the recent storm had closed both southbound lines in the mountains 4 days ago and UP and SP were waiting for equipment to open them. The plows and crews had all been routed to the Sierras which had been hit even harder. Trains had been piling up in the yard for 4 days, and each one had added a half dozen or more riders to the camp.

As it got later, guys started trickling back to the camp with food, firewood, cardboard and anything else they’d been able to score. Fires were lit, food was cooked, coffee was drunk, and stories were told. Hundreds of stories, all about trains and riders. I remember stories from the high-line of guys getting rolled for their sleeping bags, from CA of riders killed or injured by rocks thrown from overpasses (When we said we were headed for Sacramento there must have been a dozen guys warn us not to ride gondolas. You wanted something over your head!)

Everybody had a railroad map in their head, and when a place name came up in a story they would always describe the route. You could hear people reciting routes all through the camp, and if somebody forgot to mention a junction or section-point they’d get corrected and sometimes some pretty hot words got flying.

The camp just naturally divided into 3 loose groups: the bad-ass city guys, the fruit tramps, and the stamp tramps collecting food stamps in 3 or 4 states (there were a bunch of them on their circuits so it must have been the first week of the month.) Because I was a farm kid and worked seasonally in AK fish-canneries and cranberry harvest I usually hung with the fruit tramps, but at night I’d drift from fire to fire and listen to all kinds of stories. We were there for 2 nights and it was like going to Hobo College!

There were a set of rules that everybody seemed to know and a lose hierarchy. If you broke a rule it would be “explained” to you. On the second day we got to see the hierarchy challenged. A group of 4 Nam vets, heavily armed with big packs and traveling as a tight crew, came into camp and approached the lower center fire pit asking for who was in charge. I didn’t see the first part, but the camp slowly gathered around as the leader of the vets and the old fruit tramp who had previously been senior exchanged challenges. “Have you ever been to Such-a-place?” “Yeah, you come in the the Such’n’such line through blablabla” and recite a string of 20 town names Y’s and section points. Then branching from one of these points they’d ask back< “Have you ever ridden the old So-and-so?”

This went on until they’d pretty much described all the rails west of the Mississippi. Then the old trap shrugged and said, “Well I guess you have been to So-and-so,” picked up his pack and moved up the hill, leaving the fire to the new crew. What was amazing to me was that the change of leadership happened without any threat of violence, though any one of the 4 could have beat the old guy easily. Instead it was decided by a duel of knowledge, which was what the community required.

Everybody had a “be-good-stick” or belt-knife where you could see it and, although nobody would have been uncool enough to mention if they were carrying, this was back in the day when anybody could buy a .22 or .32 pistol for 20 bucks and no ID in most gun stores. So whenever the white pickup would stop, the camp would go quiet and we’d stare at him from our terraces on the bank like the birds in the Hitchcock movie. It must have been really creepy for him to look up and see an army!

One event stands out. It turned out to be nothing, but sometime after midnight a car pulled off the highway, down the service road beside the bridge, and parked twenty feet from the camp. You could feel the tension as everybody in camp sat up and cleared for action. It was very military and deadly quiet. There’d been a lot of stories told of townies beating up tramps, so you can imagine what everybody was thinking.

The car sat there for ten minutes or so, then turned around and drove away. Probably just a couple high school kids smoking a joint with no idea they were sitting a few feet from a small army! I’m just glad nobody got out of that car to take a piss. That could have gotten very ugly!

On the morning of the third day the trains started rolling again, about an hour apart. The first train went to the guys who’d been there the longest. I remember 4 guys had built a cardboard palace on the back porch of a grainer while they were waiting, though the fruit tramps I was with thought that was completely improper by the rules of keeping a low profile. My partner and I caught a grainer on the 3rd train out and cruised down to Sacramento with no further problems.

The way these camps came together, functioned as towns, then dissolved was always amazing to me. It felt like we were all governed by ancient rules that dated way back into prehistory. The way the current “Occupy” camps function seems to follow these same old rules. I wonder if they are hardwired into the human brain, or have they been passed by common people generation to generation for thousands of years?

Very interesting...I feel someone must have written a book about this culture, but if not, it's up for grabs David!

Mrs Figg - at first I didn't think the story was going anywhere, then you lit off on a bike and the knives came out. Two stories with knives in a row, hmmm.

I love your stories Dave, I reckon there is a novel in there waiting to be sculpted, just like 'David' inside that block of white Carrara marble waiting for Michelangelo to set him free.

I would tell you a tale about the time I was a Bunny at the Manchester Playboy club but its probably not suitable for a Hobbit forum.

You cant go saying something like that Mrs Figg then say youre not telling us! I demand to know! (Not least just to make sure I wasn't there! Or if I was that I was suitably behaved, for a drunken Scottshobbit obviously)

Dave- your interesting, exciting life is making me ill at ease as my own life now seems as seditary as the most stay at home Baggins.
I obviously need to go out into the world and get even more drunk in it in dangerous places.

oh okaaaay then, they do say truth is stranger than fiction after all.
Was about 18 and I had just left my convent school, I am not Catholic but my folks wanted me to actually get some qualifications so I was forced into a straw boater and shipped off to t'nuns like. It had the suitable effect, crappy A levels and a psycological er warping lets say, lets just say I went into what only can be described as being totally unadapted for the adult world being wrapped in cotton wool and ignorant of er 'stuff'. I went wild, or feral is probably a better description, I let my hair down and went hell for leather. After all the incense and rules I wanted glamour and excitement, well as much as Manchester had to offer anyway, the world could wait a bit.
It was the time of Bryan Ferry and Roxy music and Grace Jones and I wanted some of that. I got a job at the Manchester Playboy Club as a bunny, it was the most glamorous thing I could find, it wasnt exactly Las Vegas, it was on the decline and a bit seedy round the edges, but at that age I didnt see it, living a noctural life means you meet nocturnal types of people from the mad to the bad to the dangerous to know, I mixed with townies and clubbers and musicians some of them famous most of them wannabees.
Anyway I had met an actor on the set of a Manchester made B movie called Target Eve Island, a pseudo James Bond thing, ( I had a bit part) and he invited me to a house party in the posh part of Cheshire, when I got there even my extreme naivity knew something dodgy was going on, hem, basically it was some kind of S&Mfest, I walked round goggling for a bit and then my instincts kicked in and told me to leave immediately.
I told the guy I wanted to leave but he was too wasted to drive so I nicked his car keys and even though I hadnt passed my test I drove through the night and got home safely, with a sigh of relief. The next day I had a problem, I didnt know where this guy lived, or had his number or anyway to contact him about the car, so I went to work to ask around about him, nobody knew and I left the car in Piccadilly underground carpark hoping that the police would find it, I did not want to get done for driving without a licence.
I worried about it for ages until one day I was watching the news on tv when this face came on the screen, it was HIM, the actor, the police had raided the house just after I had left and had found him in a compromising position with a hermaphrodite and a glass topped table. (I kid you not).

Brillaint- and good to see even feral you never lost your wits.
I can't work out from your account if the glass topped table was there incidently or proactively and my mind boggles either way!

That's quite a story Mrs Figg!
I'm glad you got out of there before that pervert put on the wizard's costume and made you pull the bunny sled

I really want to find a copy of that film too, just for the bad 80s hair if nothing else.

'There is no evidence that mermaids exist, a US government scientific agency has said.
The National Ocean Service made the unusual declaration in response to public inquiries following a TV show on the mythical creatures.
It is thought some viewers may have mistaken the programme for a documentary.
"No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found," the service wrote.
The inquiries followed May's broadcast of Mermaids: The Body Found, on the Discovery Channel's Animal Planet network.
The programme was a work of fiction but its wink-and-nod format apparently led some viewers to believe it was a science education show, the Discovery Channel has acknowledged.

David H wrote:I'm glad you got out of there before that pervert put on the wizard's costume and made you pull the bunny sled

I'm dying here.

Great story Mrs Figg. Sometimes I feel that my life has been quite boring, but at the same time I'm very grateful for that.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:The programme was a work of fiction but its wink-and-nod format apparently led some viewers to believe it was a science education show, the Discovery Channel has acknowledged.

Sadly this sort of thing is nothing new. The History Channel is notoriously bad for passing off bad pseudoscience as actual "educational" television. Stuff like Nostradamus, 2012, Ancient Aliens, that sort of thing. Apparently Discovery wants in on the action, which is a shame, since they have a lot of good shows like Mythbusters that actually do encourage scientific thinking.

In Louisiana, Republican Governor Bobby Jindal pushed for a voucher program that would allow state funds to be used to pay for religious schools.
Now, one of the state legislators, Rep. Valarie Hodges, just made a shocking discovery, though: Christianity isn’t the only religion!
"I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday, "“Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders’ religion. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”



Obviously noone told the Republicans if you fund religous schoools you aren't allowed to pick and choose.
I thnk my favourite bit of this is the thought of Islam being taught in schools in Louisiana thanks to Republican ignorance!