Living By The Tracks — E10

Danelle visits with a kindred spirit, and reckons with the past. Ruby and Danelle finally talk about it. Kiwi weighs in and looks back on Profane Sass. Danelle pursues several new leads. Plus CC Rider, a Western bar, and a road dog named Nikita.

Thank you for listening to Season One! We’ve got good things planned – stick around. And listen to The Yard: Songs Inspired by City of the Rails at aaronkaufmanmusic.com/theyard/

Danelle's playlist of modern hobo music at tinyurl.com/hobomusic

Want to stay in touch? Find us @flipturnpods and keep an eye on danellemorton.com. Have a question or comment? Leave us a voicemail. We’re keeping the lines open just for you.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Just a heads up. The following episode deals with death, addiction,
and mental health. Take care while listening, and if you're
a new listener, this is our tenth episode, you probably
want to start with episode one. Oh, Danielle, daniel Zelle,
you and I have been leading rather parallel lies. Actually,

(00:28):
I live in San Francisco. I lost a kid to
the Rails, meaning he wrote them for almost a decade.
He comes from an impact family, and dad and I
have been together forever. Ec writer talking out to try
It's kind of amazing. We just had, sadly a very

(00:50):
different ending. Anyway, if you'd like to hear my story,
give me a call, Take good care, Bye bye. I
didn't think it was possible there was someone living a
life parallel to mine, but there was, and she was
listening to City of the Rails. Our specifics were different,
but I was telling her story and I was in

(01:12):
her neighborhood. Nanat Krupa lives in my hometown, San Francisco,
and her son, Rooster rode for ten years until the
trains took him in December twenty twenty. I called Nanette
as soon as I heard her message. It was like
a lifeline to me. Wrapping up this show trying to
tell the story of a family that got bound up
with the rails. I'd answered my questions about who, where,

(01:34):
and why, But as I was bringing this to a close,
I started interrogating my role in all of this. I'd
met enough writers to know the kind of teen who
ended up on the rails, but was there a type
of mom who drove them to leave. I'd talked to
a lot of parents over the years, but back then
I'd been asking different questions. So four days after her
fun message, I was on my way to meet Nanette.

(01:57):
I wanted her to help me figure out if I'd
done something that pushed Ruby out onto the rails, because
if that was possible, if there was something I'd done,
I knew what it had to be. I'm de El Morton,
and this is City of the Rails. I relate to

(02:43):
everything you're talking about. It's so interesting that you've embraced
feeling everything that they're going through in a way that's
open and honest, and I tried to do that too.
Nana lives in the Foggy is part of San Francisco,
the Avenues, not far from where I went to high school.

(03:05):
I found her in a modest gray house with a
big front porch, and it was protected by her son,
Rooster's dog, Nikita Krushcheff, a sleek black hunting dog who
used to ride trains with Rooster. And when I settled
in on Nanette's couch, Nikita would not leave me alone.
She was right at my side, her big eyes looking
up at me from my lap and talking over Nanette
as she shouted from the kitchen, Yeah you want CAFCA

(03:28):
decaf would be gag because it's a fast name. I
was instantly at ease here in this confy living room,
Nanette in her favorite chair. A lot had happened in
these rooms before Rooster left, and I felt his absence.
Nanette and her husband Bob had raised Maxwell, Rooster's given name,
and his younger sister Alex, in this home. While we spoke,

(03:50):
Nanette kept pointing to Rooster's old bedroom just off the
living room, and it was clear Nikita knew what was
going on. There aren't too many of us train moms,
but when we get together, we get right to the point.
So like the Ride or Die Hobo cruise that hopped
trains as a pack for the engineer and the conductor
duos chugging through the deserts at night. Nanette and I

(04:10):
were about to become a family, at least for this afternoon.
Nanette said that Rooster was fascinated by trains long before
he read them. He just loved everything about them, goodness, graces.
She's so chatty today, Bob, and she just won't leave

(04:31):
to all alone. That's my girlfriend. She knows we're talking
about him. So did you do what I did? Did
you start looking into what the world of the trains was? No?
I did not. If it had been my daughter, possibly,
I was almost like knowing less is better. I didn't

(04:54):
want all the details. I knew that when he'd come home,
he'd tell me everything. Wow, that'd be a change of
pace for me and Ruby. But it was different from Nanette.
When Rooster came home for Christmas, he was a homebody.
I meetriad fresh sheets. I made him his favorite food,
which were my buffalo wings and Greek salad. And you know,

(05:18):
he would sneak off to seven to eleven and get
a forty and we would watch Last Week Tonight with
John Oliver, like all of them, all of Silicon Valley,
all the TV. We had so much fun. Rooster also
fit the profile I'd been developing of the dirty kid
who came from a middle class home. He was smart, sensitive,

(05:40):
and likely had a learning disability, and all the energy
around those qualities goes haywire when these kids hit the
teenage years. That exquisite sensitivity, usually artistic, too, makes the
crush of high school social life excruciating, and the learning
disability is isolating. A lot of them start life sociable,
but in high school kids like us or become loners

(06:01):
as they withdraw from the world. Frantic parents send them
to psychiatrists, get them on drugs like prozac and anti
anxiety medication. That's how it was with Rooster too. He
was an odd combination of stir up the ship and anxiety.
He was nerd, virgin adhd, fun, fun fun. That kid

(06:25):
was so active in such a blast, But Rooster was
extremely anxious. But he was fearful of change and things
he didn't know. It took a really long time to
get him to ride a bike. It took a really
long time to get him to swim. I wouldn't say
he was popular with his peers. He liked to push
people until he kissed them off. There was something entertaining

(06:48):
for him about doing that, and that's why he had
issues with his peers. And Rooster was a sleepwalker. The
door to his bedroom opens into the living room, then
that is a night owl watches TV late. Starting when
he was a little boy, several times a week, Rooster
would get out of bed, walk into the living room
and just stand there. But he had a lot of

(07:09):
problems turning off the brain at night, and when he
drank a certain amount, then the sleepwalking kicked in. Rooster's
teenage years were lonely, so Nanette was happy when a
new kid slightly older moved into the neighborhood. But then
he and Rooster started drinking together and Rooster escalated to
hard drugs. His senior year, he was less and less

(07:30):
interested in school. Rooster dropped out a few months before
graduation and got his ged. We were in therapy, We
were in family therapy. He was in outpatient rehab. He
spent two months at inpatient rehab. We went through the
whole thing, Nanette pointed to the door to Rooster's room.

(07:53):
Crack cocaine in your house. No, No, He would use
in the tender and then come home and be in
their sleeping for thirty six hours. I knew the exact feeling,
having a troubled team living in close quarters, seeing the
closed bedroom door right there, wondering if you dare open

(08:15):
it or when to bar gin ready for a confrontation.
That's where it feels like a rebuke of you as
a parent, of what you've been trying to offer. As
Rooster's addiction got worse, and then that and kicked him
out of the house. This was a turning point for them.
And as my mother said, he will be attracted to
the lowest common denominator because they will accept him wholeheartedly.

(08:38):
And finally I said, look, you have to stick to
the rules. You have to go to work every day,
you have to take care of yourself, and you can't
use I don't even care if you smoke pot. I
don't even care if you drink a few beers, but
you may not do drugs and stay here. That's the rules.

(09:01):
And we had a first incident, a second incident, a
third by incident. Ten I said okay, this is it,
and I threw him out. So it was really tough.
And as you can tell, we're in a thousand square
feet and you know it took a real toll in
all the other family members. It was really hard to

(09:21):
live with, and then it tortured herself over this decision,
fearing she was sending Rooster out to his death on
the streets of San Francisco. But Rooster didn't like the
tenderline either. After living on the streets for a while,
he found his way to Santa Cruz, where he met
a lot of train hoppers and it wasn't long before
he was on the rails. Calls me and says, guess what,

(09:42):
I'm on a freight train. I said, you're kidding me.
He's like, yeah, I'm loving it. I'm having the time
of my life. I'm like, are you using No, because
you can't be high on a train, you will die.
I'd heard this all the time, that writers with anxiety

(10:03):
disorders discovered an eerie calm, a heightened focus when they
were hopping trains. The situation they'd thrown themselves into was
so dangerous and demanding, their anxiety for a while seemed
to disappear. I knew his anxiety would keep him safe.
I knew because of his anxiety that he was going
to know every single thing that he had to know.

(10:24):
To be safe on these strains. When kids leave middle
class homes for the rails, one of the first things
they do is throw away the prozac anti anxiety medication, lexapro,
and whatever mood stabilizers their child psychiatrists put them on,
even if it strugs for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. The
new travelers want to feel at all and not be
lulled into complacency by pharmaceuticals, so instead they self medicate

(10:48):
with alcohol and drugs, sometimes heroin. They want to feel
it all on their own terms, even if it might
kill them. And when Annette told me we'd led parallel lives,
she wasn't kidding. Rooster became such an experienced hobo he
learned about how CEC Writer offered travelers a place to
stay and have her Montana. He ended up staying with
CEC three or four times a year. They developed a

(11:10):
strong friendship. I called Ceci to ask her about Rooster.
He always makes an excellent impression on me because he's
just was a genuine dude man, I mean genuine as
genuine can beat. And as it turns out, CEC Writer
taught Rooster had a drive, and Ceci told me he
had no choice. It was to save her from a dui.

(11:33):
As they left a bar near Cecy's house, she threw
Rooster the keys to her car. Well, we went to
the bar and I got messed up, and I said, sorry, bro,
but you gotta drive. He says, I don't know how
to drive. He said, you're gonna learn. He was kind
of wobbly in the beginning. What the bar is only
across the tracks on the north side, you know, we're

(11:55):
like a mile and a half away, so he didn't
have to go far. But Ceci went to know something
from me. How Nikita the dog was going, Oh funny,
she was telling you stories. I knew she was from
the intense way Nikita looked at me when she was howling.
I wondered what those stories would be. As Nikita was

(12:18):
not your typical road dog. Now everybody says she hated
train hopping. Well, when I taking the cats out, should
get all giddy and sit and start shaking real bad, like,
oh no, not again. Yeah, she didn't even like driving
in my car. Nikita hated train hopping so much Rooster
had to stop traveling with her, which is how the

(12:39):
dog ended up with Nanette and Bob while Rooster kept writing.
Nanette had simple rules for Rooster when he was on
the rails. You had to come home for Christmas, and
if I called you, you had to return the call
or text me why you couldn't return the call or so.
Christmas twenty twenty, Rooster was on his way home from
Yuma when Nnette told him he had to find a

(13:01):
way to quarantine for ten days. She just had COVID
pretty bad. So Rooster hung around in Yuma and hoped
to train out of Tucson. Max decided to take the
Coastline back up to Roseville and then the Amtrak from Roosevelt.
He'd have enough time that he could come back and
see us because he really really missed Nikita and he

(13:25):
missed us. Nanette and Bob expected him home by New
Year's but late one night after Christmas, Bob woke up
to a firm knock at the door. Bob went and
looked out and he goes, it's the police, And I went,
oh my god, it's probably Max. And I'm calling his
cell phone. I leave Max a message, what are you

(13:46):
doing now? What's going on now? Geez? And I hang
up and they just told me we found him dead
on the on the side of the railroad track. That
was it. And Bob comes in and he said Max

(14:07):
is dead. And I screamed for about three minutes, just screamed.
It was the most awful feeling in the world. And
Bob and I were just we just hugged. Nat believes

(14:31):
Rooster was sleepwalking when he got it from his sleeping
bag and walked off the side of the box car.
And he was never suicidal. He never had a death
wish ever. He loved life. Then Nat and her sister
went to human to collect the body and to speak
to the sheriff. So the train was going very very fast,

(14:52):
sixty five to seventy miles an hour, and he said,
walking off of that he felt no pain. And they
went to see where Rooster spent that last Christmas and
meet his friends. They were so sweet, they were so kind,
and they said, do you want to see the hop out?
Do you want to see where he lived? Yes? So

(15:14):
I went and met them. I gave them fifty dollars.
They didn't want to take it. I said, you'll take it.
They gave me two bottles he had decorated at Christmas,
and that brought out the bottles for me to see.
This was there a little great gift to us. She
showed me two tequila bottles hand painted with blue cymbals

(15:36):
and Christmas greetings. It was a quiet moment in a
room that had been filled with conversation for more than
two hours, And this was my moment to ask, did
Nanette pour over the past? Asking herself if there was
anything else she could have done? I tried everything I
possibly could think of, so I didn't think I did

(15:58):
something wrong. I didn't do enough, And what else could
I have done? Like Nanette? I've asked myself that. But
today Nanette has peace because she has nights when she
feels she can still speak to her son and he
soothes her. So people ask me all the time, how

(16:21):
do you live with us? First of all, I'm really
really lucky because I can kind of break through the
veil a little bit. I've seen evidence of souls after
they've left bodies and before they've come into them. And
I'm sitting right there about five hours later, and I'm crying,

(16:46):
and I'm like, Max, what were you thinking? In my head?
Instantly the voice comes through, Are you kidding? It was epic.
It was fantastic. It was a perfect way to die.

(17:07):
Nanett's feeling of connection through the veil gave her a
sense of mystical peace. I'm not someone who pierces the veil.
I don't even believe it exists, but sometimes I wish
I did. I recognize what I comfort it would be
to connect to the people who are gone, and that
last sentence stayed with me long after I left Nanette.

(17:27):
It was a perfect way to die. Living with so
much risk gives hobo's an acute sense of life and death.
We all know our lives could end in any minute,
but hobos see that daily, and for them, it's all
part of the ride. You can hear it in the
chorus of Profane Sass, a song about the Squat Fire
twelve to twenty eight. It is deep with sadness, but

(17:50):
it's also a fond send off. You were loved, you
are missed, but you are a rare person who lived

(18:10):
as they chose and raised their middle finger to the consequences. Yeah,
but you shouldn't cry. No tears, No tears tears their waterfall.
Say something funny about that person and play their favorite song.
Rry own, carry on something in their name. I was

(18:36):
thinking about this as I made my way home from Nanette,
Bob and Nikita. I wanted to make sense of my
own maternal response, and I got what I came for.
With Nanette. I realized there was no maternal playbook for
a child who just wanted to be free. The rejection
of the conventional world is at the heart of every
person who takes to the rails. But had I done
something to make our side of the tracks even less

(18:58):
appealing to Ruby? Nanette struggled with the decision to kick
Rooster out after he'd been using so heavily and right
when things were on the brink. With Ruby, I had
done something I was beginning to question, and the worst
part about it was I did it to protect her.
After Ruby attempted suicide, I went to visit her in
a mental institution where she was under a seventy two

(19:20):
hour hold. She was still high from all the drugs
in her system. We held hands across the narrow formica table,
the edges worn down from the thousands of elbows that
had rested there as concerned families dealt with their crises.
I asked her if ending up here was a significant
enough shock that she wouldn't do this again. She thought

(19:40):
about it for a minute, then she said she'd probably
stick it out for a month or two, but she
would try this again. When I left the hospital, I
knew I couldn't bring her home. I couldn't guarantee that
I'd be able to keep her safe. As I sat
in our empty apartment in Santa Monica, I had no
idea what to do, but I had to do something.

(20:19):
When Ruby was hospitalized, I consulted with her psychiatrist, who
suggested we send her off to an emotional growth boarding school.
I'd never heard of a place like that, but it
was only twenty four hours later when I was up
on Big Bear Mountain, three hours east of Santa Monica,
a place where frantic parents send their teenagers, and I
was frantic. Like so many parents. I figured this was

(20:41):
the best place to send my daughter because I didn't
know how to keep her safe. Little did I know
this was not just any boarding school. It was the
worst one seed, a place that traumatized hundreds of kids.
Although I didn't know about that at the time. The
Cedar campus looked like a happy summer camp from the outside,

(21:01):
with tennis courts in a swimming pool amenities that did
a pretty good job of hiding from distraught parents what
was taking place in the sweet little Swiss chalets looking dorms.
The program was rigorous, with lots of group therapy an
individual therapy for an added fee. In the daily group sessions,
guided by their counselors, they confronted the issues in their lives,

(21:22):
the things that led their parents to send them away.
This sounded good to me, as well as intensive sessions
called profets, where they would focus on a single idea
for days like I want to live another thing that
sounded like it might benefit young people who had considered
or attempted suicide. I only found out later how brutal
these sessions were for the teens. When I had my

(21:44):
weekly call with Ruby, she couldn't speak freely on the phone.
Staff monitored the calls, and students could be reprimanded or
even isolated if they complained to their parents too much,
and if I got emotional about something. Ruby told me
i'd later get an email or a phone call from
her counselor about trusting the process and supporting the staff.

(22:05):
From what I heard from her counselor's Ruby was doing
well getting more and more privileges, and as the months
went on, we had longer visits, starting with one on
campus and then a weekend away at a hotel on
the mountain. At every visit, I was anxious to see
how she was doing, and I braced myself the second
she got in the car with me. She complained about
all the things they were doing to her and her friends.

(22:26):
It was a long list about everything from the food
to complaints about individual counselors. I know for sure I
wasn't fully grasping what was going on. What I retained
was she hated being away and wanted to come home.
I wanted that too, but it was too soon, so
I just let her vent. But I missed her desperately.

(22:47):
Every day I wondered when would be the right moment
to bring her back, and what situation would be right
for her return. I'd moved home to the Bay Area
after I sold the single mom effect, thinking whenever Ruby
got out of that place, this would be a good
place for a fresh start. And then suddenly there was
an urgency to solve that problem right away. She'd been

(23:08):
there nearly a year when Cedu discovered that Ruby had
a crush on one of the male students, and the
two of them had been leaving notes for each other
in their cubbies. This is strictly forbidden and both of
them had to be punished. They were both put on
something called bands, which meant they were not allowed to
speak to anyone, had to set alone at the dining hall,
and we're not allowed to make eye contact or smile.

(23:30):
How was this helping them? This being shunned for a
normal teenage response that would just piss them off more
and make them more defiant. When I called the staff
to get a full explanation of what bands meant, I
said I wanted this stopped, but unbeknownst to me, they escalated.
They told Ruby that if she kept breaking the rules
like this, she'd end up as a single mom with

(23:51):
no employable skills outside of manual labor, and decided to
introduce her to what that life would feel like. They
assigned her to scrub the bathroom on her hands and
knees and gave her an animatronic baby to take care of.
The baby was set to cry a few times an hour.
Ruby would have to stop to soothe the crying baby,
then go back to work. When I found out what

(24:13):
they were doing. I was furious that the way they
were humiliating her, how would this motivate her to change?
And certainly this was not the single mom Ruby was
raised by for the single mom, as I was writing
about in my book This Archaic Sexius crap. As a punishment,
I blew my stack on the phone with the office
and demanded that they stop, but the punishment was already over.

(24:34):
When I got the full story, it turned out Ruby
was as pissed off as I expected. The baby wouldn't
stop crying, so in frustration, Ruby gave it a shake
and it died. The staff had already forced Ruby to
conduct a funeral for the robot baby, with all the
other students standing at the grave. The so called father
had dug for the burial. How was this supposed to

(24:56):
make Ruby think life was worth living barbaric? Her father
and I agreed we needed to get her out of there,
but it wasn't as easy as just pulling her out.
We needed to have the right school to place her
in so she had the best chance of success when
she came home. And while we were exploring options, CID
went bankrupt. I got a call on a Thursday afternoon,

(25:19):
ordering me to come pick up Ruby within twenty four hours,
as the place was shutting down. Ruby was on spring
vacation with her father. When I got through to them,
they were on their way back to the campus. She
was elated that this would be the last time she
saw CEDU. When her father and she pulled up to
that place, it was like Lord of the Flies on
the mountaintop. The staff had split that hadn't been paid

(25:41):
in weeks, leaving the kids to manage themselves. They'd broken
into the commissary and were gorging on candy. Some of
them were having sex in the bushes. We grabbed her
stuff and she and her father split. A few hours later,
I picked her up at the Oakland Airport, both of
us in shock. Ruby sat in my unfamiliar living room,

(26:03):
blinking like a newborn, happy to be out, but unsure,
as both of us were, what would come next. Eventually
we found this school that was perfect for her, small
and with strong academics. As her friends changed from schoolmates
to train hoppers and musicians, she started to confront me
about Sea. Do you sent me away? She'd say bitterly.

(26:27):
I wasn't impressed by her anger, then I dismissed it, saying,
and you're alive to tell me I suck, So I'm
okay with that. At the time, i'd been desperate. I
thought this was at least one place I could guarantee
she'd be safe. But all these years later, after all
I'd learned and come to appreciate about the uniqueness of
Ruby and the people she chose, when she left to

(26:48):
Hop Trains, I was ashamed. I was so dismissive of
her pain. My shame came to a peak the day
Ruby made an appointment with me to talk about Sea
Do January of twenty twenty one, when Paris Hilton was
lobbying on Capitol Hill trying to get Congress to regulate
emotional growth. Boarding schools establish some standards for the staff

(27:09):
and put some limits on what they could do to
the children under their control. Seed forced us to participate
in attack therapy designed to humiliate and degrade you. At SED,
I was not allowed to speak to or look at
my peers. The staff verbally abused me, calling me vulgar
names that should never re said to a child. I
did not comply with the program, so I was brought

(27:32):
to Ascent in Idaho. I knew about his Scent, a
wilderness program the staff often threatened to send the kids
to if they didn't follow the Seed program. There are
many of these places where the selling point is that
your child needs to be shocked scared into complying with
the rules. Ruby never ended up at his Scent, But

(27:52):
when Paris said those bold things about her experience at SDO,
I had an idea of what Ruby would want to
talk about. Before I versation, I took down my journals.
I've kept a journal for nearly thirty years, at page through,
looking for every time I mentioned CD to prepare for
whatever issues Ruby wanted to raise about that time. I
didn't want to be defensive, as I'd lost any need

(28:14):
to defend what I'd done. I knew more about this now,
and I could apologize, but I wouldn't apologize for trying
to keep her alive. Sometimes, as a parent, the only
choices you have are bad ones. I had failed in
a way, though, and I knew it. Yes, she was alive,
but she hadn't been safe. We talked for nearly two hours,

(28:36):
and we cried. Ruby had no idea that her father
and I were trying to get her out months before
the place closed down. She thought we were just going
to leave her there forever and didn't care how she
was being treated as a parent. Is hard to know
which of the many complaints to take seriously. Ruby had
told us so much about it every time we got
her away for a visit, but I didn't appreciate just

(28:57):
how terrible it had been for her. We forgave each
other for all of it, what led up to it,
what happened while she was there, and how it ended.
But after Ninette and I spoke, the weight of that time,
my sarcastic dismissal felt heavy on me, and sending her
away to that awful place, I had broken some fundamental

(29:18):
link in our family life, some basic trust between us,
and that time before her suicide attempt, Ruby was sensitive
to the hypocrisy of the adult world, the bullshit of
everyday life, and the stupid bargains we make to appear respectable,
and we are withering inside. But when I sent Ruby away,
it was like I had cast her out of the family,

(29:40):
and in a way I was shaming her more than
the funeral for the robot baby. Suddenly, family was part
of the bullshit too. I'd made it a lot easier
for her to reject family along with everything else. When
she didched us a graduation, it was an echo of
what I'd done to her, sending her away without warning.
I am at the stage of life when regrets hit hard,

(30:02):
and after all I'd learned exploring the City of the Rails,
I had to own up to this decision being one
of the biggest regrets of my motherhood. I don't know
what else I could have done, but I am sorry
that I sent her off to se Do Well. I'm
still stuck on this. Ruby just wants me to move on,
get over it. She certainly moved on. When I told

(30:25):
her I was doing a podcast where I would blend
the story of what she went through on the Rails
with my decade of research, she was exasperated with me
and then enraged. She gave me three instructions, change her name,
talk about her suicide attempt, and talk about sending her
off to s DO. I wasn't going to talk about
those things at all. I felt like those parts of

(30:46):
the story were hers to tell. Plus she didn't want
to give me any guidance on how to address them.
We have forgiven each other, but those scars remain. There
isn't a family I know of that doesn't struggle through
scars and all and work toward a future founded on
the fact that love indoors, love survives. That foundation is
something we can return to once we've said what we

(31:08):
need to say about the past and been humbled by that.
And I know the fact that I have not been
able to let loose of the railroad and have kept
plunging deeper and deeper in long after Ruby left has
not been helpful to this healing. It's the problem of
being the child of a writer. I have told this
story about her, but it's not her story. I think

(31:30):
I'm getting why she never answered any of my questions.
She wants to keep that story as her own, and
she's gone some length to protect it. And one thing
I've come to understand during my time in the City
of the Rails is that no matter if you are tough, smart,
or just stubborn, and even if you do everything right,
the rails break your heart. Coming up against their brutal

(31:51):
power reveals things in you and in others. Sometimes those
are things you'd rather not see, rather look away. So
many people die out there, so many lives are lost
to the trains, and riders carry those losses with them
even after leaving the rails. Once riders do get off
the rails, it's hard for them to figure out how
to live a good life, and it can be difficult

(32:12):
to fit back into the world they left behind. Ruby
had to figure that out too. I was worried at
first that Ruby wouldn't find much meaning in life back home,
but I didn't need to. She has made a life
of her own, something to be very proud of, using
what she learned on the rails to make a positive
impact in the community getting off the rails. The people

(32:34):
who make that transition the best are ones who did
what Ruby did. They find a way to support themselves
while holding conventional society at arm's length. That's what Kiwi
from Profane Task did too. We have to get through

(32:56):
the maze of dogs. A few years ago, her partner Daniel,
got a permit to start a weed farm in Oklahoma
away for them to sustain a life off the rails.
Their farm is well organized with rows and rows of
plants ready to harvest. Right now, we have three rows
of cannabis and they are all in flower, so we're

(33:18):
about four weeks away from a harvest, and this will
be our third harvest in this greenhouse this year. Oh
that's very productive. Yeah, we're trying our hardest. Kiwi, who
was the banjo player for Profane Sass, the band that
performs our theme music Wayfaring Stranger, has been off the
rails for more than a decade. We got Kiwi off
the rails was a tragedy after the squat fire in

(33:41):
New Orleans. Profane Sas was devastated. They just lost eight
of their friends. And then nine months later, Thomas, the
lead singer of Profane SaaS, died on the rails while
he was taking some kids on their first ride. He
was their charismatic, barefoot mandolin player who everyone called Toe.

(34:01):
When he passed, Kiwi needed to get off for a while.
Right after Toe died, I was like, I don't know
what I'm doing with my life. I mean, the reason
I even got into cannabis is it was basically how
I healed myself from my best friend dying. So I
really love, you know, the piece that comes with farming.

(34:24):
We were supposed to go be rock stars and have
you know. We had big plans. But after he died,
you know, we all had to lick our wounds. That
death shook Kiwi and everyone else from profane SaaS. Thomas

(34:45):
was in a lot of ways the heart of their music,
a big man with a powerful voice and personality whose
death affects her to this day. I don't think I
can talk. I don't want to go play music on
the street. I'm heartbroken. And I got a job offer
in that spring to like just live on a mountain
and grow weed, which is perfect. I'm like, this is amazing. Yeah,

(35:08):
I just need to go cry in a greenhouse for
a year. But it also led to this new career path,
I guess you can say, so accidentally becoming a weed farmer.
There's a lot of things about her new life KeyWe
didn't expect. She grew up in Rena, never thinking she'd
end up in Oklahoma and as a farmer no less.

(35:31):
Seems like she and Daniel have a knack for this
accidental career. The greenhouse is lush, jungle like with all
the plants about to be harvested. But yeah, so now
we're in the middle of the greenhouse and we're like
surrounded by five foot tall plants, which is about as
big as we want them in the greenhouses, and it

(35:51):
probably smells really strong. I can't even smell weed anymore.
It's definitely a lot of labor. There's only two of us,
so whoa. We do all the farming everything, but you
guys have to do your own trimming as well. We
do some, and then we hire some friends. We still
have some friends that are like still touring musicians that

(36:14):
come trimp for us and make some extra dough because
we all know music doesn't pay well. We also have
some like babies in their twenties and they're like riding
trains now and doing the cool stuff that I used
to do, going to New Orleans, playing on the street
and busking, and they come and trimp for us. He

(36:37):
we started this business when she was trimming weed in California.
Now she hires people off the rails to help the
farm at harvest season, a full circle giving back to
where she and Daniel came from. This attitude of welcoming
people from the traveling community reminded me a lot of
CC Rider living by the tracks, and on top of
himploying her hope of friends on her organic weed farm,

(36:59):
ken We opens her home to all kinds of strays.
We're part of a dog rescue or there's like a
lot of stray dogs and we're trying to like clean
them up and get them into nice families. Two are
like retired train riding dogs. They're old. Do you think
they missed the train? Maybe a little bit. But my

(37:22):
dog she's almost sixteen and I got her when I
was sixteen, so she's definitely in retirement these days. Kiwi's
found a way to live a full life off the
rails on her own terms. The Kiwi still thinks about them.
So when did you stop riding? I wouldn't say I stopped.

(37:45):
I'll go to the the top a train, but I just
have enough time. I'm busy right now. But I've put
all my eggs in this basket. But you know, if
it all fails, I can go back to living under
a bridge and hoping trains. There's always the back plan.
There's always plan B. Yeah. Yeah. My partner he's also

(38:08):
an old train rider, So yeah, if it all fails,
it's all good. I think there's there's a type of
person that's just like there's always somewhere else to go.
I look at the trains every day. I'm like, oh, yeah,
I could just hop on that and be out of here.
No matter how long or short of a time you've

(38:29):
been on the rails, it seems there's always a dry
to go back, that feeling that when you're at a
low point in life, escape is just a few feet
from this side of the tracks. I saw this with
Lee sleeping under his truck in the California Desert mining
for precious metals, and I heard it from Thomas Wolf
two from episode four, even though he's been off the

(38:49):
rails for ten years. Well, when my daughter asked me
by I explained to her that it was the sound,
you know, the smells, the creosote, the whistles was even now,
when trails of people are worked with yore holding down,
holding down, that pull of the rails is something people

(39:09):
just can't shake. I was drawn into this world by Ruby,
but at this point I'm into deep and thankfully the
story I moved on to next has nothing to do
with Ruby. It's all about another world I discovered inside
the city of the Rails. I started out this journey

(39:42):
trying to tell the story of my daughter going on
to the rails, but when she came home, as the
year is piled up. My fascination was less about her
and more about the unforgettable people, the history and the
culture in the city of the Rails. When Ruby first left,
I was seeking the romance and the beauty. But you
know that clack clack on the railroad text it's called

(40:03):
the Hogoes lullaby and looking down and just completely surrounded
by pink water, just feeling outside of this world. But
beyond that was the intrigue and the mystery. There is
another world out there and it's dark. I'm going to
go head first into the darkness so I don't have
to do what you do. And history too, how the

(40:24):
railroads created modern America pus it's behind the scenes. You
have the finger on the pulse of the nation. The
railroads show you had raised capital, set up management, and
also they show you how to cheat. The more I learned,
the more I came to see the train yard as
the last lawless place. We're bulls, we're in control. He
comes running up, She's the dude, has my sign, and

(40:45):
he fucking paunches them for the beauty and community. The
rails are brutal. Nobody treats other human beings in the
way that we are being treated unless they actually hate us,
says this is for the dogs so they can eat,
not for you, and walks off. But even if they
are treated roughly and with disrespect, they made a conscious

(41:08):
choice to embrace this life, and they didn't want anyone
to pity them. I cherished me, and I know that
when I take the west Wind, I'm won't be riding huh.
As I worked my way further into the City of
the Rails, so many things caught my interest and felt
important to pursue. But there was one detour that landed

(41:29):
me somewhere I couldn't have imagined. When I started chasing
after Ruby and all my time reporting on the trains,
there was one guy who kept popping up in every
train yard. And that guy was Dirty Mike. You might
remember him as the guy who had barbecue supplies stashed
in train yards all over the country. I'm like, wow, man,
I wonder if this guy's got it like this everywhere?

(41:49):
You know, you really knew a ship. Even if his
knowledge of the trains was legendary, no one trusted him.
What's up? I'm Dirty Mike FTR, King of the Hoboes,
I think were his first words. Something and this guy's
a good The writers never forgot the way Mike strode
into the hobo jungle, talking loud so everyone would have

(42:09):
to react to him, and everyone knew he was bullshitting them.
He bragged about being up at the top of the
Freight Train Writers of America, supposedly the most violent gang
on the rails. Dirty Might claimed he was the ftira's hitman,
sent out to clean up situations on FTRA territory where
another gang was trying to take over. But I also
heard from people who liked Mike. Sometimes Mike rescued people,

(42:33):
like when he protected Sylvia from being harassed in Colton
and I yelled Dirty Mike's names. He comes running up,
She's the dude has my sign and he fucking punches them,
throws him over the off ramps, he goes flying down
the hill. We were friends ever since. I honestly felt

(42:53):
like he was constantly lying to me about how many
people he had killed and the stings that he did
for the FTR and I just I felt like he
was a bullshit artist. Hops had a lot to say
about Dirty Mike, and there were a lot of conflicting stories.
So who was he and what was the FTRA. I'd

(43:15):
heard about the Freight Trained Writers of America when I
was getting to know the rail cops. When I met
Joe and Larry in El Paso, I asked them about
the gang's reputation. The rail cops knew the f T
was aggressive. This was one gang. Even the bulls stared
clear of most of the hobos. They just kept to themselves.
These guys were looking straight in the eye and like,
I'm not afraid of you. You know. I didn't even

(43:36):
dare to search them or give him a hard time,
because that's all they needed, something to spark up a fight.
The f TERRYA was founded by disgruntled Vietnam vets angry
that Ronald Reagan cut their veteran benefits. So the f
r A also stands for fuck the Reagan administration. So
when Joe knew the f tr were in the yard,
he avoided them. There's this gang. You've got to be

(43:58):
careful with these these guys. They have these challenges of
shooting security and robo police. It goes actually you can
look inside a training, they'll shoot you in the face. Everybody,
everybody stayed away from those guys, you know, and then
they have their camp like that hobo jungle were clear
for them, nobody want to be associated with them. Throughout

(44:22):
my reporting, I kept wondering who really ran the train yard,
and it seemed like the answer might be the FDRA,
which is exactly why I figured they could help me.
After we became home, I started investigating the rail cops
and even got a couple of journalism grants to support me.
And at this point in the show it should be
no surprise I had a tough time finding sources, so

(44:44):
I figured if I could get one of these old
FTIRA guys to talk to me, he could tell me
a lot about the rail cops. The FTRA knew every
trainyard in America had a lot of run ins with
rail cops and no reason to protect them. Dirty Mike.
Other writers told me I knew a few of the
bulls by name, and they'd seen him greeting them like
old friends. He just might be the key to Unlucky

(45:06):
the story of the rail coops. So I kept googling
Dirty Mike and the FTRA, and then one day there
was a bee on the lookout bulletin for Dirty Mike.
We are now going to turn to the urgent man
hunt for a Texas man who went on the run
the night before. The bullet had listed his name as
Michael Elijah Thompson and had a lot of aliases beyond
Dirty Mike, Little Bear, Crazy Mike, and Nasty Mike. And

(45:31):
the first time I met Larry Diaz, he told me
he'd seem Dirty Mike around. I knew him because I
saw him here and there, would run into him on
multiple occasions in different areas. He knew who I was
better than I knew who he was. I just clumped
him together as part of that group, the FTRA group.
Need to be careful with them, and you know they

(45:51):
don't give him Matt Fox kind of attitudeing Larry didn't
suspect Dirty Mike was a murderer any more than the
obos did. But after the Crime Stoppers bulletin where he
got around in the traveling community that maybe Dirty Mike
hadn't been exaggerating, maybe he was a murderer. I never
paid any attention until me and Chad got pulled off

(46:13):
of a train in El Paso and the Bowl asked
us if we knew and dude named Mike with railroad
tracks tattooed by his eye, and that he was wanted
for murder. Straightaway, me and Chad were like, oh crap,
he's talking about Dirty Mike. And we were like, yeah,
we do know that person. And he's like, you know
where he is and he said no, we have no idea.
You know, we haven't seen him since Colton, which was

(46:34):
probably about two or three months before that. So all
of a sudden, the police were looking for Dirty Mike.
How many years had he been on the rails? How
many people had he killed and gotten away with it?
After all, dirty Mike could kill someone hop a train
and before states away before anyone discovered the body. So
suddenly I was very interested in Dirty Mike and what

(46:57):
he could tell me about the rails that no one
else could. It was June when I found out Dirty
Mike had been arrested in Vancouver, Washington, and extradited to
Plaster County for a murder outside the Roseville train yard
back in two thousand. So I'm navigating us to the
Roseville Market, which has kind of always been getting dropped
off point. Police had discovered the body near the Roseville Market,

(47:18):
where Zoe and I stopped before my Google attempt to
hop a train. It's like a little convenience store. Yeah,
pretty much like this is the closest place to get water, food, cigarettes. Yeah,
that's where Dirty Mike allegedly stashed the body of John
semler owens El Paso in Roseville. Now, there were two

(47:40):
murders in counting, so I decided to go visit Dirty
Mike so we could have a little chat about the
rail coops. I checked the prison website for visiting hours
and made my way up to the Plaster County Jail
on Thursday, summer afternoon. Dirty Mike had no idea I
was coming, and he might refuse my visit, as was
his right. But what did I have to lose? At

(48:02):
the jail, I filled in a form listing myself as
his friend and watched while the officer did a quick
background check. He handed me number seventeen, the seat where
Dirty Mike and I would be face to face, with
just bulletproof glass separating us. In the waiting area, I
settled in a hard plastic chair among the other visitors,
mostly family members. The doors opened and the inmates strode

(48:24):
to their places. Families jumped up and rushed to their
seats and grabbed the phones. Every seat was occupied except
number seventeen. I walked up to the guard to ask
what was up. I had only half an hour with him,
and ten minutes of it was already gone. Where was
Dirty Mike? Oh? He said, your guide needs four armed

(48:46):
guards to escort him anywhere. We're getting those guards together.
You'll get your full half hour, it just won't be
at the same time as anyone else. The room cleared out,
leaving me alone. Then the door opened and two guards
shoved Dirty Mic into his seat at nover seventeen, while
another secured the chains around his wrists, waists, and ankles

(49:08):
to a metal loop in the floor. Another stood by
with a rifle trained on him. They won't let you
bring anything into the visiting room, so I had no
tape recorder or no pat I rushed to the stool
to take a good look at him, trying to memorize
every tattoo, every scar. He was looking over my head,
right past me, refusing to look me in the eye,

(49:28):
which gave me time to examine all the marks on
his face. I counted nine railroad ties on the tattooed
Sylvia made across the right side of his face. The
one she gave him in Colton, and he had SSC
south side Colton inked further down on that side of
his neck, ftira across the top of his chest, slow
ride on his knuckles, and he was missing a lot

(49:50):
of teeth. He picked up the phone and started yelling
at me, really telling me off. But I couldn't hear anything.
He'd picked up the wrong phone. I pointed at mine
with a sarcastic smile to show him I couldn't hear him.
He laughed. The tension was broken. Dirty Mike and I
size each other up through the glass. He picked up

(50:10):
the correct phone and asked, who are you. I'm a writer,
I replied, Oh, thank god, he said. There were a
few seconds of silence while his eyes looked past me
over the top of my head. I watched Dirty Mike's
wheels turning, trying to decide how to use my arrival
in the visiting room to his advantage. He knew a

(50:31):
writer's weakness, A writer wants a story. When his focus
drifted back to me, there was a glint in his eyes.
They have me for two murders. They easily could get
me for twenty five, twenty five murders. If he was
telling the truth. Dirty Mike was the nation's least known
serial killer, all because he picked his victims in the

(50:52):
place where people go to disappear. The people he killed
were drifters. No one was expecting them to show up
for work or be home for dinner. In a lot
of cases, their families had written them off years ago.
As I realized in El Paso, the train yards connect
some of the roughest neighborhoods in the country, and the
trains are filled with criminals and people on the run.

(51:13):
Like Chris Rose told me in New Orleans, you don't
know when you're walking down the street if the guy
passing you as a serial killer. And that's even more
likely if he's covered in trained tattoos and chained to
the floor across the bulletproof glass from you. Dirty Mike
sat there for a sec calculating what to say next.
Then he said, I'm going to spend the rest of
my life in jail. All I have left is my story.

(51:37):
I'll tell it to you. That'st next season on City
of the Rails. And we went back with the gentri
talking about other marks for thought. Ask them, you know,
are there any others? And he said We'll talk about
that when you come get me ft. They just took
whatever from anybody, and he did what they're wanted. Those

(51:58):
guys were in the shadows. They did everything at night.
You know, they scared everybody here. Dirty Mike is happier
than a pig in shit to know that you are
going around talking to his ex traveling partners and his
old friends about him. They had all friends of money.
They didn't look like it, but these guys were like

(52:19):
Hell's angels. The Hell's Angels were angels in comparison, and
a lot of the FHRA. The FHRA would have taken
you off the split second. That's next season on City
of the Rails. Wet the end of the show, and

(52:47):
I wanted to sign off with a heartfelt thank you
to this audience. Thanks for letting me lead you head
first into the darkness. It's been rough at times, scary too,
but you stayed with me. He did not look away.
As a toxic train wreck in East Palestine shows people
should be paying a lot more attention to the railroads.
You are such a diverse group, including many current and

(53:08):
former hobos. A lot of people have hopped trains, even
if they only rode for a month or two. Living
that life of absolute freedom and taking incredible risks is
something they'll never forget. And if my voicemail is any indication,
those memories got even stronger as they listen to this show.
Beyond hobos, just regular folks, school teachers, firefighters, pipe fitters,

(53:29):
lawyers even heard the stories from the train yard and
began to re examine their lives. Sober responsible citizens started
to consider Momo's great question, why do you do what
you do? I never expected City of the Rails would
bring people together in that way, and shout out to
the many moms who have called and written, moms who
see a bit of Ruby and their teenage daughters and

(53:50):
are wondering what's coming. Just this week, I got a
message from a mom in Texas whose son has been
on the rails for twenty years. She's never known how
to talk to him about this life, but since you
found City of the Rails, all of a sudden, she
knows what to ask. I am so proud of that
to while you train moms, mothers of those who rode
or are still out there. Nanette thinks we should have

(54:12):
a train mom zoom call, and I'm all for it.
If you're into it, leave me a message at the
show phone number seven oh seven six five three three
three nine. I also wanted to acknowledge the people who've
passed on while I've been researching the Rails. In this season,
we've lost two byron Yorke, who survived the Squat fire
and Josh Brack, who told me Colton was the capital

(54:33):
city for Hoboes. As for what's next, don't unsubscribe to
the show feed. We're planning some great bonus episodes inspired
by Nikita. We're collecting road dog stories, so leave them
at seven oh seven six five three oh three three nine. Also,
I've been working with pro Publica, the investigative journalism nonprofit,
on a series of stories about the Rails, so workers, engineers, conductors,

(54:57):
Carmen and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way. I want
to talk to you seven h seven six five three
three three nine. Stay tuned because there are a million
stories waiting to be told in the City of the Rails.
We've heard great things from you about the music, many
new followers of my modern Hobo playlists, and new fans

(55:18):
of the band that plays our theme song, Profane Sass
and We're excited to announce that our composer Aaron Kaufman,
is releasing an album entitled The Yard Songs, inspired by
City of the Rails. You can find it on Spotify
and all major streaming platforms, or by using the link
in our show notes. San Molica Senmica dos Turn fourteen

(56:11):
as well be Drinking Gasoline, Send Far Away, No Talking
on the telephone, and when my broprey you places away
for Menasten. City of the Rails is hosted and written

(56:32):
by me Danelle Morton and developed in partnership between Flip
Turn Studios and iHeart Podcast. If you want to follow along,
find us on Instagram at flip turn Pods. I'll be
posting more too at Danelle Ryder. Our production team is
executive producer and showrunner Julian Weller. Julian also produced Our
Trips to Al Paso and Colton sound directed, edited and

(56:52):
mixed the show. Our executive producer at flip Turn is
Mark Healey, Senior producer Abooza Far Producers and Lady Squad
Zoe Denkla, Emily Marinoff, Shina Ozaki, Jackie Huntington, Trisha Mukherajee
and Jessica Krinchich, with production support from Marci the Pina.
We had a very modular team making this show, and

(57:13):
many people pitched in to make it sound as good
as it does. But special shout out to three people
who were here for the whole ride. Zoey Denkla, who
was at the other end of the zoom for every recording,
battling with me over the script, always with the goal
of making it authentic and easier for listeners to understand.
She made great contributions in story discussions and an episode

(57:34):
edits too, and Julian Weller assembled the great team I've
gotten to work with, sound directed, edited and mixed the show,
and more than that, drove through the Texas desert with
me and snuck into Southside Colton Yard to record train sounds.
Plus struggled through eighteen months working with a very demanding
host and, best of all, my business partner, Mark Healey,

(57:55):
who two years ago convinced me we should make a
podcast when I thought that was the craziest thing in
the world. You were right. Mark is working so far.
But if it all goes horribly wrong, we can just
blame Jamie Kitman for introducing us. You still owe me
that Manhattan. Original music every episode by Aaron Kaufman. O
theme music is Wayfaring Stranger, performed by Profane SaaS thanks

(58:17):
to Scott Michaud at Flail Records. Our loco is by
Lucy Kingtonia and uses a photograph by Mike Brody and
I Heeart thanks to Nikki Etour and Bethan Macaluso. Because
We'll see you again in the City of the Rails

(58:39):
and Danielle look, come just to give your ring from Australia.
We're up. Been listening to that fantastic story of yours
and your beautiful writing. I've enjoyed it homously. M It
reminds me so much for the time and I was
on the road in America by music on the streets

(59:01):
and seeing some of the musicians and the kids out
there playing and busking reminded me so much of my
years traveling and hanging on and off trains. I just
wanted to say how much I've enjoyed it, and how
so many memories that sort of come studding back at
the time. Anyway, I thought I'd just play you one

(59:24):
of the songs that I used to play a lot
when I was when I was around. You won't hear it. Guys,

(01:00:00):
m m h m hm hm hm Women