July 15, 2025 • 48 mins
Ian interviews the people that inspired him to go on the cross-country bike trip that lead him to his crazy night with Uncle Chris. Hear firsthand accounts from Hitchhikers, train hoppers and folks floating down the Mississippi on boats made out of garbage.
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
Back in the seventies when my dad was in college,
heina buddy of his drove a Jeep CJ from Arkansas
all the way up to Alaska. They parked it and
spent the entire summer hiking and camping throughout the Alaskan wilderness.
I was raised on pictures and stories from their trip
growing up. My dad, an avid fishermen and camper, brought
my sister and I on a lot of fishing and
(00:33):
camping trips, so the idea of going on an adventure,
or at least sleeping in a tent wasn't too foreign
to me. Combine those experiences with a lifetime of hearing
all about the wild escapades of John Herndon, and you
could say that the seed for adventure was planted, but
it would take meeting a few other people to get
that seed to sprout. Towards the end of my freshman
(00:55):
year of college in Savannah, I ended up getting kicked
out of the dorms. It's a story for a whole
other podcast, but the result was that I went from
living in the dorms to living off campus with a
buddy of mine and ended up becoming really good friends
with his roommate a guy named Marcus. Tall, skinny, and unassuming,
he always looked too young for his age. Marcus was
usually the quiet guy at the party, sitting in the
(01:17):
corner with the beer, smoking cigarettes, watching everyone else hang out.
I was a goofball freshman and Marcus was technically a sophomore,
but somehow he managed to go around the curriculum and
was taking all of the senior level film classes. I
think a lot of that had to do with the
fact that he was probably the most talented cinematographer in
the program, But what matters is that he was in
high demand to shoot all of the senior's thesis films.
(01:41):
Thanks to Marcus, I was exposed to the krem de
la creme of my school's film department. I went from
hanging out with fellow freshmen spending the majority of our
time getting high and watching adult swim, to entering a
world full of the most talented, creative, and fun upper
classmen our school had to offer. I was an impressionable
college friend wishman who was all of a sudden spending
every night with the most exciting art school students in Savannah.
(02:05):
I absorbed everything that was happening around me. Not only
the wild and crazy party ethic that this group had,
but also the incredible work ethic that came with a
bottomless pit of creativity. Everyone was always working on projects,
always making things, always painting things, always building things. It
was contagious. The more I became part of the scene,
the more everyone's attitudes and lifestyles started to help shape mine.
(02:29):
At the center of all of it was the Ross brothers.
Bill was a senior and a film major, and Turner
was a junior studying painting. Fast forward twenty some years,
the Ross brothers now work together as filmmakers. They've made
seven feature films, worked with the likes of David Byrne
and Ira Glass, have shown at film festivals all over
the world. They've won numerous awards, including an Independent Spirit
(02:51):
Award for Best Documentary Feature, So you know, they're kind
of a big deal when it comes to independent films.
Their style of filmmaking usually involves them picking a location,
transplanting themselves there, and just existing among the people in
places in that area for you know, like a year
or so, and then they leave and somehow turn the
experience into a movie. It's a style that's constantly evolving,
(03:14):
but it really does represent how these guys exist in
the world. They show up, see what's going on, and
somehow turn it into something awesome that gets rave reviews.
A friend of mine who didn't know who they were
and went to a party that they hosted, described them
as those two brothers who seemed like weird versions of
Matthew McConaughey. I'm sure Bill and Turner would hate hearing that,
(03:35):
but the shoe fits. They're both never ending sources for
wild ideas and crazy stories. First impressions would describe Bill
as the affable party animal and Turner as the intense,
brooding artist, but that doesn't quite cover it. They're both funny, charming,
sometimes intimidating, sometimes dangerous. Oh, I don't know what's the
(03:56):
right word. Scoundrels pirates, cowboys. I don't know. Here's Bill.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The lack of thrilling things that we had to do
growing up, it's like it resulted in looking for something
that would like make you feel anything other than boredom.
Like I remember we'd sneak out in the middle of
the night and we'd Cincinnati was only an hour and
a half away, but we'd go to the Ohio River,
touch the Ohio River, and drive back in time to
(04:23):
get back in bed, so our parents when they woke up,
we would still be there.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
But we could go to school.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
The next day and say that, you know, we touched
the Ohio River overnight, and people be like, what the fuck,
Why the fuck would you do that, you know, and
it's like just to say that you did it. But
that was always like fun and like having a good
story to tell at school the next day. I just
(04:49):
feel like like Turner's stuff was like so much more solitary,
like he was like trying to prove something to himself,
where I just wanted to have fun with my buddies.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
And here's Turner. Anything stand out as like the first
adventure you went on. Yeah, I ran away. I was
like thirteen.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I was tired of the bullshit at my house.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
So I went to my friend Mike's house for a
few days until there was fear of police and military school.
But that was a brief adventure anyway. And then I
used to like to steal cars in the middle of
the night. That was always an adventure because you just
never knew. Yeah, in high school, my buddy and I
set off on bicycles with a gallon of vodka and
(05:34):
some clothes and just rode around Ohio.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
For a week.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
We created fake names for ourselves. His was Tristan Roberts
and mine was Simon Phoenix. The day I turned eighteen,
I flew to Germany with this kid who moved into
my house. He was an exchange student, got kicked out
of his house for not being a good kid, I guess,
and he took me over to Germany and wow, that
was an adventure.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Wait didn't you fall in love with like a German
star or something. It's all coming back to me now.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I did, yeah, very much so, but she was out
of my league, so that didn't have much longevity.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
For the record, I did cry a little further, and
Turner prefers to keep this part of the story mysterious,
but for my own recollection. Apparently there was some paparazzi involved,
and he was featured in some German gossip magazines as
a mysterious dream boy or something. Anyhow, so, yeah, actual adventures.
Let's talk about actual adventures. Let's think about that.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
I started hopping trains and hitchhiking. If you want to
learn something, go out and stand on the side of
the road and have a stranger pick you up. You know,
he'll end up in a new place with a news story.
You know, it's and then it's just like a chain letter.
It's really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
In their early twenties, Turner and friend of ours named
Emos walked the coast from San Francisco down to Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Yeah, we walked out of his apartment in San Francisco
and thirty three days later walked into mine in La
having walked for five hundred some miles and just sleeping
outside kind of strangers type of stuff. That was a
summer in the sun. Man. That was That was really wild.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I don't know that I have the nerve that Turner
does to like be like, well today I'm gonna go
out by myself and jump on a tree. Yeah, I
don't know. I take some real weird stock to just
do that.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
On your own.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
I feel like I need to be motivated by sort
of a common enthusiasm by friends or you know, in
Turner's case, family. You know, if somebody gets a wild hair,
I'm always down for it. But but yeah, left in
my own devices, I'm not. I don't particularly seek that
(07:49):
kind of stuff out, I'll very happily just sit at
home and watch movies.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Bill and Turner grew up in the small town of Sydney, Ohio, so.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
A town of about twenty thousand folks, as far away from.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Art as you could possibly get for any of you
film nerds out there. The movie Gummo takes place an
hour down the road in Xenia, Ohio, so, as you
might imagine, both felt the strong need to escape.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, movies were just like the great escape. Growing up
where we did and wanting to have an artistic life
I think was pretty uh bold. So when you're going
to the video store and you find you know, like
a Fellini movie and they would all be like in
the one dollar bin because nobody was watching them and
(08:34):
people weren't gonna pay a dollar for them, but like
you know, having to kind of hide out to even
watch those, because like, if you're into that kind of stuff,
you're fucking weird and it's not something you bring up
a lot, because you'd get your ass kicked, like, hey, hey, guys,
I just watched this Italian film and my god, and yeah,
(08:54):
and especially like you know, like in a tiny town
like that, when you start watching like a true faux film,
and you've never been outside of you know, a few states.
It's like that's your way of seeing the world, and
so your whole existence opens up and you realize that
the world's a lot bigger place than you know.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Unlike Bill's found escape through movies, Turner felt he needed
to create his own means of escape as a reaction
to the things he didn't like that were all around him.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
I'm still punching up at it, man, it's still the
same shit. It's just angst and dissatisfaction and low ceilings,
small town conservative politics. It was Catholicism.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
For instance.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
I ran the local video store, which also was the
porn store, and so I sold porn to all of
the adults, some of whom were also the guys who
passed the bucket at Catholic church on Sundays. And the
hypocrisy of that was just astounding to me. And just like,
you know, they made us read Huck Finn in school.
(10:00):
You know, that's the first problem. It's like you gave
me a book about running away from home on a
raft and going out to experience the world like it's
in there.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Man. Most people that I know that have gone on
these types of trips or adventures usually stop after their twenties.
Bill and Turner, now in their forties, have managed to
maintain this lifestyle, both professionally but also personally. In June
of twenty twenty two, when Roe v. Wade got overturned
and everyone dug their heels in on which side they
(10:32):
were on politically and began screaming at each other on
TV and online, Turner decided, rather than join the fray,
he would go and see things for himself.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
And so I said, well, I'm just going to hitchhike
across Nebraska, see what the fuck's going on.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
He had a wedding to get to in Colorado, so
he left a week early and flew into Omaha. His
plan was to get to the wedding by hitchhiking.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I may have my own politics and my own view
of the world, but that doesn't mean I'm right, you know,
that doesn't mean I'm a better human being than somebody else.
Somebody else is completely in their own, you know, frame
of reference that's different than mine. Of course they're going
to feel differently. So I wanted to go connect with that,
and a lot of people suspected, well, since he's here,
(11:14):
he must just be one of us, and that's a
bit of a magic trick. And I, unless asked, wouldn't
say otherwise. But I listened a lot and talked. I
got offered a job, you know, I got free meals.
You know, people took care of me. And they were
people who if you were you know, talking back and
(11:34):
forth on Twitter, would be your arch nemesis and you
would say, are the fucking bane of the world. But
they picked me up, they took care of me, they
were kind to people. It's very different politics, and for me,
it's really important to continue to foster that empathic response
so that I don't get dead inside and you know,
(11:54):
like rutted into one way of thinking and being.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Any of these trips backfired on you.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I got, yeah, I got I got rolled by a
one eyed drunk one night in New Mexico, stole my
favorite knife. You know, stuff like that happens. I've definitely
made some mistakes, had some bad encounters, but you know,
by you know, by and large, it's people like to
fear monger with this kind of shit. In the reality
(12:25):
is there are mostly kind people in the world. I
don't go to these places to impose myself. All these
scenarios involve people choosing whether they wish to accept me
into their spaces. Hitchhiking is very much that, you know,
but also walking into a rough neck bar in Wyoming
(12:46):
or in the border Lands, it's like they know you're
a fish out of water, So do they choose to
accept you or not?
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Do you have like a go to move?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I mean, my routine is walking into a bar.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
I got him pretty good at it.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
But uh, but then, yeah, I try to try to
beat polite, try not to impose myself, try not to
take up too much space. And then if somebody wishes
to start discourse with me, I let that go where
it wants to go and follow the energy man, and
more often than not, that goes to the light.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
I asked Bill if he had a similar philosophy about
coming into new places and meeting new people.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
This is probably the difference between Turner and I in
that scenario. It's like, I'm thinking about what everybody else
is thinking. Turner is probably just like, well, I'm sure
they're happy I'm here, got it. Yeah, right, It's just
(13:50):
it's a very different, very different philosophy.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Got it. These were the guys I met as a freshman.
Hanging out with them and all of the people in
their orbit helped me start to see the world differently
and think about the different ways I might want to
experience the world. But it was actually Marcus, the quiet
guy at the party, who got the seed of adventure
ready to sprout. Just a heads up, Bill calls Marcus Juice.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
I was very impressed by that. I didn't know Juice.
I didn't know Juice had that in him, but I
think I think he really started that. And I bet
that probably little fire under Turner to want to like
do that. It's funny. It's it's funny. The least fire
starter or person that we.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Know is.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Has really motivated, like you know, going going down rivers,
hopping on drains. If you had to guess out of
all of us, who would that be. I don't know
that you would have picked Juice at that point.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
But yeah, this is Marcus.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Terrifying all the time to me. I don't know one
else seemed to terrified as me, but I was so terrified.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
So here's how it all started.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
I mean, it all started for me because of Bill
and Turner. Actually they befriended this guy, David Everheart.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
David Everheart is a filmmaker who was at the Savannah
Film Festival in two thousand and three promoting his film
Long Gone. He spent ten years riding the rails making
the film. It's a documentary that dives into hobo and
tramp culture. The movie tells the stories of six different
hobos as they train hop all over America.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
Bill and Turner were huge fans of the movie, and
so they like approached him. Unbeknownst to them, David is
basically he lives his hobo life permanently sort of. David
was like, yeah, I could use a place to stay,
and David ended up crashing at Bill and Turner's house
in Savannah for a while.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
He stayed with us for you know, I want to
say months. Having grown up watching Half Baked and The
Guy on the Couch, I was like really excited to
have our own guy on the couch. I would come
home from class, bring him beer, sit on the couch,
and just like ask him questions for hours. Every night.
We would just sit there and Bill and Ted style
was basically like the guy from the future that came
(16:17):
back and said like here's one way of living, and
you can like jump trains, you can make movies, you
can meet all these people, but you just have to go.
And that's how he got Turner, That's how he got Marcus,
that's how he got me. Its like he just like
opened a door that was like, you don't have to
live like everybody else. There is this other way. He
(16:37):
really laid the groundwork for what we, you know, even
do to this day. I mean, in our new film,
we have a train sequence that wouldn't be there if
it weren't for him.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Maybe a year later, we were moving out to la
and David contacted me to be a DP for his
next documentary, which was about these tramp kids are gutterpunk
kids from Minneapolis who build their own boats out of
whatever they can get their hands on and float down
(17:10):
the Mississippi.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
That's right, the Mighty Mississippi Old Man River, America's artery
two thousand, three hundred and forty miles of winding river,
starting from Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota and flowing all
the way to the Gulf of Mexico through New Orleans.
The Big Muddy carves its way through ten states, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi,
(17:40):
and Louisiana. The Mississippi River is no joke. One hundred
and seventy five million tons of freight are moved down
the Mississippi each year by ships and massive barges. The
water level is constantly changing, with depths ranging from thirty
to two hundred feet, causing the currents to be unpredictable.
These deadly currents and an unforgiving under are responsible for
(18:01):
large amounts of drownings every year. In June of two
thousand and three, Marcus joined a ragtag expedition of gutter
punks who decided to face this treacherous waterway on vessels
made out of plywood, scraps and garbage. Sure it sounds insane,
but to quote mister Mississippi River himself, Mark Twain, you
feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
So yeah, I had just literally just moved to La,
I dropped off my stuff, and then I was on
it for almost six months.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
If you aren't familiar with the term gutter punk or
haven't been around anyone from the hobo, tramp, train hopper scene,
let me describe the esthetic punk style patches, lots of tattoos,
aggressive piercings paired with thrift store and homemade clothes, broken
glasses held together with tape and wire, dreadlocks, mohawks, Everyone
and everything is dirty. If you live in a city,
(18:57):
you've probably seen these types walking around, typically in a group,
and there's usually a dog or two with them. The
adventure began with eighteen voyagers twelve guys and six gals,
all of them somewhere in their twenties, and even though
they'd be fine with the gut or punk label, the
group's look was more subtle. Picture a bunch of grungy
Generation xish, dirty looking slacker types walking around in nondescript
(19:20):
through store clothing.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
I think there was like five boats to begin with,
and I think three of them made it to the end.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Photos that Marcus took on this trip show these bespoke
boats and their captains. Some of the boats are completely
pragmatic in bare bones. Others look like something you'd see
at Burning Man or in a Mad Max movie. Well,
I guess, uh, I guess water World would be more apped.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Let's see, they're made out of plywood. The base of
it is basically like a barge style build is like
a rectangle with the sloped front and back underneath, and
then on top of that you just build any kind
of shanty kind of thing you want, Like Evan. His
was very simple. It was the barge with sort of
bent PVC like a like you would do for like
(20:05):
a greenhouse, a DIY greenhouse with tarp pulled over it.
But Gerty had this sort of very nice like screened
in little cabin like with doors, and he had a
pilot sort of perch on top of it. On the roof.
One guy had pontoons that were just old like those
blue construction barrels for floats, with a deck deck on top.
(20:26):
And that was like it. You know, he would like
live under like a looked like a bed sheet, you know,
tied up into a tent. The most photogenic boat. It's pretty.
It was really amazing. Was he took the shell of
like a I don't know what kind of car. It
was like a Nova or something, some shitty car, but
it was the full frame and that was that that
(20:47):
made the roof of the the boat. So the boat
was like a you know, barge with a car top
on top. And he lived in that and it was
really impressive.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I'd like to add that the words John Denver's play
We're painted onto the side of the car frame. One
of my favorite images is of one of these tiny
plywood boats. It looks like a small shanty hut covered
with junk. There's a cooler, a bicycle, lawn chairs, and
a cartop carrier on top of this thing, and in
the background the Saint Louis arch. This was the third
(21:21):
year that this group had embarked on this voyage, and
they knew what they were doing. It may have looked
like a slipshot operation from the outside, but in actuality
it was a well thought out and planned experience. You know.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
The thing is like as far as the documentary, we
were viewing it as this like you know, epic journey story.
But in their minds this was just like a lifestyle.
So like no one, they didn't seem as too concerned
about destination or you know, making it there. And because
of the nature of the boats, like they just build
(21:54):
a new one for next year. The engines aren't strong
enough to go upstream, and they're not valuable enough to
or anything like that. So I think the original title
of the documentary was supposed to be burn this boat
because at the end they would just set the boat
on fire.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Marcus would spend his days hopping from boat to boat
filming for the documentary.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
The boats that were that the guys maids did great,
but the.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Boats the girls maids sucked.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
The guys that musing a colloquially yeah, the the royal
guys just say the gang. The gang. Their boats fared
really well like, but they.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Were careful because of the size and construction of the boats.
They had to travel at a snail's pace, sometimes only
going a couple of miles a day.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
You know, I think it took us three or four
months just to get to like southern Illinois.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
You know, for the first part of the trip, it
was a pleasure cruise.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
They didn't have money for gas or anything like that really,
so anytime they could they would just float. The thing
that would ruin their boats would be you know, waves,
if it's chop, be their potsomriplywood, so they could easily
like just crack. So they just avoided all of the
bad weather, bad conditions. So when the weather was bad
(23:11):
for us, you know, we just hunker down wherever we
were and then you know, the river goes up and down,
so if it's flooding, there's all kinds of debris like
logs and trees and stuff, which you'll hit if you're
not careful, or hit your propeller on and then you're stuck.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
But once the Mississippi River meets the Ohio River, the
pleasure cruise portion of the voyage is over.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
You know, the northern half of the Mississippi from Minnesota
to Cairo, Illinois, which is where it meets with the Ohio.
The speed of the river is like three miles an
hour or something like that. You could swim. It was
pretty clean, luxurious, and there's shores and little islands and
you know, places you can stop and camp if you want.
As soon as you meet the Ohio, the river becomes
(23:56):
like ten to fifteen miles per hour, which is really fast.
And for these guys' boats, if you miss like the
dock you were trying to get to to go upstream
would be like full engine power to try and get
back up. So you're really like trying to be careful
about all that, and their boats probably couldn't do it.
They're just these big wooden checks on that are floating,
(24:19):
so that's not like they're streamlined or anything.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
And you can't even paddle that.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
No, and there's barges everywhere that like commercial traffic that's
going up and down.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
And it turns out that the scariest thing on the
Mississippi River is a barge. If you've ever seen a
river barge in real life, it's surprising how big they are.
The average river barge is a flat rectangle that's about
forty feet wide two hundred feet long, and is pushed
by a towboat from the rear. Barges are loaded with cargo,
(24:48):
usually shipping containers. The average barge holds around two thousand
tons of cargo at a time. The Mississippi is windy
and these massive barges aren't very maneuverable, so boaters need
to constantly be on the lone out for barges that
might pop around a corner unexpectedly. Barges only travel at
fourty five miles an hour, but like a freight train,
the weight of the barge makes it very hard for
(25:10):
them to stop moving. It takes a mile and a
half for a barge to come to a complete stop.
Along with that, the weight of the barge causes so
much water displacement that its wake can poll boats that
are too close to it underwater. So if you end
up in the way of a barge, there's not much
you can do to stop it from killing you.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
They're having to displace all this water to get upstream
at any kind of speed. All these old timers you'd
meet at bars and restaurants be like, if you get
it within one hundred yards of those things, they'll suck
your boat right under them. And so I was constantly
terrified of the barges, and even at night, you know,
like we put an anchor on shore, dig it into
the sand. There's just been so many days where we're
(25:52):
just hanging out during the day and be like, oh,
the anchor's coming loose. We should reset it, you know.
And so how do you like go to sleep at
night being like that an that I just reset five
times today. I'm just hoping it doesn't need to be
reset all night long. And then we don't just go
floating down the river while I'm asleep and just sucked
under a barge. So I don't think I slept well
like the whole time.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
They could change the title of the movie to Sucked
under a barge.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Yeah, sucked under a marge.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Since Marcus was there to film the boat Riders, he
spent most of his time on a houseboat along with
the director David.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Our boat was constantly breaking down, and I was terrified
all the time. There was like a nineteen fifties houseboat
with like a Chevy engine in it. The constant joke
was that we should have been filming ourselves, trying to
document them, because everything that went wrong went wrong with
our boat. I know there's one time where the engine
had died and I'm freaking out because there's a barge
(26:47):
coming upstream, like maybe a mile away and they can't turn. Really,
I'm driving the boat and I get on our radio
and I'm kind of like trying to use the like
official lingo that you're supposed to use on the radio
that they teach you. It's like southbound pleasure craft to
northbound barge. You know, we are without power or something
(27:08):
like that. But then the radio, of course is also
now not working and the battery's dying, so it's like
intermittent and it was like a you know, terrible comedy
where you know every other word would just be cutting
out and then finally I would hear this captain of
this other ship go like, am I to understand you're
without bound? I was like, yes, please don't kill us,
Like throughway all the lingo stuff, it's just like, we're stuck.
(27:32):
Don't kill us. He's like, I'll do my best. And
then you know, we do whatever we could, paddling just
to try to get us out of the channel, and eventually,
you know, you'd run a ground somewhere and be like,
oh thank god.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
That happened so many times that it is just terrifying
all the time to me. I don't know one else
seemed as terrified as me for that.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
I was so terrified, but you kept you but you
hung in there for six months.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Yeah, I mean, I really it is very romantic the
whole thing, you know. Obviously, like I was terrified at times,
but I was also like, I mean, that's sort of
the point, I guess.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Hanging out on the boats, Marcus began to learn more
and more about hobo culture. Throughout the trip. Different people
would meet up or tag along for days and weeks
at a time, showcasing the complete freedom and agency of
the lifestyle.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Everywhere we'd stop and meet up with their friends or
all other train writers, other tramp kids, and so that
whole world was very much part of this world and
was super fascinating to me. And so I would hear
all their like little stories and their little tips and
tricks and things.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Because he was just there to film the documentary, Marcus
never really felt like a peer amongst the rest of
the boat riders. He always felt like an observer. But
as he got to know them better, he became increasingly
fascinated by their world and the different subcultures that existed
within the train hopping scene.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
There's like hobos, you know, like the old timer guys
who are out there alone, just nomadic travelers, and those
are usually like the older guys. And then there's tramps,
who are sort of the younger people who liked the
lifestyle of living nomadically as well. And then there's like
home bums. Those are the like one the kids who
(29:34):
like were sneakers or something. They're the ones who look
like they're gutterpunks of train riders, but they never leave
their hometown. I guess something like that. We'd go to
these like some meet up or hang out or something
where a lot of them are just kind of either
like alcoholics or you know, drug addicts. There's all those
people as well. But the ones that we were following
(29:55):
on the boats and the people that I knew were
I don't know, all had a very like strong sort
of like ethic about it all. It wasn't so much
fuck everything, you know. It was more like, I like
living this way and believe in dumpster diving because they're
against the cost of food and they choose to live
on the on the move. A couple of them would occasionally,
(30:16):
like they call it, like I forget with it. I
think it was like flying a sign, which was like
where you'd hold up a sign and say like traveling broken, hungry,
you know, like busy panhandling. A couple of them would
do that in an emergency, but they hated the idea
of doing that, and it was a very embarrassing thing
to them. They wouldn't even want to be like interviewed
about it because it's not something that they were proud of.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
But that type of lifestyle requires a certain amount of resourcefulness.
They would scavenge copper by dumpster diving along the way.
The bottoms of their boats would be completely full of electronics, wires,
discarded metal, anything that might have copper in it.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
They'd wait until they had enough to do like a
good haul, a multi day task because you have to
strip all the plastic off all this electrical wire and
then they bring however they had like one hundred and
fifty or two hundred pounds of copper to the recycling
center and exchange it for however much it was at
the time, something that you could get. I think it
was like they'd make it five hundred bucks or something.
(31:12):
I remember a couple of them like left the boats
for like a month because they would go do the
beat harvest, and I think that was in like North
Dakota or something, just like migrant farming where you're put
up and it's just during the harvest for however long
that is, like a month or something, and then you
just save all that money that you made.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Stuff like that. So a lot of integrity in the operation.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Amongst these guys. Yeah, But they weren't like trying to
break any laws at anytime, you know. I mean it
was funny that these handmade boats were all licensed, Like
you have to get the license at the DMP as
a craft. You know, so they had their little number
stickers on the bow.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
I really liked the idea of like this line at
the DMV full of dudes with brand new fishing boats
and jet skis and boats, and then all of a sudden,
all these gutterpunks show up with a bunch of garbage boats.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
They weren't like runaways or something, you know, or they
weren't in trouble with little law or escaping anything. They
just liked the lifestyle of it. And I think linked
to that was the anti consumerism and waste of modern
culture or something like that. But they also weren't like
militant about it, you know, like it wasn't anger based
(32:26):
or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, just more threau, very throwy.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
And we just want to be able to do our
thing kind of. And I'm friends with some of them
still on Instagram, and a couple of them are still
living on a boat.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
At the time Marcus was on his trip, I was
a junior in college and my mind was completely blown
by what he was doing. It was two thousand and four,
so that means it's pre Instagram, pre Facebook, pre smartphones.
No one was getting daily updates. There were no posts
for Marcus, he wasn't taking any selfies of himself on
the boats in front of the Saint Louis Ar. Instead,
(33:01):
every couple of months somebody would get a call from
Marcus or a postcard during an email. All I really
knew is that he was going down the Mississippi on
boats that looked like tree Fords, and it got my
imagination going wild. It really made me just want to
get out there and do something as cool as that
as soon as possible.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
By the time we got to Natchez, just before Baton Rouge,
it was cold, it was almost Christmas time, and I
didn't know how much longer it would take.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Against the end, after six months on the river, Marcus
decided it was time to go home.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
And another guy who was on the who had been
on the boats for a while, his name was Seth.
He was also getting off to head home for Christmas,
and so he was going back up to the Chicago area.
And he was a freight train writer, and so I
had spent six months listening to stories about freight train writing,
and so I was very like hopeful to get to
(33:58):
try it myself.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Marcus knew that he wanted his first train hopping experience
to be with someone who knew what they were doing.
He had heard a lot of stories about train hopping
and had paid attention to all the ways it could
go wrong.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
For instance, well, how do you know where the train's going.
She can't jump off unless it stops. How do you
know if it's going to stop? And when it does stop,
how do you know that the car you're on is
not getting left out?
Speaker 1 (34:20):
There was a woman who fell asleep while riding a
train through Idaho. When she woke up, the train car
she was riding in had been disconnected from the rest
of the train.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
They're just delivering an empty railcar so that farmer whenever
they get their grain can fill up that car, and
then they call the rail yard to come pick up
their full car to ship it. And so she's literally
like hundreds and hundreds of miles from like anywhere. It's
just the middle of nowhere, and it's like summer and hot,
and she doesn't have enough water. She just like didn't
know what she was gonna do. It's just like started walking.
(34:51):
You know, I didn't know about cardboard.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
If you're train hopping in winter, you need to bring
cardboard with you. To insulate your body from the steel
box car, otherwise you will fe to death.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
And then there's also the dangers of like dehydration if
you're stuck on a train, because sometimes they'll keep going
for days, so you need to know how long you're
going to be on it.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
You need to make sure that the doors don't close
on you.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Multiple people told me about being in like a box
car and like the doors slip shut and latched, and
they were stuck inside of a box car going through
the desert, so it was like basically an oven. They
had no choice but to like bang on it and
yell when they would train would slow down, hopefully someone
would hear that there was a person inside. You know,
there's a thing like when they pick up a railroad
spike off the ground, you like keep an eye out
(35:34):
for them amongst the gravel and the railroad tracks, and
you just keep one on you and you use the
spike to spike the box car door so it doesn't
do that, which is also something you would not known about,
or it wouldn't have occurred to me.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
He even knew someone who's legged be torn off while
trying to jump onto a moving train.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
You know, the train cars wider than the wheels, Like
if you slip, you'll naturally swing, your legs will swing
under the train, and you know, it's just super dangerous.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
According to the Federal Rail Administration, there is an annual
average of four hundred and thirty illegal train riding related deaths,
and the numbers increase each year.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Not everyone who's writing trains, or probably the majority, are
not on some romantic trip. They're usually like running for something,
or homeless, or have mental health issues or substance abuse issues.
So I think there's a lot more danger than there
is not danger.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Train hopping is exciting, it's romantic, and it's deadly. It's
not something to be taken lightly. So once Marcus had
a guide with the proper amount of train hopping experience,
he was ready to take his first train home from
New Orleans back to Chicago for Christmas.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
I went with him, and we went to the train
yard and caught a train going north. The middle of
winter by the time we got north and freezing cold,
and I had a duffel bag and a sleeping bag
and a puppy. I found a dog while we were
on the boats.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
That's right, Marcus's first time ever, train hopping was also
with his adorable little black lab mutt named Yazoo that
he found on the Yazoo River near Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
And so I had this puppy not ideal. I guess
it was like having a baby where you're like, you
don't want it to cry at a certain time because, like,
you know, it's illegal to be in the train yard.
It's trespassing, so you're, you know, there's at least a
period of time where you're trying to be very stealthy
to not get caught. And so I just hope this
puppy wouldn't like wine or park or something, and also
(37:46):
hoped that I could sleep without it falling off the train,
so I would just stuff it down on the bottom
my slipping bag. But yeah, I end up being okay.
It was just very a very cold, very cold ride.
We got off at one point on our train and
we were in like central Illinois. We just needed to
get warm and get some food, so we like got
(38:06):
off because the train stopped and we were walking along
the road and this pickup truck pulls up and it's
this guy who's like, you know, were you guys just
down that train, and you know, I just let Seth talk,
and Seth was like maybe he ended up being a
super He was. He was like an engineer, one of
the engineers on that train. And so he like took
us into town and bought us a meal at a
(38:28):
diner that was open. It was like the middle of
the night, and he was like where you'll headed, And
we're like, we're trying to get near Chicago. And he's like, well,
you're gonna want to get back on that same train
because they don't stop here, but you know once a
week or something like that. Normally they just fly through.
So like we didn't know that, and if he hadn't
(38:49):
told us, you know, we would have been stuck there
for however long a week. So he ended up driving
us back to the train yard, like into the train yard.
He stopped at the like their little cont troll tower
to check the list of cars to find us which
train car would actually be going all the way to
where we were going, and then he drove us down
the line of the train to find the number of
(39:09):
that car and let us get on there. But you
made it, made it, yeah, made it to Champagne Orbana.
We decided not to go to Chicago, because this is
an example of why I would have done it alone,
because he knew that Chicago yard was massive and had
a lot of security, and he was not confident that
we would be able to make it off of the
(39:30):
train and out of the yard without getting arrested. We
jumped off there like the train didn't even stop. It
slowed to like a couple miles an hour at one point,
and we just kind of jumped off.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
They hitched a ride with a friend up to Chicago,
and Marcus spent Christmas with his family. Even though he
spent six months floating twelve hundred miles down the Mississippi
and rode eight hundred miles in a box car in
the middle of winter to go back to Chicago. Marcus
does not consider himself to be a true train hopper.
He does not want to come off as a poser.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
And so like everything I've talked about even now about
it is sort of from my perspective. And you know,
I'm in no way expert on river travel or boat
building or freight train writing at all.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
But an expert in being terrified of barges.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
Yeah, terrified. I'm good at being terrified.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
A couple of years later, in two thousand and seven,
David would invite Marcus to work on another documentary. Marcus
ended up spending six months in Cambodia documenting a group
of deported Cambodian American street gang members from Los Angeles
who opened Cow Saying, a facility dedicated to helping people
struggling with heroin addiction. So yeah, Marcus for six months
(40:43):
living in the slums of Cambodia with a bunch of
heroin addicts and deported street gang members. The stories are
pretty wild. To this day, neither documentary has been finished.
(41:04):
In twenty twelve, Bill and Turner, along with their other
brother Alex, and a friend, did their own trip down
the Mississippi River from their hometown in Ohio all the
way down to their new home in New Orleans. The
stories of this trip are absolutely insane. It's incredible. In fact,
they made a documentary about it that I highly recommend.
It's called River. In talking with Bill and Turner about
(41:24):
this trip, we discussed the difference between going on an
adventure solo or with other people.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
I'd much rather share the journey. You know, when you
have a common experience, when you have you know a
language that you all speak, and you can look at
something that's happening across the room, across the water, across
the street, and y'all don't need to say anything.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
You just sort of poke each other.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
And you're just like, you know why whatever is happening
is funny, Like that's as it's not as fun for me.
For me, it's not as fun if you're just sitting
there by yourself being like man, I wish he In
was here so that because he would know why that's funny.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
When reminiscing on the first part of their river trip,
the leisure cruise portion floating down the Ohio River before
it met the Mississippi, Bill had this to say.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
I felt very unbound and and sort of and free.
Really for the first time in my life, I felt
I felt no attachment or need to reach out to
(42:42):
anybody or I didn't feel like beholden to anything or
any one, and I was really just, you know, sort
of a person in the world, moving moving through.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Do you think you were able to have that feeling
because you're with three very close, sumportant people.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
For sure? For sure, because we were we were really bonding,
We were very close as crud as young guys can be.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
It was.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
It was a very full hearted experience. And then what happened, Well,
we turned onto the Mississippi. It was no joke. We
as soon as we turned it was absolute, absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Turner, of course, has a different perspective and a pretty
solid case for going on a solo mission.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
To go on a journey, to go through trials with
somebody else as a real proving ground of a relationship,
and that either grows the relationship or breaks it. You know,
there's no just sort of acquiescence or like, well, you know,
we're just kind of the same as we were before.
You go through some shit when you spend time with people,
like when you know, throwing yourself at the world, all
(43:50):
of your fears are exposed, all your vulnerabilities. That can
be really powerful shit with people you love and trust.
You know, it could be the beginning of something, the
end of something, but it's always something. And then the
ones by myself, I feel like are similar in a
way because you know, I'm a different person on the
other side of them. I would say that I usually
(44:11):
set out with an intention, and that intention either includes
someone else or is open.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
To meeting others.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Sometimes I just needed to go off and be fucking
weird by myself and let my brain untangle itself for
a while, you know, Like I hitchhiked across the Northwest
up into Saskatchewan once to go hang out with my
dead grandfather who I never met. You know, it's really
(44:39):
long distances out there in Montana and Idaho and the Dakotas.
So i'd hitchhike as much as I could and then
hop the trains in the right direction, hope and I'd
get somewhere. But I went to his town and I
went and drank on his grave for a day, and
you know, went through all the records in the local
library and just tried to be there. It didn't really
(45:02):
meet a lot of people up there. I just kind
of wanted to be in that space and that spirit.
Where did this person come from? That's part of me
that I don't know, And how can I find a
connection there? And what am I going through that this
guy was going through that you know, led him to
his dark end. And I came out the other side
of that one changed, you know, I was not the same.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Person, changed in a way that you were expecting, Like
did you kind of know what would happen or was
it just you're just going to go there and see
what happens. I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
I didn't know what would happen. I Uh, it was
just an intention. It's like my my my cousin, who
was my my my exact same age, had had odd
the year before, and I had just started getting into,
you know, making these independent films with my brother, and
I felt like I was in between a couple of
(45:53):
worlds and there was some shit that I wanted to know,
Like there was I knew there was a passage that
needed to happen, and so I just went and just
to be present with those thoughts and try to bring
the past into the present and try to connect it
to some future that I didn't know yet. Just tried
(46:14):
to be open to it, you know. And when I
came home, I started making movies with my brother. And
that was seventeen years ago.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
You know.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
By the time I was a senior in college, the
idea of going on my own adventure was something I
was thinking about constantly. You could call it monkey see,
monkey do. But these upperclassmen that I had been looking
up to for the last few years had really entered
the world in some inspiring ways, and I was getting
anxious for my turn. I didn't know where I wanted
to go or what I wanted to do, but I
(46:49):
really wanted to have the type of experience Turner was describing.
I wanted to go out into the world all on
my own and see what happened. To quote Turner, I
just needed to go off, be fucking weird by myself
and let my brain untangle itself for a while. On
the next episode, the planning, the training, the anticipation, and
(47:11):
the fate of my very own adventure. Special thanks to
Bill Turner and Juice. Be sure to check out the
Ross Brothers movies at rossbros dot Net, and of course,
huge thanks to the Savannah College of Art and Design
for kicking me out of the dorms so I was
able to meet these guys. Uncle Chris is a production
(47:33):
by Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network at iHeart Podcasts.
It's created and hosted by me Ian faff I, wrote, directed, scored,
edited and mixed this episode. The show is executive produced
by Hans Sanhi and Will Ferrell and co produced by
Olivia Aguilar. If you want to see what else I'm
up to. Go to ianfaff dot com or check out
my Instagram. Spring Break nineteen eighty four. Thanks for listening,
Back in the seventies when my dad was in college,
heina buddy of his drove a Jeep CJ from Arkansas
all the way up to Alaska. They parked it and
spent the entire summer hiking and camping throughout the Alaskan wilderness.
I was raised on pictures and stories from their trip
growing up. My dad, an avid fishermen and camper, brought
my sister and I on a lot of fishing and
(00:33):
camping trips, so the idea of going on an adventure,
or at least sleeping in a tent wasn't too foreign
to me. Combine those experiences with a lifetime of hearing
all about the wild escapades of John Herndon, and you
could say that the seed for adventure was planted, but
it would take meeting a few other people to get
that seed to sprout. Towards the end of my freshman
(00:55):
year of college in Savannah, I ended up getting kicked
out of the dorms. It's a story for a whole
other podcast, but the result was that I went from
living in the dorms to living off campus with a
buddy of mine and ended up becoming really good friends
with his roommate a guy named Marcus. Tall, skinny, and unassuming,
he always looked too young for his age. Marcus was
usually the quiet guy at the party, sitting in the
(01:17):
corner with the beer, smoking cigarettes, watching everyone else hang out.
I was a goofball freshman and Marcus was technically a sophomore,
but somehow he managed to go around the curriculum and
was taking all of the senior level film classes. I
think a lot of that had to do with the
fact that he was probably the most talented cinematographer in
the program, But what matters is that he was in
high demand to shoot all of the senior's thesis films.
(01:41):
Thanks to Marcus, I was exposed to the krem de
la creme of my school's film department. I went from
hanging out with fellow freshmen spending the majority of our
time getting high and watching adult swim, to entering a
world full of the most talented, creative, and fun upper
classmen our school had to offer. I was an impressionable
college friend wishman who was all of a sudden spending
every night with the most exciting art school students in Savannah.
(02:05):
I absorbed everything that was happening around me. Not only
the wild and crazy party ethic that this group had,
but also the incredible work ethic that came with a
bottomless pit of creativity. Everyone was always working on projects,
always making things, always painting things, always building things. It
was contagious. The more I became part of the scene,
the more everyone's attitudes and lifestyles started to help shape mine.
(02:29):
At the center of all of it was the Ross brothers.
Bill was a senior and a film major, and Turner
was a junior studying painting. Fast forward twenty some years,
the Ross brothers now work together as filmmakers. They've made
seven feature films, worked with the likes of David Byrne
and Ira Glass, have shown at film festivals all over
the world. They've won numerous awards, including an Independent Spirit
(02:51):
Award for Best Documentary Feature, So you know, they're kind
of a big deal when it comes to independent films.
Their style of filmmaking usually involves them picking a location,
transplanting themselves there, and just existing among the people in
places in that area for you know, like a year
or so, and then they leave and somehow turn the
experience into a movie. It's a style that's constantly evolving,
(03:14):
but it really does represent how these guys exist in
the world. They show up, see what's going on, and
somehow turn it into something awesome that gets rave reviews.
A friend of mine who didn't know who they were
and went to a party that they hosted, described them
as those two brothers who seemed like weird versions of
Matthew McConaughey. I'm sure Bill and Turner would hate hearing that,
(03:35):
but the shoe fits. They're both never ending sources for
wild ideas and crazy stories. First impressions would describe Bill
as the affable party animal and Turner as the intense,
brooding artist, but that doesn't quite cover it. They're both funny, charming,
sometimes intimidating, sometimes dangerous. Oh, I don't know what's the
(03:56):
right word. Scoundrels pirates, cowboys. I don't know. Here's Bill.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The lack of thrilling things that we had to do
growing up, it's like it resulted in looking for something
that would like make you feel anything other than boredom.
Like I remember we'd sneak out in the middle of
the night and we'd Cincinnati was only an hour and
a half away, but we'd go to the Ohio River,
touch the Ohio River, and drive back in time to
(04:23):
get back in bed, so our parents when they woke up,
we would still be there.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
But we could go to school.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
The next day and say that, you know, we touched
the Ohio River overnight, and people be like, what the fuck,
Why the fuck would you do that, you know, and
it's like just to say that you did it. But
that was always like fun and like having a good
story to tell at school the next day. I just
(04:49):
feel like like Turner's stuff was like so much more solitary,
like he was like trying to prove something to himself,
where I just wanted to have fun with my buddies.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
And here's Turner. Anything stand out as like the first
adventure you went on. Yeah, I ran away. I was
like thirteen.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I was tired of the bullshit at my house.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
So I went to my friend Mike's house for a
few days until there was fear of police and military school.
But that was a brief adventure anyway. And then I
used to like to steal cars in the middle of
the night. That was always an adventure because you just
never knew. Yeah, in high school, my buddy and I
set off on bicycles with a gallon of vodka and
(05:34):
some clothes and just rode around Ohio.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
For a week.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
We created fake names for ourselves. His was Tristan Roberts
and mine was Simon Phoenix. The day I turned eighteen,
I flew to Germany with this kid who moved into
my house. He was an exchange student, got kicked out
of his house for not being a good kid, I guess,
and he took me over to Germany and wow, that
was an adventure.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Wait didn't you fall in love with like a German
star or something. It's all coming back to me now.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I did, yeah, very much so, but she was out
of my league, so that didn't have much longevity.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
For the record, I did cry a little further, and
Turner prefers to keep this part of the story mysterious,
but for my own recollection. Apparently there was some paparazzi involved,
and he was featured in some German gossip magazines as
a mysterious dream boy or something. Anyhow, so, yeah, actual adventures.
Let's talk about actual adventures. Let's think about that.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
I started hopping trains and hitchhiking. If you want to
learn something, go out and stand on the side of
the road and have a stranger pick you up. You know,
he'll end up in a new place with a news story.
You know, it's and then it's just like a chain letter.
It's really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
In their early twenties, Turner and friend of ours named
Emos walked the coast from San Francisco down to Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Yeah, we walked out of his apartment in San Francisco
and thirty three days later walked into mine in La
having walked for five hundred some miles and just sleeping
outside kind of strangers type of stuff. That was a
summer in the sun. Man. That was That was really wild.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I don't know that I have the nerve that Turner
does to like be like, well today I'm gonna go
out by myself and jump on a tree. Yeah, I
don't know. I take some real weird stock to just
do that.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
On your own.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
I feel like I need to be motivated by sort
of a common enthusiasm by friends or you know, in
Turner's case, family. You know, if somebody gets a wild hair,
I'm always down for it. But but yeah, left in
my own devices, I'm not. I don't particularly seek that
(07:49):
kind of stuff out, I'll very happily just sit at
home and watch movies.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Bill and Turner grew up in the small town of Sydney, Ohio, so.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
A town of about twenty thousand folks, as far away from.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Art as you could possibly get for any of you
film nerds out there. The movie Gummo takes place an
hour down the road in Xenia, Ohio, so, as you
might imagine, both felt the strong need to escape.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, movies were just like the great escape. Growing up
where we did and wanting to have an artistic life
I think was pretty uh bold. So when you're going
to the video store and you find you know, like
a Fellini movie and they would all be like in
the one dollar bin because nobody was watching them and
(08:34):
people weren't gonna pay a dollar for them, but like
you know, having to kind of hide out to even
watch those, because like, if you're into that kind of stuff,
you're fucking weird and it's not something you bring up
a lot, because you'd get your ass kicked, like, hey, hey, guys,
I just watched this Italian film and my god, and yeah,
(08:54):
and especially like you know, like in a tiny town
like that, when you start watching like a true faux film,
and you've never been outside of you know, a few states.
It's like that's your way of seeing the world, and
so your whole existence opens up and you realize that
the world's a lot bigger place than you know.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Unlike Bill's found escape through movies, Turner felt he needed
to create his own means of escape as a reaction
to the things he didn't like that were all around him.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
I'm still punching up at it, man, it's still the
same shit. It's just angst and dissatisfaction and low ceilings,
small town conservative politics. It was Catholicism.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
For instance.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
I ran the local video store, which also was the
porn store, and so I sold porn to all of
the adults, some of whom were also the guys who
passed the bucket at Catholic church on Sundays. And the
hypocrisy of that was just astounding to me. And just like,
you know, they made us read Huck Finn in school.
(10:00):
You know, that's the first problem. It's like you gave
me a book about running away from home on a
raft and going out to experience the world like it's
in there.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Man. Most people that I know that have gone on
these types of trips or adventures usually stop after their twenties.
Bill and Turner, now in their forties, have managed to
maintain this lifestyle, both professionally but also personally. In June
of twenty twenty two, when Roe v. Wade got overturned
and everyone dug their heels in on which side they
(10:32):
were on politically and began screaming at each other on
TV and online, Turner decided, rather than join the fray,
he would go and see things for himself.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
And so I said, well, I'm just going to hitchhike
across Nebraska, see what the fuck's going on.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
He had a wedding to get to in Colorado, so
he left a week early and flew into Omaha. His
plan was to get to the wedding by hitchhiking.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I may have my own politics and my own view
of the world, but that doesn't mean I'm right, you know,
that doesn't mean I'm a better human being than somebody else.
Somebody else is completely in their own, you know, frame
of reference that's different than mine. Of course they're going
to feel differently. So I wanted to go connect with that,
and a lot of people suspected, well, since he's here,
(11:14):
he must just be one of us, and that's a
bit of a magic trick. And I, unless asked, wouldn't
say otherwise. But I listened a lot and talked. I
got offered a job, you know, I got free meals.
You know, people took care of me. And they were
people who if you were you know, talking back and
(11:34):
forth on Twitter, would be your arch nemesis and you
would say, are the fucking bane of the world. But
they picked me up, they took care of me, they
were kind to people. It's very different politics, and for me,
it's really important to continue to foster that empathic response
so that I don't get dead inside and you know,
(11:54):
like rutted into one way of thinking and being.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Any of these trips backfired on you.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I got, yeah, I got I got rolled by a
one eyed drunk one night in New Mexico, stole my
favorite knife. You know, stuff like that happens. I've definitely
made some mistakes, had some bad encounters, but you know,
by you know, by and large, it's people like to
fear monger with this kind of shit. In the reality
(12:25):
is there are mostly kind people in the world. I
don't go to these places to impose myself. All these
scenarios involve people choosing whether they wish to accept me
into their spaces. Hitchhiking is very much that, you know,
but also walking into a rough neck bar in Wyoming
(12:46):
or in the border Lands, it's like they know you're
a fish out of water, So do they choose to
accept you or not?
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Do you have like a go to move?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I mean, my routine is walking into a bar.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
I got him pretty good at it.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
But uh, but then, yeah, I try to try to
beat polite, try not to impose myself, try not to
take up too much space. And then if somebody wishes
to start discourse with me, I let that go where
it wants to go and follow the energy man, and
more often than not, that goes to the light.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
I asked Bill if he had a similar philosophy about
coming into new places and meeting new people.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
This is probably the difference between Turner and I in
that scenario. It's like, I'm thinking about what everybody else
is thinking. Turner is probably just like, well, I'm sure
they're happy I'm here, got it. Yeah, right, It's just
(13:50):
it's a very different, very different philosophy.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Got it. These were the guys I met as a freshman.
Hanging out with them and all of the people in
their orbit helped me start to see the world differently
and think about the different ways I might want to
experience the world. But it was actually Marcus, the quiet
guy at the party, who got the seed of adventure
ready to sprout. Just a heads up, Bill calls Marcus Juice.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
I was very impressed by that. I didn't know Juice.
I didn't know Juice had that in him, but I
think I think he really started that. And I bet
that probably little fire under Turner to want to like
do that. It's funny. It's it's funny. The least fire
starter or person that we.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Know is.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Has really motivated, like you know, going going down rivers,
hopping on drains. If you had to guess out of
all of us, who would that be. I don't know
that you would have picked Juice at that point.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
But yeah, this is Marcus.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Terrifying all the time to me. I don't know one
else seemed to terrified as me, but I was so terrified.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
So here's how it all started.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
I mean, it all started for me because of Bill
and Turner. Actually they befriended this guy, David Everheart.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
David Everheart is a filmmaker who was at the Savannah
Film Festival in two thousand and three promoting his film
Long Gone. He spent ten years riding the rails making
the film. It's a documentary that dives into hobo and
tramp culture. The movie tells the stories of six different
hobos as they train hop all over America.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
Bill and Turner were huge fans of the movie, and
so they like approached him. Unbeknownst to them, David is
basically he lives his hobo life permanently sort of. David
was like, yeah, I could use a place to stay,
and David ended up crashing at Bill and Turner's house
in Savannah for a while.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
He stayed with us for you know, I want to
say months. Having grown up watching Half Baked and The
Guy on the Couch, I was like really excited to
have our own guy on the couch. I would come
home from class, bring him beer, sit on the couch,
and just like ask him questions for hours. Every night.
We would just sit there and Bill and Ted style
was basically like the guy from the future that came
(16:17):
back and said like here's one way of living, and
you can like jump trains, you can make movies, you
can meet all these people, but you just have to go.
And that's how he got Turner, That's how he got Marcus,
that's how he got me. Its like he just like
opened a door that was like, you don't have to
live like everybody else. There is this other way. He
(16:37):
really laid the groundwork for what we, you know, even
do to this day. I mean, in our new film,
we have a train sequence that wouldn't be there if
it weren't for him.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Maybe a year later, we were moving out to la
and David contacted me to be a DP for his
next documentary, which was about these tramp kids are gutterpunk
kids from Minneapolis who build their own boats out of
whatever they can get their hands on and float down
(17:10):
the Mississippi.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
That's right, the Mighty Mississippi Old Man River, America's artery
two thousand, three hundred and forty miles of winding river,
starting from Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota and flowing all
the way to the Gulf of Mexico through New Orleans.
The Big Muddy carves its way through ten states, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi,
(17:40):
and Louisiana. The Mississippi River is no joke. One hundred
and seventy five million tons of freight are moved down
the Mississippi each year by ships and massive barges. The
water level is constantly changing, with depths ranging from thirty
to two hundred feet, causing the currents to be unpredictable.
These deadly currents and an unforgiving under are responsible for
(18:01):
large amounts of drownings every year. In June of two
thousand and three, Marcus joined a ragtag expedition of gutter
punks who decided to face this treacherous waterway on vessels
made out of plywood, scraps and garbage. Sure it sounds insane,
but to quote mister Mississippi River himself, Mark Twain, you
feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
So yeah, I had just literally just moved to La,
I dropped off my stuff, and then I was on
it for almost six months.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
If you aren't familiar with the term gutter punk or
haven't been around anyone from the hobo, tramp, train hopper scene,
let me describe the esthetic punk style patches, lots of tattoos,
aggressive piercings paired with thrift store and homemade clothes, broken
glasses held together with tape and wire, dreadlocks, mohawks, Everyone
and everything is dirty. If you live in a city,
(18:57):
you've probably seen these types walking around, typically in a group,
and there's usually a dog or two with them. The
adventure began with eighteen voyagers twelve guys and six gals,
all of them somewhere in their twenties, and even though
they'd be fine with the gut or punk label, the
group's look was more subtle. Picture a bunch of grungy
Generation xish, dirty looking slacker types walking around in nondescript
(19:20):
through store clothing.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
I think there was like five boats to begin with,
and I think three of them made it to the end.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Photos that Marcus took on this trip show these bespoke
boats and their captains. Some of the boats are completely
pragmatic in bare bones. Others look like something you'd see
at Burning Man or in a Mad Max movie. Well,
I guess, uh, I guess water World would be more apped.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Let's see, they're made out of plywood. The base of
it is basically like a barge style build is like
a rectangle with the sloped front and back underneath, and
then on top of that you just build any kind
of shanty kind of thing you want, Like Evan. His
was very simple. It was the barge with sort of
bent PVC like a like you would do for like
(20:05):
a greenhouse, a DIY greenhouse with tarp pulled over it.
But Gerty had this sort of very nice like screened
in little cabin like with doors, and he had a
pilot sort of perch on top of it. On the roof.
One guy had pontoons that were just old like those
blue construction barrels for floats, with a deck deck on top.
(20:26):
And that was like it. You know, he would like
live under like a looked like a bed sheet, you know,
tied up into a tent. The most photogenic boat. It's pretty.
It was really amazing. Was he took the shell of
like a I don't know what kind of car. It
was like a Nova or something, some shitty car, but
it was the full frame and that was that that
(20:47):
made the roof of the the boat. So the boat
was like a you know, barge with a car top
on top. And he lived in that and it was
really impressive.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I'd like to add that the words John Denver's play
We're painted onto the side of the car frame. One
of my favorite images is of one of these tiny
plywood boats. It looks like a small shanty hut covered
with junk. There's a cooler, a bicycle, lawn chairs, and
a cartop carrier on top of this thing, and in
the background the Saint Louis arch. This was the third
(21:21):
year that this group had embarked on this voyage, and
they knew what they were doing. It may have looked
like a slipshot operation from the outside, but in actuality
it was a well thought out and planned experience. You know.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
The thing is like as far as the documentary, we
were viewing it as this like you know, epic journey story.
But in their minds this was just like a lifestyle.
So like no one, they didn't seem as too concerned
about destination or you know, making it there. And because
of the nature of the boats, like they just build
(21:54):
a new one for next year. The engines aren't strong
enough to go upstream, and they're not valuable enough to
or anything like that. So I think the original title
of the documentary was supposed to be burn this boat
because at the end they would just set the boat
on fire.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Marcus would spend his days hopping from boat to boat
filming for the documentary.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
The boats that were that the guys maids did great,
but the.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Boats the girls maids sucked.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
The guys that musing a colloquially yeah, the the royal
guys just say the gang. The gang. Their boats fared
really well like, but they.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Were careful because of the size and construction of the boats.
They had to travel at a snail's pace, sometimes only
going a couple of miles a day.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
You know, I think it took us three or four
months just to get to like southern Illinois.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
You know, for the first part of the trip, it
was a pleasure cruise.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
They didn't have money for gas or anything like that really,
so anytime they could they would just float. The thing
that would ruin their boats would be you know, waves,
if it's chop, be their potsomriplywood, so they could easily
like just crack. So they just avoided all of the
bad weather, bad conditions. So when the weather was bad
(23:11):
for us, you know, we just hunker down wherever we
were and then you know, the river goes up and down,
so if it's flooding, there's all kinds of debris like
logs and trees and stuff, which you'll hit if you're
not careful, or hit your propeller on and then you're stuck.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
But once the Mississippi River meets the Ohio River, the
pleasure cruise portion of the voyage is over.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
You know, the northern half of the Mississippi from Minnesota
to Cairo, Illinois, which is where it meets with the Ohio.
The speed of the river is like three miles an
hour or something like that. You could swim. It was
pretty clean, luxurious, and there's shores and little islands and
you know, places you can stop and camp if you want.
As soon as you meet the Ohio, the river becomes
(23:56):
like ten to fifteen miles per hour, which is really fast.
And for these guys' boats, if you miss like the
dock you were trying to get to to go upstream
would be like full engine power to try and get
back up. So you're really like trying to be careful
about all that, and their boats probably couldn't do it.
They're just these big wooden checks on that are floating,
(24:19):
so that's not like they're streamlined or anything.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
And you can't even paddle that.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
No, and there's barges everywhere that like commercial traffic that's
going up and down.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
And it turns out that the scariest thing on the
Mississippi River is a barge. If you've ever seen a
river barge in real life, it's surprising how big they are.
The average river barge is a flat rectangle that's about
forty feet wide two hundred feet long, and is pushed
by a towboat from the rear. Barges are loaded with cargo,
(24:48):
usually shipping containers. The average barge holds around two thousand
tons of cargo at a time. The Mississippi is windy
and these massive barges aren't very maneuverable, so boaters need
to constantly be on the lone out for barges that
might pop around a corner unexpectedly. Barges only travel at
fourty five miles an hour, but like a freight train,
the weight of the barge makes it very hard for
(25:10):
them to stop moving. It takes a mile and a
half for a barge to come to a complete stop.
Along with that, the weight of the barge causes so
much water displacement that its wake can poll boats that
are too close to it underwater. So if you end
up in the way of a barge, there's not much
you can do to stop it from killing you.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
They're having to displace all this water to get upstream
at any kind of speed. All these old timers you'd
meet at bars and restaurants be like, if you get
it within one hundred yards of those things, they'll suck
your boat right under them. And so I was constantly
terrified of the barges, and even at night, you know,
like we put an anchor on shore, dig it into
the sand. There's just been so many days where we're
(25:52):
just hanging out during the day and be like, oh,
the anchor's coming loose. We should reset it, you know.
And so how do you like go to sleep at
night being like that an that I just reset five
times today. I'm just hoping it doesn't need to be
reset all night long. And then we don't just go
floating down the river while I'm asleep and just sucked
under a barge. So I don't think I slept well
like the whole time.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
They could change the title of the movie to Sucked
under a barge.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Yeah, sucked under a marge.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Since Marcus was there to film the boat Riders, he
spent most of his time on a houseboat along with
the director David.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Our boat was constantly breaking down, and I was terrified
all the time. There was like a nineteen fifties houseboat
with like a Chevy engine in it. The constant joke
was that we should have been filming ourselves, trying to
document them, because everything that went wrong went wrong with
our boat. I know there's one time where the engine
had died and I'm freaking out because there's a barge
(26:47):
coming upstream, like maybe a mile away and they can't turn. Really,
I'm driving the boat and I get on our radio
and I'm kind of like trying to use the like
official lingo that you're supposed to use on the radio
that they teach you. It's like southbound pleasure craft to
northbound barge. You know, we are without power or something
(27:08):
like that. But then the radio, of course is also
now not working and the battery's dying, so it's like
intermittent and it was like a you know, terrible comedy
where you know every other word would just be cutting
out and then finally I would hear this captain of
this other ship go like, am I to understand you're
without bound? I was like, yes, please don't kill us,
Like throughway all the lingo stuff, it's just like, we're stuck.
(27:32):
Don't kill us. He's like, I'll do my best. And
then you know, we do whatever we could, paddling just
to try to get us out of the channel, and eventually,
you know, you'd run a ground somewhere and be like,
oh thank god.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
That happened so many times that it is just terrifying
all the time to me. I don't know one else
seemed as terrified as me for that.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
I was so terrified, but you kept you but you
hung in there for six months.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Yeah, I mean, I really it is very romantic the
whole thing, you know. Obviously, like I was terrified at times,
but I was also like, I mean, that's sort of
the point, I guess.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Hanging out on the boats, Marcus began to learn more
and more about hobo culture. Throughout the trip. Different people
would meet up or tag along for days and weeks
at a time, showcasing the complete freedom and agency of
the lifestyle.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Everywhere we'd stop and meet up with their friends or
all other train writers, other tramp kids, and so that
whole world was very much part of this world and
was super fascinating to me. And so I would hear
all their like little stories and their little tips and
tricks and things.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Because he was just there to film the documentary, Marcus
never really felt like a peer amongst the rest of
the boat riders. He always felt like an observer. But
as he got to know them better, he became increasingly
fascinated by their world and the different subcultures that existed
within the train hopping scene.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
There's like hobos, you know, like the old timer guys
who are out there alone, just nomadic travelers, and those
are usually like the older guys. And then there's tramps,
who are sort of the younger people who liked the
lifestyle of living nomadically as well. And then there's like
home bums. Those are the like one the kids who
(29:34):
like were sneakers or something. They're the ones who look
like they're gutterpunks of train riders, but they never leave
their hometown. I guess something like that. We'd go to
these like some meet up or hang out or something
where a lot of them are just kind of either
like alcoholics or you know, drug addicts. There's all those
people as well. But the ones that we were following
(29:55):
on the boats and the people that I knew were
I don't know, all had a very like strong sort
of like ethic about it all. It wasn't so much
fuck everything, you know. It was more like, I like
living this way and believe in dumpster diving because they're
against the cost of food and they choose to live
on the on the move. A couple of them would occasionally,
(30:16):
like they call it, like I forget with it. I
think it was like flying a sign, which was like
where you'd hold up a sign and say like traveling broken, hungry,
you know, like busy panhandling. A couple of them would
do that in an emergency, but they hated the idea
of doing that, and it was a very embarrassing thing
to them. They wouldn't even want to be like interviewed
about it because it's not something that they were proud of.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
But that type of lifestyle requires a certain amount of resourcefulness.
They would scavenge copper by dumpster diving along the way.
The bottoms of their boats would be completely full of electronics, wires,
discarded metal, anything that might have copper in it.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
They'd wait until they had enough to do like a
good haul, a multi day task because you have to
strip all the plastic off all this electrical wire and
then they bring however they had like one hundred and
fifty or two hundred pounds of copper to the recycling
center and exchange it for however much it was at
the time, something that you could get. I think it
was like they'd make it five hundred bucks or something.
(31:12):
I remember a couple of them like left the boats
for like a month because they would go do the
beat harvest, and I think that was in like North
Dakota or something, just like migrant farming where you're put
up and it's just during the harvest for however long
that is, like a month or something, and then you
just save all that money that you made.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Stuff like that. So a lot of integrity in the operation.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Amongst these guys. Yeah, But they weren't like trying to
break any laws at anytime, you know. I mean it
was funny that these handmade boats were all licensed, Like
you have to get the license at the DMP as
a craft. You know, so they had their little number
stickers on the bow.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
I really liked the idea of like this line at
the DMV full of dudes with brand new fishing boats
and jet skis and boats, and then all of a sudden,
all these gutterpunks show up with a bunch of garbage boats.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
They weren't like runaways or something, you know, or they
weren't in trouble with little law or escaping anything. They
just liked the lifestyle of it. And I think linked
to that was the anti consumerism and waste of modern
culture or something like that. But they also weren't like
militant about it, you know, like it wasn't anger based
(32:26):
or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, just more threau, very throwy.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
And we just want to be able to do our
thing kind of. And I'm friends with some of them
still on Instagram, and a couple of them are still
living on a boat.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
At the time Marcus was on his trip, I was
a junior in college and my mind was completely blown
by what he was doing. It was two thousand and four,
so that means it's pre Instagram, pre Facebook, pre smartphones.
No one was getting daily updates. There were no posts
for Marcus, he wasn't taking any selfies of himself on
the boats in front of the Saint Louis Ar. Instead,
(33:01):
every couple of months somebody would get a call from
Marcus or a postcard during an email. All I really
knew is that he was going down the Mississippi on
boats that looked like tree Fords, and it got my
imagination going wild. It really made me just want to
get out there and do something as cool as that
as soon as possible.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
By the time we got to Natchez, just before Baton Rouge,
it was cold, it was almost Christmas time, and I
didn't know how much longer it would take.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Against the end, after six months on the river, Marcus
decided it was time to go home.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
And another guy who was on the who had been
on the boats for a while, his name was Seth.
He was also getting off to head home for Christmas,
and so he was going back up to the Chicago area.
And he was a freight train writer, and so I
had spent six months listening to stories about freight train writing,
and so I was very like hopeful to get to
(33:58):
try it myself.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Marcus knew that he wanted his first train hopping experience
to be with someone who knew what they were doing.
He had heard a lot of stories about train hopping
and had paid attention to all the ways it could
go wrong.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
For instance, well, how do you know where the train's going.
She can't jump off unless it stops. How do you
know if it's going to stop? And when it does stop,
how do you know that the car you're on is
not getting left out?
Speaker 1 (34:20):
There was a woman who fell asleep while riding a
train through Idaho. When she woke up, the train car
she was riding in had been disconnected from the rest
of the train.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
They're just delivering an empty railcar so that farmer whenever
they get their grain can fill up that car, and
then they call the rail yard to come pick up
their full car to ship it. And so she's literally
like hundreds and hundreds of miles from like anywhere. It's
just the middle of nowhere, and it's like summer and hot,
and she doesn't have enough water. She just like didn't
know what she was gonna do. It's just like started walking.
(34:51):
You know, I didn't know about cardboard.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
If you're train hopping in winter, you need to bring
cardboard with you. To insulate your body from the steel
box car, otherwise you will fe to death.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
And then there's also the dangers of like dehydration if
you're stuck on a train, because sometimes they'll keep going
for days, so you need to know how long you're
going to be on it.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
You need to make sure that the doors don't close
on you.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Multiple people told me about being in like a box
car and like the doors slip shut and latched, and
they were stuck inside of a box car going through
the desert, so it was like basically an oven. They
had no choice but to like bang on it and
yell when they would train would slow down, hopefully someone
would hear that there was a person inside. You know,
there's a thing like when they pick up a railroad
spike off the ground, you like keep an eye out
(35:34):
for them amongst the gravel and the railroad tracks, and
you just keep one on you and you use the
spike to spike the box car door so it doesn't
do that, which is also something you would not known about,
or it wouldn't have occurred to me.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
He even knew someone who's legged be torn off while
trying to jump onto a moving train.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
You know, the train cars wider than the wheels, Like
if you slip, you'll naturally swing, your legs will swing
under the train, and you know, it's just super dangerous.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
According to the Federal Rail Administration, there is an annual
average of four hundred and thirty illegal train riding related deaths,
and the numbers increase each year.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Not everyone who's writing trains, or probably the majority, are
not on some romantic trip. They're usually like running for something,
or homeless, or have mental health issues or substance abuse issues.
So I think there's a lot more danger than there
is not danger.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Train hopping is exciting, it's romantic, and it's deadly. It's
not something to be taken lightly. So once Marcus had
a guide with the proper amount of train hopping experience,
he was ready to take his first train home from
New Orleans back to Chicago for Christmas.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
I went with him, and we went to the train
yard and caught a train going north. The middle of
winter by the time we got north and freezing cold,
and I had a duffel bag and a sleeping bag
and a puppy. I found a dog while we were
on the boats.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
That's right, Marcus's first time ever, train hopping was also
with his adorable little black lab mutt named Yazoo that
he found on the Yazoo River near Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
And so I had this puppy not ideal. I guess
it was like having a baby where you're like, you
don't want it to cry at a certain time because, like,
you know, it's illegal to be in the train yard.
It's trespassing, so you're, you know, there's at least a
period of time where you're trying to be very stealthy
to not get caught. And so I just hope this
puppy wouldn't like wine or park or something, and also
(37:46):
hoped that I could sleep without it falling off the train,
so I would just stuff it down on the bottom
my slipping bag. But yeah, I end up being okay.
It was just very a very cold, very cold ride.
We got off at one point on our train and
we were in like central Illinois. We just needed to
get warm and get some food, so we like got
(38:06):
off because the train stopped and we were walking along
the road and this pickup truck pulls up and it's
this guy who's like, you know, were you guys just
down that train, and you know, I just let Seth talk,
and Seth was like maybe he ended up being a
super He was. He was like an engineer, one of
the engineers on that train. And so he like took
us into town and bought us a meal at a
(38:28):
diner that was open. It was like the middle of
the night, and he was like where you'll headed, And
we're like, we're trying to get near Chicago. And he's like, well,
you're gonna want to get back on that same train
because they don't stop here, but you know once a
week or something like that. Normally they just fly through.
So like we didn't know that, and if he hadn't
(38:49):
told us, you know, we would have been stuck there
for however long a week. So he ended up driving
us back to the train yard, like into the train yard.
He stopped at the like their little cont troll tower
to check the list of cars to find us which
train car would actually be going all the way to
where we were going, and then he drove us down
the line of the train to find the number of
(39:09):
that car and let us get on there. But you
made it, made it, yeah, made it to Champagne Orbana.
We decided not to go to Chicago, because this is
an example of why I would have done it alone,
because he knew that Chicago yard was massive and had
a lot of security, and he was not confident that
we would be able to make it off of the
(39:30):
train and out of the yard without getting arrested. We
jumped off there like the train didn't even stop. It
slowed to like a couple miles an hour at one point,
and we just kind of jumped off.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
They hitched a ride with a friend up to Chicago,
and Marcus spent Christmas with his family. Even though he
spent six months floating twelve hundred miles down the Mississippi
and rode eight hundred miles in a box car in
the middle of winter to go back to Chicago. Marcus
does not consider himself to be a true train hopper.
He does not want to come off as a poser.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
And so like everything I've talked about even now about
it is sort of from my perspective. And you know,
I'm in no way expert on river travel or boat
building or freight train writing at all.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
But an expert in being terrified of barges.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
Yeah, terrified. I'm good at being terrified.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
A couple of years later, in two thousand and seven,
David would invite Marcus to work on another documentary. Marcus
ended up spending six months in Cambodia documenting a group
of deported Cambodian American street gang members from Los Angeles
who opened Cow Saying, a facility dedicated to helping people
struggling with heroin addiction. So yeah, Marcus for six months
(40:43):
living in the slums of Cambodia with a bunch of
heroin addicts and deported street gang members. The stories are
pretty wild. To this day, neither documentary has been finished.
(41:04):
In twenty twelve, Bill and Turner, along with their other
brother Alex, and a friend, did their own trip down
the Mississippi River from their hometown in Ohio all the
way down to their new home in New Orleans. The
stories of this trip are absolutely insane. It's incredible. In fact,
they made a documentary about it that I highly recommend.
It's called River. In talking with Bill and Turner about
(41:24):
this trip, we discussed the difference between going on an
adventure solo or with other people.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
I'd much rather share the journey. You know, when you
have a common experience, when you have you know a
language that you all speak, and you can look at
something that's happening across the room, across the water, across
the street, and y'all don't need to say anything.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
You just sort of poke each other.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
And you're just like, you know why whatever is happening
is funny, Like that's as it's not as fun for me.
For me, it's not as fun if you're just sitting
there by yourself being like man, I wish he In
was here so that because he would know why that's funny.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
When reminiscing on the first part of their river trip,
the leisure cruise portion floating down the Ohio River before
it met the Mississippi, Bill had this to say.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
I felt very unbound and and sort of and free.
Really for the first time in my life, I felt
I felt no attachment or need to reach out to
(42:42):
anybody or I didn't feel like beholden to anything or
any one, and I was really just, you know, sort
of a person in the world, moving moving through.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Do you think you were able to have that feeling
because you're with three very close, sumportant people.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
For sure? For sure, because we were we were really bonding,
We were very close as crud as young guys can be.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
It was.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
It was a very full hearted experience. And then what happened, Well,
we turned onto the Mississippi. It was no joke. We
as soon as we turned it was absolute, absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Turner, of course, has a different perspective and a pretty
solid case for going on a solo mission.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
To go on a journey, to go through trials with
somebody else as a real proving ground of a relationship,
and that either grows the relationship or breaks it. You know,
there's no just sort of acquiescence or like, well, you know,
we're just kind of the same as we were before.
You go through some shit when you spend time with people,
like when you know, throwing yourself at the world, all
(43:50):
of your fears are exposed, all your vulnerabilities. That can
be really powerful shit with people you love and trust.
You know, it could be the beginning of something, the
end of something, but it's always something. And then the
ones by myself, I feel like are similar in a
way because you know, I'm a different person on the
other side of them. I would say that I usually
(44:11):
set out with an intention, and that intention either includes
someone else or is open.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
To meeting others.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Sometimes I just needed to go off and be fucking
weird by myself and let my brain untangle itself for
a while, you know, Like I hitchhiked across the Northwest
up into Saskatchewan once to go hang out with my
dead grandfather who I never met. You know, it's really
(44:39):
long distances out there in Montana and Idaho and the Dakotas.
So i'd hitchhike as much as I could and then
hop the trains in the right direction, hope and I'd
get somewhere. But I went to his town and I
went and drank on his grave for a day, and
you know, went through all the records in the local
library and just tried to be there. It didn't really
(45:02):
meet a lot of people up there. I just kind
of wanted to be in that space and that spirit.
Where did this person come from? That's part of me
that I don't know, And how can I find a
connection there? And what am I going through that this
guy was going through that you know, led him to
his dark end. And I came out the other side
of that one changed, you know, I was not the same.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Person, changed in a way that you were expecting, Like
did you kind of know what would happen or was
it just you're just going to go there and see
what happens. I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
I didn't know what would happen. I Uh, it was
just an intention. It's like my my my cousin, who
was my my my exact same age, had had odd
the year before, and I had just started getting into,
you know, making these independent films with my brother, and
I felt like I was in between a couple of
(45:53):
worlds and there was some shit that I wanted to know,
Like there was I knew there was a passage that
needed to happen, and so I just went and just
to be present with those thoughts and try to bring
the past into the present and try to connect it
to some future that I didn't know yet. Just tried
(46:14):
to be open to it, you know. And when I
came home, I started making movies with my brother. And
that was seventeen years ago.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
You know.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
By the time I was a senior in college, the
idea of going on my own adventure was something I
was thinking about constantly. You could call it monkey see,
monkey do. But these upperclassmen that I had been looking
up to for the last few years had really entered
the world in some inspiring ways, and I was getting
anxious for my turn. I didn't know where I wanted
to go or what I wanted to do, but I
(46:49):
really wanted to have the type of experience Turner was describing.
I wanted to go out into the world all on
my own and see what happened. To quote Turner, I
just needed to go off, be fucking weird by myself
and let my brain untangle itself for a while. On
the next episode, the planning, the training, the anticipation, and
(47:11):
the fate of my very own adventure. Special thanks to
Bill Turner and Juice. Be sure to check out the
Ross Brothers movies at rossbros dot Net, and of course,
huge thanks to the Savannah College of Art and Design
for kicking me out of the dorms so I was
able to meet these guys. Uncle Chris is a production
(47:33):
by Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network at iHeart Podcasts.
It's created and hosted by me Ian faff I, wrote, directed, scored,
edited and mixed this episode. The show is executive produced
by Hans Sanhi and Will Ferrell and co produced by
Olivia Aguilar. If you want to see what else I'm
up to. Go to ianfaff dot com or check out
my Instagram. Spring Break nineteen eighty four. Thanks for listening,
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