Tales Of The Lakota
Queen-The Time Navajo Jack Caught The Westbound Freight
By Seth Garth
Hi, Ace of Diamonds here, my on the bum moniker, real
name Jim Mahoney. I just got the word a few days ago that the near-legendary master
hobo Navajo Jack (sorry, never knew his last name, or his real last name the
reason which will become obvious below) had caught the West-bound train. That
is hobo-bum-tramp speak for passing away, dying. How I know that expression I
gathered from first- hand experience when I was on the bum back in the 1970s
after my first divorce which got a big
hand from my drug and money problems
which the “ex” couldn’t deal with any longer after I spent the mortgage payment
one month on an few ounces of nose candy, of sweet cousin cocaine and she threw
me out or I took off depending at this far remove on whose story you want to
believe. At the time we were living in Oakland out in California (funny to say
these days because we couldn’t afford upscale San Francisco and now Oakland is
getting beyond reach for the same kind of people as us back then). I was also
in hock to about fifteen other people so I decided to scram, to head out on the
road, to go underground really, to go to a place where repo men, dunners and a
couple of guys with turned up out of joint noses who worked from a drug dealer
I was in hock to big time, and the United States Post Office couldn’t find me
with the three dollars in my pocket and a green small backpack with all my
worldly possessions in it.
Yeah, the big idea was to go to a place where nobody
cared about I.D, about what your past was about or your last address. Of course
never having been on the bum before I wasn’t sure where to go. That is not
exactly right I had been thrown out of the family house a few times as a young
kid when my mother couldn’t handle what she called “one more disgrace” but that
was kid’s stuff. Then I would go to the church for refuge but having lost the
faith, having lapsed as they say in the Catholic Church that was the last place
I wanted to go, especially in unknown California. I headed to the Sallies, to
the Salvation Army where if you gave them a “story” they would put you up for a
few days. That is exactly what I did once I saw that almost any hard luck story
would do. They just wanted a story to cover themselves that you would go the
straight and narrow, be contrite. At least while you were under their
protection. So I headed to the Mission District, told my story and got my three
days and three squares.
That is where I first met
Boston Brownie whose first name I do know but will keep quiet about just in
case anybody is looking for him for any reason. Still despite time and sunnier
days I still remember the rules. Most of which he taught me that first Sally
experience. Brownie had confused me when he introduced himself since I thought
he was from Boston although he was really from Albany and was using Boston as a
cover. I had told him that I was from Riverdale not far from Boston and he told
he had slept near the Sudbury River not far from my growing up home one time
when he was East. That was the night he told me never tell to say where you
were really from, or your name, since you never knew who might cut your throat
for that information, meaning if somebody was looking for you they would have a
source to go to. I went by the moniker Vegas Vick until one night out in a
jungle camp south of Westminster in Southern California while playing five-card
stud with Saw Mill Jefferson I kept drawing the Ace of Diamonds and thereafter
was christened Ace of Diamonds.
In any case after our stay,
my stay was up at the Sallies me and Brownie decided or rather he decided and I
went along to hit the road. By the way it was Brownie who clued me in to the fact
that at the Sallies as long as you were sober, or appeared sober, could get
extensions of your stay especially if you had an earnest story and demeanor.
(When I found those “later and sunnier times” anytime, now even, the Sallies
sent a request for donations I would ante up so there is some kind of equity in
this transaction between us even if they are unaware of the connection.) I
wound up staying about two week, kept sober, got some day labor money and paid
close attention when Brownie would tell me various hustles like where to get
free lunches on the church soup line circuit, some clothes beyond my crusted
old stuff and how to hit the church social welfare circuit to get five, ten,
twenty dollars to “get on your feet” with a half decent sob story.
I didn’t have to embellish
mine much since that divorce, the drugs and a general line of patter about a
new start got me over the line. The only thing that Brownie yelled at me about
was that day labor work which he said was beneath his dignity, his dignity as a
hobo. That was when he gave me the word on the differences, recognized
differences among the road brethren, between the low-level bum who basically
refused to work living almost exclusively on hand-outs, the tramp who would
work any kind of job from dishwasher to fruit-picker mainly to keep himself in
wine and cigarettes and the kings of the hill, the hoboes who kept the hobo
jungles in order and who only worked when there was some worthwhile job, not
cheapjack day labor. Anybody, or almost anybody, was welcome at least for a
while in any hobo camp but that hierarchy as I would come to see definitely
existed.
I had read Jack Kerouac’s On The Road as a younger man and so I
was kind of thrilled that we would be heading out on what I thought was the
hitchhike road. Maybe meet some females looking for male companionship, maybe
not. (The curse of the hitchhike road then whenever I chanced to travel that
way when too far from the freight tracks was not the later mass murderer
roaming the highways looking for easy victims but what we called the “perverts”
guys who were cruising looking for other guys, homosexuals, who if you said no
would dump you off the side of the road like I was one time out in Winnemucca
in the Nevadas.) That hitchhike stuff was crazy Brownie laughed the only way to
travel was on the freights where you could make better time avoid lots of road
hassle and local on the look-out cops (although overall the railroad bulls,
cops were more of a hassle than any civilian cops except when trying to sleep
in their parks or places like that.) Brownie’s plan was to head south since
this was late September when we started and as you headed East if you went
through the Rockies you could run into snow and cold weather trouble as early
as early October. We went south to L.A.
on a Union Pacific spur then headed East on the grand old Southern Pacific.
That first trip out I would have bet everything I had that hitchhiking was
better but I will admit Brownie was right that to get where you are going that
freight system is the way to go.
As I have already mentioned
along the various railroad tracks that crisscross the country there are hobo
camps, jungles, where the brethren can find kindred, a safe flop and a not fit
for everybody meal at least. The camp at Gallup, New Mexico was where I met the
legendary Navajo Jack who Brownie kept telling me about and hoped would be at
Gallup when we arrived. Naturally the stories about so-called legendary guys on
the road center on survival prowess, beating back the bulls and cops and the ability
to jump any freight that comes your way. Nothing big by real world standards
but big in that world. Navajo had that reputation but also one as a guy who
would not think twice about cutting another guy if he crossed him or crossed
some young kid (more likely tried to rape the kid) or crossed some friend. But
mainly the legend was about his ability to run the rails, to see that mystical
starlight on the rails. When I did get to meet him I was all ears to what he
had to say. (Brownie and he had traveled together when both were younger, when
Navajo was working the freights trying to get out of the fucking Dakotas and
that reservation life.)
But enough about me and my
travels which in the hobo-tramp-bum road book were rather short (even including
the hitchhike trail) since once I headed East that last time and settled in
Boston for real and opened up a small print shop, got remarried and took on
those sunnier days I went off the road. Navajo never did as I would hear
occasionally from Brownie (when he finally went off the road after almost
getting a leg severed trying to jump a freight that was moving too fast for
him).
This time that I found out
about Navajo Jack’s demise I had run into
Boston Brownie in the Boston Common as I occasionally do when I am downtown for
some reason and noticed that he was sitting on a bench that I have seen him sit
on a million times over the years. Since the days when he stopped trying to
catch freight trains because he just couldn’t do it anymore. (I had given up
that mode of transportation many years before that and had gone back to the
nine to five grind which proved easier than being on the bum-most hobos, bums,
tramps would disagree and who is to fault them.) Sometimes I would stop and
give him a ten-er or whatever I had in my pocket and talk for a while. Sometime
not either because I was in that nine to five rush or because he was in his
cups, his high wino heaven moment.
That day though Brownie was
coherent, and I had money in my pocket, so I sat down next to him and talked a
bit. That is when he mentioned that he had heard from somebody else that Navajo
had passed away, hell, some things, some terms die hard, had caught that
West-bound train. Brownie didn’t know exactly how Jack ended although it was on
the bum, on the road since the party who informed Brownie said Navajo had
passed some place in Illinois on the Lakota Queen and had been found one
morning face down a short distance from the tracks near a hobo “jungle” and
somebody had called the coppers to get him out of there. (“Hobo jungle” a place
usually a short distance from the side of a railroad track, or under a bridge,
along a river bank if there no train tracks where the travelling people as they
say in Ireland can find kindred, find some food, some hellbroth stew usually no
culinary expert could cook up, some
warmth of the eternal fire some protection of sorts from railroad “bull,”
railroad cops, or local cops as long as they decided not to bust the operation up and, maybe, some
camaraderie although that sometimes could be iffy as I knew from first-hand
experience when old-timers did not welcome young guys into their club.)
Well at least Navajo didn’t
die in his bed, didn’t die in his native South Dakota a place from which he was
always running away from. Died running the Lakota Queen which is the name Navajo
gave to every train he ever hopped a ride whether it was the Washington and
Ohio, Union Pacific or Southern Pacific. Needless to say it was never an Amtrak
passenger train every true hobo scorned out of hand. That running away
something that I could relate too then, maybe now too on full moon nights when I
get a craving for being on the road, for being free from the nine to five drag
that I would bitch and moan to Brownie about when he was not in his cups. The
times I talked to Navajo we would always start with -where you running away
from this time. Funny Navajo didn’t even want to carry his name, his traditions
at a time when I knew him American Indians were becoming “Native Americans” and
later “Indigenous peoples” for despite his moniker he was half Lakota, half
white if you can fathom that.
Yeah Navajo Jack was Lakota
Sioux and I think he said Welsh, but he hated that former fact, hated that he
had grown up on a dingy South Dakota reservation just as I had grown up in that
Riverdale mill town about forty miles west of Boston. Told me he had tried out
various names Hopi Hank, Raging Apache and the like but after going through
Navajo country somebody had tagged him with the name and it stuck. Funny though
from the first day, or rather night I met him out in Gallup, New Mexico, out at
the hobo jungle right outside of town not far from the Southern Pacific tracks
he called every train the Lakota Queen, so who knows what was going through his
mind at any given time about running away from his past. A lot of guys had
names for the freights, usually after some love that had faded long ago or had
been run away from and regretted. I always thought Navajo was running the same
thoughts in his head when he rode every train west or east. Some squaw his
term, some Phoebe Snow we called it around some flame-flickered campfire.
Navajo was maybe ten,
fifteen years older than I was. Had been on the bum, been on the road for maybe
ten years then, had been on that road every since he got out of the service,
out of the Army after hell-hole duty in Vietnam which he said he would never
get over, not about the killing but about the lies the government, the white
man’s government had told him via the recruiting sergeant about what was going
on over there. Made sure he didn’t put down roots anywhere, left no forwarding
address for nothing nowhere the way he said it. I always liked being around Navajo,
he got me out of a few jams, kicked my ass a few times when he let the whiskey
get to him, but always will be in my book one of the royalty of the road, of
the hobo kingdom.
Funny, as I left Brownie
that forlorn day when I found out about Navajo I almost said that he had
“cashed his check.” I stopped myself when Brownie gave me a wicked look and then said, “sorry Navajo that
you wound up catching that West-bound freight.” Brownie smiled as if to say
that he now knew that I would always remember the rules of the road.
