It seemed crazy to undertake a project about hobos without doesn’t some train-hopping.
So, I decided to re-enact the hobo census that John McCook conducted in the 1890’s.
Brett and I ‘rented’ some vintage clothes from a costume shop and hit the rails.
Kitty Joe and Merenda joined us for part of the journey.
We tried several yards around NYC before we were successful.
After fending off guard dogs, and crossing a moat…
We finally found a yard that was easy to catch out of.
Friendly workers in the yard gave us flashlights, water & long timbers to prop a boxcar door open.
We rode in style from there to Buffalo.
Checkin’ for bulls.
Lunch in Buffalo.
A ‘flat bed’ out of Buffalo.
Brett brought his banjo along, which I thought might be cumbersome.
But then again, Brett’s pet rat, Lucy, also joined us for the trip.
A few hobo monikers we spotted along the way…
…the only sign of our fellow travelers so far.
Not much to report for the 2010 McCook census.
‘Somebody’s Gotta Do This’
During our plentiful spare time we started working on our own monikers.
I was still thinking about mine
Brett’s came to him a little more easily.
So I used up all of my oil sticks…
And all of that plentiful free time…
…planning out my Kingbury Run fire drawing.
We walked to the opposite side of Chicago to catch out from a different train yard.
After a run-in with the police, we ended up getting on the wrong train…
…and woke up in East St. Louis.
We had to ride all the way back.
I decided to spend the rest of the day reading a book by Jim Tully, legendary Ohio hobo/author..
Brett just decided to spend the day getting shit-faced.
We finally got a westbound train out of Chicago, bit it was more of a tight squeeze.
Eventually we made it back to Cleveland.
After a few drinks at the Dawg Pound, we were ready to get to work.
Overlaying vintage maps of the city over google maps…
…we were able to figure out a few places we could access the Run through the sewer system.
A noxious mist rose off the highly contaminated Kingsbury Run.
I was literally rowing up Shit Creek
The narrow culvert was actually extremely deep, so I guess I really was in deep shit.
I think I would have rather been surrounded by sharks.
As I continued deeper underground, the culvert gradually got more shallow.
So we put on waders and continued on foot.
The construction of the tunnel varied as we passed beneath different sections of the city.
The area where we did most of the filming…
was directly beneath the 4th precinct police station. Which seemed appropriate.
Stalactites appeared above…
…and an ominous mold grew everywhere above.
Finally we reached the ‘headwaters’, a pipe in the ground too small to enter.
It must have started raining outside because the wastewater started flowing…
…and the water level started to rise really fast, and picked up speed, too.
Soon it was up to our waists, so we decided to get the hell out of there.
I told the rental company I needed the car for business.
But failed to say what my business was...
…or that we were filming a movie in the sewer.
The hotel where we stayed was even less pleased.
Hotel management sent photos to the museum & said we got cement all over the walls and down the drains.
But the manager pronounced ‘cement’ like CEE-MENT (kind of like on the Beverly Hillbillies).
and the museum director mistook her pronunciation of ‘cement’ for ‘semen’.
So it was relayed to me that I was in trouble for spraying semen all over the walls of my hotel.
After the ‘semen’ incident, we found more modest accommodations.
Cleveland was as a hobo’s paradise.
The giant salt piles near the mouth of the Kingsbury Run looked like the Great Rock Candy Mountains.
I decided to do the introduction text for the show on the tracks.
So I could film it from a moving train.
…sort of like a filmstrip or a ticker tape.
A remaining section of the Kingsbury Run as they were preparing to divert it underground, circa 1966.
Kingsbury Run hobos being rounded up before being driven out of town, 1939
One of the shanty towns at Kingsbury Run burned by Eliott Ness, 1939
The same location, 2010
71 years later, people are reclaiming the area as a shanty town.
After the filming was complete, we decided to hit the rails again…
…and made it just around cocktail hour.
Bathroom Break
Kitty Joe, climbing into a gondola to hide from the bulls.
Actually, we got busted three times. All were pretty mild.
But this was the only bust that pulling out a camera seemed reasonable.
Hitchhiking back to the yard after bust.
Kitty Joe’s shoe repair.
Cat nap?
I tried to get the cigarettes for making a cigarette tree for free, but failed.
Doubtful anyone would miss these old railroad spikes, but I turned it into a Rambo mission anyway.
Doubtful anyone would miss these old railroad spikes, but I turned it into a Rambo mission anyway.
We decided to borrow a piece of the train bridge that spans the Kingsbury Run.
It’s one of the only true vestiges of the Run’s history at the time of the shantytown.
Unless you count this guy…
The MOCA staff was eager to help us borrow the municipal property.
I built a giant compass with 360 railroad spikes.
I modeled the lubber of the compass after a brick sewer tunnel or well…
…similar to those found at the headwaters of Kingsbury Run in my search for ‘Lubberland’.
Lubberland is a paradisiacal realm described in an ancient mariner song.
The same song was interpreted into Harry McClintock’s hobo classic ‘The Great Rock Candy Mountains’.
‘Rock Candy’ was harvested from the Rock Candy Mountains a.k.a. the local Cleveland salt piles.
Oh yeah, and some from Home Depot, too.
Naturally, in Lubberland, the Kingsbury Run would flow with whiskey instead of sewage.
Besides, it made a nicer surface for projecting the hobo nickel animation I made
Exhibition Floorplan