“Setting Off”

It began in Santa Barbara, California, in August of 1971.  With friends Mike and Steve, I was off to ride freight trains to the Pacific Northwest.   While we lived in Los Angeles, we knew we mustn’t catch our first train there.  Mike had learned from previous experience that, with its railroad police, the massive rail yard of Los Angeles was too risky of a place to hop onto a train.  It would be safer to get on in the small coastal city to the north, where the freights always stopped and there were only two directions they could possibly go – north or south.   

But first we had to get to Santa Barbara, which meant hitching a ride from our homes in the San Fernando Valley.  This tied in perfectly with the cover story we had told our parents, which was that we were hitchhiking up to Santa Clara, where I was attending college, to visit friends.  Only nineteen years old and still very much children in our parents’ eyes, we couldn’t very well reveal to them our actual — and potentially dangerous – plans.   Indeed, my father even disapproved of our thumbing, offering to lend us a car so we could drive.  I deferred, telling him that hitchhiking was the whole point of the adventure, and that, because there were three of us, we’d be perfectly safe.  He accepted this with reluctance.

Some context about the era might be helpful.  While technically the 1970s, it was still very much the 1960s, especially when it came to hitchhiking, which was almost as easy as taking a bus, and in many ways, easier.  Back then it was unusual to spot a freeway onramp – or a highway junction with a good shoulder – that didn’t have at least one person sticking out their thumb.   In San Francisco, just past St. Mary’s Cathedral, Gough Street merged onto the “Central Freeway,” a connector route via which one could take US 101 toward San Jose or Interstate 80 across the Bay to Berkeley.  (Damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, this short stretch of freeway no longer exists.)  On the block before Gough turned into those 101 and 80 onramps, there was always at least twenty hitchhikers holding out signs or thumbs — from hippies to rough-looking drifters to long-haired but clean-cut college kids.  You never had to wait there more than a few minutes for a ride. especially if you were headed across the Bay.   Drivers would pull over, roll down the window and shout out “Berkeley,” prompting a run on the car. Filled up and doors closed, the car would pull back into traffic and head onto the freeway, leaving those left out to wait for the next “bus.”    

(Hitchhiking back to Santa Clara one time from this very spot, I was picked up and robbed.  But that’s another story.)

In suburban Encino, the northbound 101 Balboa Boulevard onramp on which we began our journey wasn’t so convenient.   Since there were three of us, we had to wait a while for a driver with the room and the inclination to pull over.  But we eventually got lucky and managed to get up to Santa Barbara in just two rides.  Dropped off where the 101 then ran through downtown as a surface street (and was a hitchhiking mecca like Gough Street in San Francisco), we walked down State Street to the Art Deco train station a few blocks away.   

The three of us had been classmates at the all-boys Catholic high school, Crespi Carmelite.  We all lived in Encino neighborhoods that, once middle-class, are now among LA’s toniest.   Alphabetical seating meant that, with last names that began with “BL” and “BO,” Mike and I sat next to each other in every class as freshmen and quickly became best friends.  We were both children of the film business.  My dad was a sound editor.  Mike’s was a screenwriter who would soon pen an iconic bestselling novel.  By junior year, Mike and I were making 8mm movies together and were key members of the drama club.  My connection with Steve went back to elementary school and Boy Scouts.  He was the eldest of eight children.   His dad was an engineer.   In senior year, his house burned down from an electrical fire.  While it was rebuilt, his family lived in a motel on Sepulveda Boulevard in deep Van Nuys.   Unlike me, Steve was an athlete who played football and ran track.  But while our high school paths went in different directions, our grade school bond held fast and we remained friends.  When, come Christmas of senior year, Mike proposed that he and I go camping in Yosemite, I suggested we invite Steve to join us.  That mishap-filled but resoundingly fun trip made us a trio and had us resolving to go on more adventures together.   The previous Christmas we had gone to Death Valley.  And now it was freight trains.

Riding freights was Mike’s idea… and a typical one at that.  The summer of 1969 he had gone on a crazy cross-country adventure, the primary goal of which was to be at Cape Canaveral for the launch of Apollo 11.  He and his companion – an older friend from another school – succeeded in this, but were also caught by police sneaking into a restricted area to get a closer view.  If ever there was a stunt that defined Mike, this was one.  When he got a notion in his head, he’d obsessively pursue it with little thought to illegality, danger or ramification.    This unique combination of fearless and foolhardy defined him.

The previous summer Mike had ridden freights with the same friend.  As such he was not only the instigator of our trip, but the expert upon whom neophytes Steve and I were dependent.  It was one thing to get onto a train, it was another to learn where it was going.  Rail workers were knowledgeable and could be helpful, but there was a risk to that.  The preferred method was to ask the hobos who rode the freights on a daily basis.  It there was a book, they had learned every trick in it. Needless to say, the people to be avoided were the “bulls,” i.e. the railroad police, whose job was to keep riders off the trains and arrest them if necessary. 

At Mike’s urging, we were traveling super light – nothing but the clothes on our backs and a sleeping bag.  No toiletries, no water bottle, no personal items, not even a toothbrush.  If Mike had learned anything on his previous experience, it was that, climbing in and out of box cars or running to get onto a moving train, you couldn’t be bogged down with luggage. 

When we arrived at the Santa Barbara station, there was a freight train parked there, its long of line of cars disappearing around a bend to the south.   While its engines were pointed north, there was no indication it was actually headed that way, or when it might depart.   We walked down the line hoping to find a hobo or worker with information.   We soon came across two relatively clean-cut young men like ourselves sitting in a nook in the bushes that grew along the track.   They had learned from a hobo that this train was heading north and was supposed to leave soon.  We consequently sat down and joined them for the wait.  Phil was tall and stocky.  Short and slim, Jay was his exact opposite.  Starting their senior year of college in the fall, they had hitchhiked from their home in St. Louis and were headed to Portland, where a friend lived.    As this would be their first time hopping a freight, they had a certain apprehension and were pleased to learn that Mike had experience.  Given the strength in numbers, there was an unspoken agreement that we’d ride this train together. 

Needless to say, an empty open box car is the preferred berth on a freight.  The only trouble with this train was that there weren’t any.  Every box car was closed and locked up tight.  Having walked the length of the train, Phil and Jay could attest to this.  We discussed this problem and decided that our only alternative was to climb aboard one of the piggyback flat cars.   Designed to carry two semi-truck trailers, these were flat cars with equipment that held down the trailer tires and landing gear.  We had our choice of several that were resting a few feet from our waiting place.

We didn’t have to wait long.  After about thirty minutes, a jolt coursed through the cars as the engine, which was about ten cars up, started pulling.  We jumped up and climbed onto the nearest piggyback, instinctively crowding around the one of the semi’s tires in a futile attempt to not be seen.  In a box car, we could have hidden.  On this piggyback we were visible to the world.   And since the train was taking us right through the station, we were afraid we’d be spotted, ordered off, or worse, arrested.  Our fears proved to be unfounded.  As the train crept past the small terminal, no one paid us the slightest attention. Once we were clear, I not only relaxed, but was filled with euphoria.   I was actually riding a freight train!  

To describe this first ride as exhilarating would be a vast understatement.  I can’t recall another time where I’ve been so wide-eyed and excited, so incredibly grateful to be alive and having an experience.   The piggyback turned out to be the freight equivalent of a glass doomed passenger car, affording a virtual 360° view.   Yes, one was exposed to the wind generated at 60 mph, but this was California in the summer and hardly unpleasant.  And if the wind got too much, one could find shelter behind the truck tires.

We were passing through an especially scenic part of California.  Ten or so miles north of Santa Barbara, the tracks – paralleling highway 101 — run atop bluffs right above the ocean.  And while cars and trucks on the 101 are forced to turn inland at Gaviota, the railroad continues straight up the coast of the rugged Lompoc peninsula, going right through the middle of Vandenberg Air Force Base, from which satellites were launched and ICBMs tested.  We were thus soon amazed to find ourselves rolling by rocket launch pads and blockhouses.  Incredulous that the military allowed such passage through such a high security area, we kept expecting to be spotted and for military police to swoop in and nab us.  Not only did that never happen, we didn’t see a single person the whole time we were on the base.  

It was around four or five o’clock afternoon when the train pulled into San Luis Obispo and slowed to a stop.  The position of our piggyback car in the line meant that it came to a halt smack dab in the center in the passenger station, leaving us in full view of everyone there.  If ever there was a time we’d be caught, this was it.  We sat nervously, wishing we’d somehow become invisible.  We might as well have been. Again, astoundingly, no one cared a dot that we were there.  When the train started moving again, we found ourselves waving to people as we pulled out of the station.   As some waved back, I was sure they were doing so with admiration and envy.  Perched on that piggyback car with my friends, I was living a kind of American Dream.  Freight riding was proving to be a thoroughly positive adventure.  Little did I know what was waiting for us a few miles up the tracks…