Central Pa.’s ‘Dirty Kids’ | PennLive.com
From left to right: ‘Dirty Kids’ Sean, Dante, Gram, and Pat hang out under a bridge in York. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
The secret society of ‘Dirty Kids’ that crisscrosses America and lands in central Pa. Story by John Luciew |
Photos by Emily Kask | For PennLive.com
September 29, 2015
Carlisle, Pa., didn’t figure into any of their plans as they traveled America, coast to coast. Yet as fate would have it, they end up there, nonetheless. And because the accommodations are so good and some of the local population is not only welcoming, but freely offering them money, it’s no wonder Chris and Kelly and their German shepherd, Shadow, end up staying for months. The local visitors’ bureau and the tourism association would be proud, except Chris and Kelly aren’t your typical tourists. They don’t inject much money into the local economy, although they do spend food stamps and live on other people’s donations. There are no hotel stays, either, except for very rare occasions when they meet up with like-minded others, pool their cash and throw down a party of epic proportions. That’s one thing these cash-strapped travelers always seem to find money, along with alcohol and, on occasion, drugs.
Why not live it up? They’re on vacation, after all. A permanent one. And their only agenda is to greet every new day on its own terms and see where the day and the next free ride or kindly cash handout takes them. They are what’s known as “Dirty Kids.” Although at 30, sporting a paunch and balding beneath his ball cap, Chris is no kid. He’s been doing this going on 15 years. Kelly is 24, but Dirty Kids aren’t defined by age, race, income or, even, mode of travel.
During their trek through Carlisle, Chris and Kelly stop to talk to a curious pedestrian on North Hanover Street. Others do double takes at the tie-dyed couple with their dog. They re accustomed to both types of reactions. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
It’s more of a mindset. A way of life. A secret society. One that travels the rails, thumbs cross-country rides with truckers, hikes the highways and dwells in the shadows of cities, large and small, subsisting mostly on the kindness of strangers. At the heart of the Dirty Kid movement is a wholesale rejection of traditional American society and what they see as its consumer-driven capitalism, along with all the stressed-out, money-focused people the system seems to breed.
Dirty Kids deal with all of this by doing precisely the opposite. They have no schedules. Usually no money, either, except for what strangers or, sometimes, their families, give them. They purchase little, aside from food, booze and their travel gear. Some are so hygiene-challenged that pungent body odor announces their presence from several feet away. For transportation, some thumb rides from truckers and hike when they can’t hitch. Some hop the rails, an increasingly dangerous mode of travel that has cost some Dirty Kids their limbs and even their lives. A few cobble together enough money to purchase a van and fuel it with gas, crisscrossing the country to attended counter-culture music festivals, rainbow gatherings, and back-country parties and meet-ups, while seeing every corner of the country, meeting as many of their kind as they can, and soaking up every last experience possible.
In their eyes, the road and the country are free and so are they.
“You can’t really starve to death in America. There’s food everywhere.”
– Chris
“It goes by a lot of names,” explains Chris, a.k.a. “No Man,” speaking from his woods-sheltered campsite just off Hanover Street near the Interstate 81 exchange outside of Carlisle.
“You’ll hear us called Dirty Kids, traveling kids. I prefer the term hitchhiker because that’s my main mode of operation. We also do a lot of just good, old fashion footwork, too.”
Whatever the name, this nomadic lifestyle has kept Chris on the highways and byways of America for 15 years and counting. There have been detours, of course. Stints when he’s off the road, either back home in Florida, or out west where he met Kelly three years ago. Back then, she was a college student in Oregon looking to become a small business owner. In between, Chris has logged tens of thousands of miles. His favorite stops are New Orleans, California and Oregon, where he says it is particularly easy to sign up for food stamps as a migrant and then keep collecting the monthly $180 benefit via debit card, anywhere in the county. To remain on the rolls, one simply calls in from the road every six months, checking in with a caseworker. As long as the recipient doesn’t settle in another state, he or she can keep collecting.
“You can’t really starve to death in America,” declares Chris, who is currently collecting food stamps from Florida. “There’s food everywhere.”
This is the first secret of being a Dirty Kid: There is such a thing as a free lunch.
Chris and Kelly pack up their gear in a shed behind a shuttered restaurant along the Carlisle Pike, just east of the Interstate 81 interchange. They re preparing to move to a more traditional camp site in the woods off Hanover Street in Carlisle. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
Freedom or Nothing Left to Lose?
Janis Joplin once famously sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
For Dirty Kids, it’s a little of both. Many are driven to the road by deep disillusion with what mainstream America has to offer. Namely, going to school, getting a job, having someplace to live, paying bills, and working for decades. Others talk of a growing itch any time they stay in one place too long.
Some are running away from abusive homes or their own boredom with small-town America. Others are explorers, adventure-seekers and experience junkies from upper-middle-class upbringings. Their travels are fully funded by permissive parents. All qualify as Dirty Kids. This secret society has a big tent. In one sentence, what is the “Dirty Kids” lifestyle all about? “It’s about living life to the fullest.” “Do whatever you can to just be happy and be free.” (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
Kelly, a.k.a. “Squirrel,” says she developed the itch back when she was doing all those things society and her upbringing told her to do. But upon meeting Chris and hearing his stories culled from more than a decade on the road, she began thinking that perhaps the conventional American Dream wasn’t for her.
“I was going for small business,” Kelly says of her college goals. “I wasn’t sure at that time — still wouldn’t be sure now — what kind of small business.”
Back then, Chris, who accomplished his first complete cross-country hitch at age 22, was also trying to be conventional. He was married and in college. It was there that he and his wife and Kelly and her boyfriend became close. In time, Kelly became obsessed with the idea of an alternative path, and she ended up falling for Chris, a one-time Grateful Dead follower with a pensive demeanor and penchant for tie-dyed T-shirts. By the time Chris’s marriage imploded, escape beckoned them both.
“My feet would start itching,” explains Chris, who first took to the road to follow his favorite bands and to escape small-town boredom. That was going on two years ago now. Chris and Kelly were headed to Maine when fate and a kindly trucker brings them to Carlisle, pulling into the long line of truck stops in Middlesex Township.
This is the route that brings many Dirty Kids to the midstate. Not choice or planning, but central Pennsylvania’s nexus of interstates and railways.
“Happenstance,” Chris explains. We “got offered a ride, and Carlisle is where that ride brought us. You never quite know where you’re gonna wake up, or what life’s gonna bring your way.”
For Dirty Kids, this is the very definition of freedom. And, “if you don’t like the scenery, you just find some new scenery,” Chris adds. As it turns out, the scenery was just fine in Carlisle. So was the hospitality and the handouts.
To earn money, Chris and Kelly don t overtly beg for donations. Rather, they, like most Dirty Kids, fly a sign emblazoned with a creative message designed to provoke a smile first and a donation second. The Walmart parking lot off Hanover Street in Carlisle proves to be a gold mine for the couple. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
A Carlisle Welcome
No sooner do they arrive at the Carlisle Pike truck stop when Chris notices that some of his Dirty Kid pals are close by. He knows this because most Dirty Kids, despite their low-cost existence, have smartphones and Facebook accounts. They use both to update their travels and meet up with any kindred spirits who happen to be close by. It’s a small world, after all. This is how Chris and Kelly end up spending a blow-out party weekend in a Carlisle Pike motel room. The booze-and-drug-fueled bash includes Chris’s Dirty Kid friends and culminates in a mind-altering, communal LSD trip that has Chris contemplating the meaning of life and his place in the universe. In the end, the LSD only confirms to him that he’s on the right path — one of endless discovery, experience and adventure. This, too, is a Dirty Kid code.
Alas, money for alcohol, drugs and motel rooms doesn’t last when one has no job. Coming down from that party weekend high proves a real bottom for Chris and Kelly. They and their dog end up sleeping in a shed near an odiferous Dumpster out behind a shuttered restaurant along the Carlisle Pike. They awake that Monday morning in July to the hot sun beating down and a fearsome stink rising at their make-shift camp. The retch-inducing odor is a combination of rotted garbage, rancid cooking oil and stale urine. Topping it all, a dead crow lay in the middle of the Dumpster enclosure. This is no picture postcard. Traveling as a Dirty Kid can be hot, smelly and uncomfortable.
It’s time to change the scenery, and quick. But instead of hitching the next truck out of town, Chris checks a smartphone map and notices a Walmart near Interstate 81. There are wooded, public lands nearby where the pair could pitch a tent and have a real campsite. The location is a good 10-mile trek on foot in the heat of the day, but the reward is well worth it. The outskirts of Carlisle off Hanover Street prove both hospitable and profitable. The pair end up putting off their plans of hiking the Appalachian Trial to Maine and stay for nearly two months. The positive Carlisle Karma is on display the very first time the couple walks through town. A uniformed police officer can’t resist the couple’s goodwill ambassador, their German shepherd, Shadow.
Shadow, the pure-bred German shepherd that Chris and Kelly rescued as a starving pup, often acts as a goodwill ambassador for the Dirty Kid couple. Here, Shadow works his charms on a dog-loving Carlisle police officer as they enter the borough for the first time. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
Right in the center of town, a female police officer fawns over the pure-bred dog that Chris and Kelly found as a starving pup in the California desert. Pedestrians take sidelong, skeptical glances at the scruffy, un-showered, tie-dye-clad couple. Chris and Kelly are accustomed to both reactions. Some people scowl and turn away. A few scold them, yelling, “Get a job!” But some, like the police officer and others to come, smile and reach out. Shadow brings out the best in people. Chris and Kelly benefit, too. After all, Dirty Kids need only a few people to smile on them with money to keep going.
The Walmart parking lot within walking distance of their campsite proves a gold mine. It becomes the place where Chris, Kelly and Shadow seek out public smiles and the money that sometimes accompanies those smiles.
“That’s pretty much it,” Chris says. “You get a decent spot for traffic. You write something on a piece of cardboard, stand with it, hold it, and hope for the best.”
Dirty Kids call this “flying a sign.” They usually don’t ask for money outright. Their signs are much cleverer. One might read: “I’m sexy and I’m homeless.” If this strikes just a few people’s fancy, it can bring in $20 per positive reaction.
“We’re looking for a smile,” Chris says, noting that the money is secondary. “We want love. There’s a lot of people out there who have traveled at one point, and you get a lot of love that way from people who are doing the same thing you’re doing, or people who have done the same thing.”
Sometimes, both the love and the money come in unexpectedly large amounts.
“You never know what to expect out there,” Chris adds. “You meet some wonderful, wonderful people who go well above and beyond what you’d ever expect. You get people to take us home for the night, let us use their shower, laundry, and trade some stories for some kindness.”
One kindred spirit in a pickup truck not only gives Chris, Kelly and Shadow a ride and gallons of fresh water, he slips Chris $100. It’s more than enough to replace a broken butane stove and provide beer and groceries for a week or more. They’ve hit the jackpot.
“Absolutely, that’s what the life is all about — meeting good people and getting to relax with some of the finer things in life,” Chris says from his campsite, now brimming with fresh supplies, new equipment and microbrew beer. After yesterday’s big score, they’re taking the day off. Chris will catch up on some reading, and Kelly will mend Shadow’s backpack and brush his hair.
Now settled at a wooded camp site off Hanover Street near the Interstate 81 interchange in Carlisle, Kelly can spruce up her Dirty Kid image but only a little. These counter-culture millennials are known for their often unkempt appearance and sometimes pungent body odor. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
Dirty Kids, Defined
Ask a Dirty Kid what they represent, and you are bound to get as many answers as there are Dirty Kids. No one seems to know exactly how many Dirty Kids there are out there, crisscrossing the United States at any given moment. Even with their social media connections and Facebook pages, Dirty Kids don’t know for sure.
“Oh, there are many,” Chris assures. Thousands? Millions?
“I wouldn’t say a million,” Chris clarifies. “Thousands, and at least a hundred thousand playing with the idea. Right now across the country, there’s 500 kids sitting there at mom and dad’s, getting their first pack together and getting ready to get out and do what we’re doing.”
This secret society of freedom-seekers have shucked off most societal conventions. But their throwback lifestyle doesn’t include throwing away technology.
“You see more and more Dirty Kids who have smart phones or Internet devices,” Chris acknowledges. “We have various Internet groups where we can connect with one another.”
They also insist upon decent camping gear, viable hiking or walking shoes and reliable all-weather clothes. But they only carry what fits in a backpack. Dirty Kids often talk of wanderlust, freedom and being one with nature. They embrace the ethos of the open road, like Woody Guthrie and Jack Kerouac before them. Theirs is a modern, millennial mash-up of everything from the hippy movement to the hobo culture of old. At its root is deep disillusionment with a consumer-driven American culture that they see as resulting in wage-slave jobs, a joyless, stress-laden lifestyle and an endless cycle of work and bill-paying.
“It’s about living life to the fullest. This lifestyle appeals to anyone with a sense of adventure who wants to live in the moment.”
– Chris
They have a name for the society they have forsaken: Babylon. In short, they do not understand us, any more than we understand them.
“It’s about living life to the fullest,” Chris explains. “This lifestyle appeals to anyone with a sense of adventure who wants to live in the moment.”
In Carlisle, Chris, Kelly and Shadow capture the attention of both the police and homeless outreach officials. While the Dirty Kid movement might be a relatively new phenomenon among millennials, the legacy of transients who forsake homes and jobs in order to freely roam America has decades-long roots.
“This is not a new situation,” says Shari Bellish, executive director of Carlisle Cares, an emergency homeless shelter in the borough.
“It is a change in the person that you see who is doing it,” she adds of the young, disaffected Dirty Kids. “That’s what hobos were when they were riding on the trains. Homelessness has changed faces.”
Yet, Dirty Kids don’t consider themselves homeless, and almost never would seek a bed or services at an emergency shelter among local homeless, who they refer to as “home bums.”
Rather, they are nomadic travelers, making their home wherever they happen to be. This includes everything from tent camping and squatting in abandoned buildings to staying with fellow Dirty Kids and supporters found on social media.
“There has always been people like that,” Bellish says. “But maybe it is getting more attention because it is young people. It’s like the Woodstock era for the 21st century.”
By late summer, Carlisle Police Chief Stephen Margeson and his department have become very familiar with Chris, Kelly and Shadow. The department has received its share of calls about the tie-dyed couple and their canine, and officers have interacted with them more than once. In the end, Margeson concludes that they’re harmless.
“They are just meandering across country and across the state in whatever direction they want to go,” the chief says with live-and-let-live acceptance. “They don’t always present the best appearance, but they generally don’t cause harm.”
It’s almost as if Margeson can see the appeal of their blow-with-the-wind lifestyle.
“That’s footloose and fancy free, I’ll tell ya,” he laughs. “It’s more of a young man’s game. They are marching to the beat of their own drummer.”
Passers-by are curious as Kelly and Shadow set up in the Walmart parking lot in Carlisle, preparing to fly a sign for public donations. It takes only a few donors to make a Dirty Kid s day. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
Finding Their Way
Not all Dirty Kids are beckoned by the endless possibilities of the open road. A good many are escaping places where they just don’t fit. Gram, 22, from suburban Harrisburg, and Dante, 18, from Lancaster, fall into this category. Gram, who was identified at birth as female but now identifies as non-binary, neither male nor female, can remember the very moment of realization that conventional society just wasn’t the right fit.
“I was in seventh grade, so I was about 12 years old, and I was just basically going to science class and hearing pretty much every day about what the human race is doing to this planet and how we’re destroying the rainforests and we’re making other species extinct,” Gram recalls.
“When I heard that and when I really understood what society’s doing, I knew I couldn’t really be a part of it.”
For Gram, this has meant becoming a Dirty Kid who travels the country by hopping railcars, a mode of travel that has become decidedly more dangerous due to stricter trespassing enforcement by railroad police and modifications to railcars designed to thwart train-hoppers. Just two generations before, Gram’s 81-year-old grandmother set out on some major travels of her own. She left Italy for the promise of the American Dream, one she still holds fast to even as she hopes against hope that Gram will eventually come around and do the same.
“…[L]ive the authentic life as best you can, and do whatever you can to just be happy and be free.”
– Dante
“I don’t understand it, I really don’t,” the grandmother says, sobbing over the choices of the granddaughter she once knew as Shannon.
The grandmother, who declined to be identified for this story, financially supports Gram and Dante on a meager Social Security income. The grandmother uses her financial aid as a platform to extoll the virtues of getting a job, building a future and having a family, mentioning these bedrock beliefs to Gram at every turn. So far, she can claim some small victories. She has pushed Gram to finish a GED. The goal now is to compel Gram to get a job by threatening to cut off financial support, which pays for a modest apartment and living expenses in Lower Paxton Twp. Gram has grudgingly agreed to get work, but vows to never again submit to covering up the facial tattoos and androgynous sexual identity that mark Gram’s ongoing personal journeys. So far, there has been little progress toward getting a job. And Gram says it is just a matter of time before returning to the rails and their shortcut to true freedom.
Dante is even more rebellious. Asked his American dream, Dante replies tersely: “No America.”
He explains:
“No countries, no borders, nothing. Just everyone living in peace with each other. No class, no class boundaries, no categories, no money. Just everybody trading and living together — mutual aid. Just everybody loving each other and living together in harmony, as one with the animals and plants and with each other. Just harmony and freedom.”
Idealistic? To be sure. But this is the quest that drives many Dirty Kids.
“I guess in the life we live today in this society, the only way to truly kind of try to embrace that is to live for yourself and go out and live the authentic life as best you can, and do whatever you can to just be happy and be free,” Dante says.
Dirty Kids Dante, left, and Gram have better accommodations than most a rented apartment in Lower Paxton Township. Here, they share a private moment in their newly rented home, which Gram s grandmother is paying for. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
‘Lost Kids’
In a melancholy moment, Gram has another definition for Dirty Kids: “We’re just a bunch of lost kids.”
Not a society? A counterculture? A movement?
“No, man,” Dante adds, “We’re just a bunch of kids. I can’t speak for other kids; I can only speak for me. I just wish I could go to Neverland and never grow up. No matter the desperation or the idealism that drives some Dirty Kids, their traveling existence is inherently optimistic. Most operate under the abiding belief that something better is just beyond the next bend in the road. Life becomes the journey, itself. The experience. The moment. And it sure beats what many Dirty Kids leave behind.
“I think some Dirty Kids end up doing it because some choose it, and some it’s just thrust upon them,” Gram says, adding:
“Some kids, you know, run away from home. They’ve had abuse in their history, or they’ve had a terrible family. Some kids have had a great family, and they end up riding the rails because they’re looking for freedom and they can’t stand the world that they see around them. They don’t want to be a part of that society. I mean, it’s so different, but I guess that sense of freedom is what draws us all to the lifestyle.”
Gram is on another journey, as well one that involves a transition to a gender identity that is neither male nor female.
Gram and Dante sport matching tattoos to symbolize their passion for hopping trains as their preferred means of transportation, in keeping with the American hobo code of old. This means of Dirty Kid transportation is both illegal and dangerous. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
‘I’m an Alien’
Gram is far from the child his grandmother so fondly remembers. The Gram of today has facial tattoos. Gram has short, blonde hair, and dresses in denim, sleeveless T-shirts, with work boots and a hat that mimic the railroad worker of old. Gram doesn’t bathe for days on end, and pungent body odor is proof of this. Identified at birth as a female, Gram’s path involves injecting male hormones to complete a transition to a non-binary gender identity. The hormone therapy is subsidized by a clinic. Gram is doing all of this as an exercise in self-fulfillment. This doesn’t stop people from reacting, however. All Dirty Kids get their share of sideways stares and ignorant comments. And Gram, for all the differences on display, can be a lightning rod.
“Uh, it’s shock, I guess,” Gram acknowledges. “Some people are disgusted.”
But everything Gram does has purpose.
Gram prepares to inject a shot of testosterone. Gram, identified at birth as female, identifies as non-binary, but says he feels more masculine than feminine. [Gram prefers to be addressed with he/him pronouns.] (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
“All of my tattoos mean something,” Gram explains. “I have the squatter’s rights symbol on my arm, and I have, like, train tracks, you know.”
Gram would never bother to explain any of this to the critics, the haters, the gawkers. Why bother?
“People really don’t say much,” Gram says. “They kinda just look, and (wonder) ‘wow, what is this?’ They kinda look at us like we’re aliens, which I am an alien so I really don’t have a problem with that.”
This is no metaphor. Gram truly feels not of this world.
“Well, I’m not from this place, and I don’t really fit with the rest of society,” Gram says. “I don’t think that earth is not my home, but I do understand the fact that (people) react that way because it’s just something they’ve never seen before. They look and they see, ‘oh my God, look at these people. Their clothes are falling apart, and they’re sewing their clothes back together. There’re tattoos on their faces!'”
Unfortunately, differences can breed contempt.
“People are scared of us,” Dante adds. “They see us, and they don’t understand. So they fear us, and they hate us.”
One never knows when hate will turn to violence. Dirty Kids describe being screamed at and spat upon. This, they can tolerate. Violence? Not so much.
“You can go to sleep and wake up to getting a boot in your face from some random person that has a job and they see you sleeping there and I guess something about that makes them really angry, so they decide they’re gonna just kick somebody in the head,” Gram says. This is the dark side of being a Dirty Kid. But there are plenty of brighter moments.
Pat, Gram, Dante and Sean take a break from moving out of an apartment on Manor Street in York. Courtesy of the money provided by Gram s grandmother, he and Dante are re-locating to a rented apartment in Lower Paxton Township. This, after the landlord in York expressed disapproval of their lifestyle and asked them to leave. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
In the Moment
Perhaps, one of the best definitions of being a Dirty Kid is the pursuit of an “authentic life.” But what does that really mean? For some, it’s staying in the moment and not knowing — or worrying — what the next second holds in store. It is accepting good fortune when it finds you. It is kismet the joy of meeting a Dirty Kid acquaintance on the road.
It’s all good. And when it is not, Dirty Kids get going on their way to their next adventure.
“It’s all in the moment, you know,” Chris explains. “We’re all family. We kind of look at what we got in our pockets and everybody throws it in a pile, and we all try and figure out what we’re gonna do. Sometimes everybody just sits around and drinks. Sometimes, if other substances are around and everyone is into those substances, we acquire those.”
For Chris and other Dirty Kids, the Holy Grail is LSD, the hallowed hallucinogenic that factored into the blow-out party marking his and Kelly’s arrival in the midstate this past summer.
“If you couldn’t tell by the tie-dye and the Volkswagen (logo), I go the hippie way,” Chris states. “I like the hallucinogens.”
Through the magic of social networking and the kismet of cross-country travel, Chris connects in Carlisle with fellow kindred spirits with whom he traveled to Grateful Dead shows and other jam band concerts years ago. These connections lay their hands on LSD, and when the dust settles, Chris has come to some momentous decisions about his life.
“Trips can go any number of ways,” he says of LSD. “This one ended up being very deep and spiritual. When it was said and done, I had to do a bit of soul-searching. Before this, I was very in my head, debating life. I looked at the clock and was like, ‘I’m 30 years old now. Should I start doing something else?'”
LSD provides the epiphany: It isn’t time for Chris to stop being a Dirty Kid, merely to change his mode of travel. Chris’s new goal is to scrape together enough money to purchase a van, and then pursue his travels as a “rubber tramp” from behind the wheel.
“I don’t want to be out on my feet for another 10 years, but I don’t want to go get an apartment, a job, right at the moment either,” Chris concludes. “I just really want to get some wheels under me.”
If it means going back to Florida, living with his mom and getting a job this winter to amass the necessary cash, so be it. Dirty Kids can abide occasional bouts of employment toward the larger goal of gearing back up and refueling for another stint on the road. As Chris puts it, he’ll “sign up for the corporate machine for a year, live really meager and accumulate money.”
Then, it’s back on the road. All of this comes to Chris in a single drug-induced vision: “Getting a vehicle, starting to follow bands around again, a two-burner stove, and selling grilled cheese sandwiches to hungry hippies,” he says, smiling. It’s his version of Dirty Kid heaven.
Mikey, a traveling kid, poses for a portrait at the Flying J Truck Stop in Carlisle before hitchhiking out to Maine to go visit the woman he loves. Central Pennsylvania s status as a transportation hub brings many Dirty Kids in and out on trucks and trains. However, the midstate is rarely, if ever, their actual destination. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
Riding the Rails
To hear Gram and Dante tell it, there’s no bigger rush than hopping a train and rolling out across the country atop the exhilarating power of a rumbling train engine. It can be the cure for small town blues that lead other young people to heroin as a means of escape. Indeed, some Dirty Kids insist they beat hardcore heroin addictions by replacing the drug with real high of hopping trains. Gram was 15 the first time he rode with friends. To hear Gram spin the suspenseful story, it’s as if it were yesterday: “We weren’t sure if we were caught, or we were getting out of the yard,” Gram says. “There were a lot of us.”
Then, the mighty engine shudders to life, and the long locomotive begins to roll, slowly at first, then amassing both speed and power. For Gram, it’s the profound power of escape.
“It was just exhilarating. It was incredible,” Gram gushes. “We made it. It goes and starts going, and it goes faster and faster. Then you know you’re good. You did this. You’re riding, and you’re leaving one town and going to a next. There really is no other feeling like it. There’s nothing that can compare to that.”
Since most Dirty Kids carry smartphones, they can chart their clandestine train travel via GPS. But just like a hundred years ago, riding the rails really isn’t about the destination. It’s the journey. For Gram, hopping a train is the closest thing to freedom in its most fundamental form.
“You might know if it’s going north or south, or east or west. But sometimes you really don’t have any idea,” Gram says. “To me, it doesn’t really matter unless I have a destination and I know, OK, I need to get to California because I have work there or I need to go here because of this reason. If I’m just riding, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just, you know, no direction.”
Given all this unrestrained affection, it’s tempting to romanticize riding the rails. In today’s reality, the practice is both highly illegal and potentially deadly. Most railroad yards are aggressively guarded by rail company police. And Dirty Kids say rail freight platforms have been redesigned to provide little purchase for illegal human passengers. Norfolk Southern, the dominant rail freight company in Central Pennsylvania, is well acquainted with Dirty Kids and their affection for hopping trains. But they don’t find it romantic at all. Rather, it is trespassing, and the company aggressively polices its property and prosecutes offenders, company spokesman Dave Pidgeon warns.
Harrisburg is a rough city for “Dirty Kids,” Chris and Kelly say. Police are strict, it’s hard to find a place to camp, and train yard employees remain vigilant in catching stray travelers. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
“Railroads have been deeply ingrained in the American culture,” Pidgeon acknowledges. “They fascinate the American people. But railroad property, freight cars, trains — they are private property. Aside from just being illegal, it could cost you your life. You are talking about several thousand tons moving at 60 mph.”
And the death toll is rising. In Pennsylvania alone, 27 people lost their lives trespassing on railroad property in 2014, up from 18 deaths the year before, Pidgeon notes. Through June of this year, 11 more people have been killed.
“You’re seeing an upward trend in that nationally, as well,” he adds of railroad injuries and deaths. Pidgeon can’t say how many casualties are due to Dirty Kids hopping trains, as the statistics are a combination of suicides, track trespassers and rail-car hoppers. But railroad companies are well aware of the train-hopping subculture among some young people, and Central Pennsylvania is a magnet due to its status as a major East Coast transportation hub.
Norfolk Southern has an aggressive education outreach that goes into schools and community settings to warn kids of the dangers of railroad trespassing. One of the main speakers is a young, double amputee who lost his legs trespassing on train tracks.
“I can’t speak to all the specific security measures we have,” Pidgeon says, declining to address any design changes to rail-cars to prevent illegal human riders. “Regardless of the design, it could cost you your life.”
On this, the railroads and Dirty Kids can agree. The danger is so great that Gram warns away anyone without plenty of experience.
“A lot of the metal in the cars has been stripped, so I guess they modified the cars to make it less rideable,” Gram explains. “They’ve taken away the good place where you’re safely gonna be able to sit and not fall off. So now kids are having to ride suicide. They’re balancing on little beams, and it’s just not safe. A lot of kids have lost legs. A lot of kids have died.”
Surprisingly, many Dirty Kids freely accept these risks, hinting at a pervasive fatalism that overlays their lifestyle.
“It’s not stopping kids from riding,” Gram says. “It’s just making it more dangerous because kids are still gonna ride, no matter what.”
With the packing finished in York, Sean wishes a safe trip to Gram and Dante as the couple prepares to relocate to Lower Paxton Township. The question now is how long will they be able to stay in their newly rented apartment there, as the money from Gram s grandmother may be running out. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
Dirty Kid Regrets?
If being a Dirty Kid is living in the moment, what happens when the moment passes? Sean, age 31, is in from Michigan to visit Gram and Dante in Lower Paxton Township. Sean was an early mentor to Gram, and they have remained best of friends ever since. But unlike his younger counterparts, Sean’s worldview has been informed by the passage of time and all its inherent cruelties. There has never been an age limit on the term, Dirty Kid. But America’s youth-centered culture extends all the way to the street. As Sean is dancing and drinking it up at a recent music festival, a younger woman balks when he moves in too close. Things turn ugly fast, and Sean suddenly feels ostracized in a community that’s all about inclusion.
Sean’s feelings of alienation are even worse when he goes back home to Detroit to visit his sister. In the past, such homecomings were always sweet. He felt acceptance as he wowed certain family members with stories of the street. Entertainment and company was all Sean had to offer. In exchange, he usually went back to his travels with some form of financial assistance from his family. It became a regular barter. But as the years, then the decade, rolled by, something happened. Sean stayed the same, but everyone and everything else had changed. These days when Sean goes home, he’s greeted by an unstated skepticism that can be summed up in one question: What does he want now?
This reality hurts Sean more than his family knows. After too much time on the street, one really can’t go home again. And for Sean, it might be too late to change.
“How long can I keep going? Until my heart stops.”
– Sean
“I don’t know if they think that I’m trying to take advantage, or if I’m trying to get over on them,” he says of his family. “I don’t want to put anybody on the spot. A lot of people, they just don’t understand the way I want to live. They don’t understand not wanting to have the burden of a job. They don’t understand that I can’t deal with being told what to do. They can’t understand that I just, simply, wish to be free.”
But one man’s free can be another’s freeloader. The question becomes how long can a Dirty Kid keep going when he’s no longer a kid?
“Well, obviously, your body ages,” Sean admits. “I’m probably not as agile as I may have been when I was 18. I’m probably not quite as nimble or as flexible. I’ve had some injuries, you know.”
So is the end of the road in sight as this Dirty Kid looks at 30?
“How long can I keep going?” Sean muses. “Until my heart stops. Who really can ever know how long they last? I could get hit by a bolt of lightning. I don’t know.”
It all goes back to the moment. It’s all Dirty Kids have, so they make the most of it.
“I didn’t choose to be here,” Sean says, referring to his birth. “I’m just kind of along for the ride.”
Dirty Kids rarely age well, and there is no retirement to speak of. Here, Sundance, 32, grows wistful as he plays some of his favorite songs of life on the road at a cut-rate motel room in Shippensburg. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
A Dirty Kid Retirement Plan
There are no retirement plans for Dirty Kids. Instead, there are sad, pathetic final acts in which aging, infirmed, alcohol-addled Dirty Kids, such as Tripps and Sundance, slowly fade away. The pair of 30-something ex-Californians catch a ride into Shippensburg on their way to Maine, the last of the contiguous states they’ve yet to visit. This summer’s pilgrimage has the feel of scratching out the final line of a Dirty Kid bucket list.
They hole up in a $45-a-night motel with their two dogs, their gear, guitars and plenty of cheap bourbon purchased in two-liter bottles. It’s 10 a.m. They’ve been in Pennsylvania for less than 24 hours. The early hours of this time are spent in a frantic search for hard liquor amid Pennsylvania’s state store system that’s a mystery for any visitor, especially ones who drink prodigious quantities.
Sundance, left, and Tripps, right, sit in a motel room in Shippensburg. The pair wanted to rent the room for another night, but the motel refuses, saying the room has already been rented. Tripps believes they re being discriminated against, and takes his revenge by trashing the room. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
Their hands are literally shaking when they finally lay them on their liquor. Tripps and Sundance are making up for lost time, now. Sundance, a former California surfer dude who still radiates a glimmer or two of his faded Golden State charm, has returned with Taco Bell. He chows down on a burrito to give his stomach something to throw up later. Then, he begins taking deep slugs, straight from the two-liter bourbon bottle. Each man has a bottle. They make no bones about their condition: They are unabashed alcoholics with advance cirrhosis of the liver and hepatitis, to boot.
They walk with stumbling gates. They slur their words. Their hands shake. And they are prone to puking until they throw up blood. Neither knows how much time they have left. But both are positive how they will spend it: On the road, doing precisely what they’re doing now. That is, drinking, idling away the hours with their dogs, and strumming their guitars or flying signs for money at a local shopping center, such as the Walmart plaza just down the road. If life is one long ride for Dirty Kids, then this is the bitter end. It’s not the years, it’s the mileage. The road has exacted its toll.
Tripps has been traveling since he was 16, when his mom kicked him out of the house. He has 200,000-plus miles under his belt. Sundance, 32, is newer to the life. He worked a variety of jobs until a bird led him out of the warehouse where he was toiling away.
“I’ll always remember the day I came out,” Sundance recalls. “I worked at this distribution place. This falcon flew by. I was like, ‘I’m that falcon.’ So I quit my job.”
That was five years ago. He’s been on the road ever since.
“I know I should be dead right now.”
– Tripps
Sundance and Tripps met just a few months ago, but they were kindred spirits from the start. Alcohol, the road and their dogs are their bond. These days, they’re going through a gallon of bourbon a day between the two of them. Tripps is brutally candid about what’s in store:
“I’ll probably die,” he says. “I’ve been in that situation for at least the last five or six years. I wake up every morning and I throw up. We really are hardcore guys, and there’s really nothing we can do. We don’t have an option. It’s not like I can go to a city and get a job being bipolar/schizophrenic, you know?”
Instead, the pair are planning to stick together, slowly making their way north to Maine, the one place neither has seen.
If one or both of them were to get too sick? There’s always the emergency room, Tripps points out. But even this option will do nothing to alter their final destination.
“The Hippocratic Oath says they have to take me,” Tripp says. “So they’ll give me a prescription for five things that I have to pay $200 for, and you know I can’t pay for it, so…”
Tripps voice trails off, then returns with the real answer.
“The average life of a dirty kid is 32 years,” he blurts, as if there’s been a scientific study done. There hasn’t.
“I know I should be dead right now,” Tripps adds, then jokes about going all the way up to Canada and seeking that country’s universal healthcare. Then he dismisses this with still more gallows humor:
“Five out of five doctors recommend that the No. 1 cause of death is life,” Tripps says. “Ain’t no one getting out alive.”
When Tripps and Sundance miss check-out time at the motel, they are greeted by a Pennsylvania State Police escort. The troopers ask plenty of questions, but eventually the pair of Dirty Kids are allowed to leave. They head for a Walmart parking lot just up the road to fly a sign and collect donations for a trip to Maine the last contiguous state neither veteran Dirty Kid has seen. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
Talk of the future can get heavy fast. In the moment is where Dirty Kids prefer to be, even aging ones.
Sundance, so soft-spoken and mumbling in conversation, is suddenly transformed when he grabs his guitar and plays a tune. He sings one of his favorite songs of life on the road. His strumming is assured; his voice, strong, at least at first. He plays “Flashback Blues” by John Prine:
Spent most of my youth
Out hobo cruising
And all I got for proof
Is rocks in my pockets and dirt in my shoes
So goodbye nonbeliever
Don’t you know that I hate to leave here
So long babe, I got the flashback blues…
Then Sundance falters. First, he forgets a lyric. Then his fingers fumble on the guitar strings. Sundance sets his jaw, angry at himself. Angry that his years spent on the road have now seemed to come back to betray him. Angry because this song and the lifestyle it represents means so much to him.
“Let me try it again,” Sundance pleads.
He does, but the results are the same: A decent beginning, followed by a bad end. There is no going back. Only forward. It’s there Tripps and Sundance will meet whatever fate is in store for them, out there on the road.
“Maine is there for us,” Tripps asserts. What’s in Maine?
“Just to see it,” Tripps answers. “And whenever we feel uncomfortable, we’ll leave and go to the next one. When we’re over Maine, we’ll go down to Rhode Island or Connecticut. Just keep moving.”
For how long?
“Who knows?”
Dirty Kids own only what they can carry. Here, Sundance is packed and ready to go, leaving the motel in Shippensburg and fully prepared to meet whatever fate awaits him out there on the open road. (Emily Kask, PennLive.com)
2015 PA Media Group LLC. All rights reserved (About Us[2]).
The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of PA Media Group LLC.
References
^
The post Central Pa.’s ‘Dirty Kids’ Central Pa.’s ‘Dirty Kids’ appeared first on Trucker World.