Former hobo, landfill resident rides the rails again in his poetry
John Geluardi, Special to The Chronicle
Friday, May 13, 2005

"There's nothing nobler than to put up with a few inconveniences like snakes and dust
for the sake of absolute freedom." -- From "The Vanishing American Hobo" by Jack Kerouac

Hobo poet James "Jimbow the Hobow" Bailey strode through the waist-high grasses on the Albany Landfill,
a former construction dump, toward the hidden, bayside campsite where he has lived for six years.

"Here it is," he announces and his weathered face breaks into a broad, gap-toothed grin. Bailey, 51, says he began living on the landfill in the mid- 1990s, when he took a hiatus from a life of nomadic travel.

He gestures to the nearby shore, where a small, sandy beach has formed among broken concrete columns and snarls of twisted rebar. "That's Bailey Beach. It's one of my favorite places in the world. It's my ocean."

Bailey is an imposing figure. He's over 6 feet tall, typically wears Pendleton shirts and speaks in a boisterous voice that's nasally from having his nose broken so many times over the years. "I can still breathe, and smell hamburgers, and, you know, it works great, great, just great," he says cheerfully.

Bailey gained notoriety as both a poet and a hobo in "Bums' Paradise," a 2002 documentary made by Oakland filmmaker Tomas McCabe. The film chronicles a unique group of "outsiders" who formed a freestanding community on the shrub- covered, undeveloped landfill.

After climbing down the bluff to the small beach -- which he named in honor of his father -- Bailey selects a comfortable place to sit and begins talking about his hobo travels, the book of poetry he's writing and his new life indoors.

Bailey is working on a collection of his poems, which he hopes to have ready for publication next year. His poems, all of which he has memorized, are mostly rough verse, but they're eloquent in their organic descriptions of the profound loneliness of nomadic life, his rejection of society as well as his pain from being rejected by society.

Berkeley lawyer Osha Neuman has known Bailey since 1990 when he represented him in a lawsuit. Over the years, the two men have become good friends, and Neuman has long encouraged Bailey to write. Neuman has also been interviewing him for a book he is writing about the landfill's history and its wildland artwork.

"Jimbow's poetry is very much like he is, honest and raw," Neuman says. "It can be quite amazing, and the poem he recites in 'Bums' Paradise' is like this raw yelp that I think is really extraordinary."

Bailey says he is deeply proud of his hobo status. In the subculture of bums, tramps and assorted vagabonds, hobos think of themselves as a cut above.

"Bums hardly ever work, and they never go anywhere. Tramps come into town and panhandle," he says. "But when a hobo comes to town, he's looking for some kind of work because he likes to pay for his own food and maybe a bottle of wine before moving on."

Bailey, who has ridden the rails through Mexico, Canada and all but three states, may be a member of the last generation of classic American hobos. The tradition began shortly after the Civil War and reached its zenith during the Great Depression when there were more than 200,000 hobos riding the rails in North America. By that time, there was a chain of hobo camps, known as "jungles," in strategic locations across the country. Hobos also developed an intricate system of hieroglyphics, which they chalked onto boxcars, water towers and railyard buildings to pass on information about food sources, campsites and hostile police.

Initially hobos were mostly migrant farm workers who traveled from one seasonal job to the next by hopping freights. After World War II, hobos were typically men drawn to the freedom of short-term jobs, nomadic travel and strong fellowship with other hobos.

Bailey is a member of the post-war generation and came to the hobo life in a fairly typical way. He was the second-oldest of four children and raised on a small farm in Georgetown, Ohio. He had a difficult relationship with his mother and began drinking and experimenting with drugs at an early age. He dropped out of school and left home by the time he was 16.

"Of the four kids, I had it the roughest. I was born with a cleft palate and a wandering eye," he says. "Mother was none too pleased."

After Bailey left home, he traveled with a circus for a few years tending the elephants and Shetland ponies before beginning an 'apprenticeship' as a hobo.

The hobo experience has been romanticized by a long list of popular novels, movies and songs. But hoboing is a rough and dangerous life. There is an art to riding the rails and surviving extreme temperatures with little food and water. There is always the possibility of falling under train wheels or being crushed by a shifting load. Many hobos have died when they were accidentally locked in a boxcar or were severely beaten by over-aggressive railroad police known as "bulls."

"The best way to learn hoboing is to find a guy who has at least a decade of experience and learn from him," Bailey says. "I learned the ropes from an older hobo named Slow Eddy. He taught me you can be just as comfortable sleeping outside as in with a little bit of knowledge."

Bailey learned that a hobo has to have a good pair of thick-soled shoes with plenty of ankle support for running after and climbing onto trains. Also, thick gloves are necessary for train exteriors that can be scorching hot or freezing cold depending on the weather. Water is scarce on trains and in most jungles, so hobos have to know how to sterilize small cuts and eating utensils with salt and how to survive freezing temperatures by insulating their clothes with newspaper.

"Learning how to hop a moving train is important because it can be so dangerous," he says and begins to laugh. "But the best damn way to catch a train is to wait until the son-of-a-biscuit-eater stops and then climb on."

Bailey also learned protocols for avoiding run-ins with the law. "If you want to get along with the cops, you go right up to them when you get to town and tell them your name, what kinda work you're looking for, where you're camping and how long you're staying," he says. "If you try to keep a low profile, moving around at night and so forth, it just pisses 'em off."

But Bailey wasn't always successful in avoiding the criminal justice system. In 1974, he served 18 months in an Ohio prison for stealing $100 from a liquor store, and over the years he found himself doing numerous short stints in jails, usually for alcohol-related offenses.

Bailey says he has grown mellow with age. He regularly attends Alcoholic Anonymous meetings (although he admits to relapsing from time to time). And like most hobos of his generation, he hasn't hopped a train in several years. He says there are very few of the old guard riding the rails anymore.

"I can't count but maybe 12 guys between Mexico and Dunsmuir, and they're only making short little hops," he says. "Most of us are retired and messing around with older women who own Cadillacs."

Bailey is now collecting Supplemental Security Income and lives near his 22-year-old daughter in a small studio apartment in Los Angeles. He says it took a little bit of time to get used to living indoors, but he's become spoiled. "I have a king-size bed and all the 'Married With Children' I can watch."

His focus over the next five years is getting his experiences down on paper.

"You know, I'm going to sit back, just watch it roll, and continue to do my poetry, and continue to be an artist," he says. "Because that's all I got, you know, is my feelings. And I can't do 'em any other way except on paper."

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Untitled No. 1
I'm Jimbow the Hobow and you ain't.
Why the bow? Always on the go.
Wanted to be a one-man show.
Classic train rides am I,
Across the states, ages 18 to 45.
Been shot at, beat up, coughed up,
puked up, and locked up.
Why the W on Hobow? The time of circus. New changes.
New ranges. New stages.
Wow. Lucky I to be a bow,
Never stopping always hopping.
Trains became the bow's life,
Even married an L.A. wife.
Queer as good old American money.
Never a camp thief. Always food to be found.
Hear ears of all sound.
Music plays in a bow's head,
Not all are forgotten.
Bow smoking on a hot shot, Spookaloo to D.C.

Untitled No. 2
Stories are written about people who have no clout.
Forget about the old ones who often shout,
Screaming, 'What's all this landfill about?'
Will birds sing and snakes crawl,
Or will this mean kill them all, by law?
Landfill folk tossed out like Albany garbage.
Their tinkering and chattering no longer noise to wit.
Their craft made them some headway.
The reality of leaving makes one wonder,
Is the American dream over.

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Learn more
For "Bums' Paradise" showings and DVDs, visit www. bumsparadise.com.

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