American Nomads Page #7

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mainly because the meat is so good.

It's low-fat, high protein,

tasty, red meat.

In the three weeks

since I last saw him,

Ted the Wall Street refugee

has driven down to Mexico and back.

He's been to New York and all

over Idaho, Wyoming and Utah.

He's had transitory relationships

with a number of different women.

Now he's come to meet me

at a remote campground

in the high desert

of Western Colorado,

and he's brought

some buffalo steaks.

Oh, man.

This is good living, huh?

Oh, man. These are really good.

What do your family think

of your wandering ways,

your appearance

and what have you?

Have you got brothers and sisters?

I don't.

I had a brother but he died

about 11 years ago and my parents,

that onus falls on me,

you know, the legacy,

the next generation.

And if I had one wish,

I wish I could make my parents happy,

you know, the only thing I know how

to tell them is I'm pretty happy,

and that's the only answer,

at the end of the day.

But if I could flip a switch and

somehow have the life I have now

and the picket fence

and the children,

raising up the next generation,

I would do it, I really would.

Just only for

my parents, for their...

You being happy is not going to

cut it compared to grandkids?

For my mother,

I just haven't delivered.

I'm telling her it's not her fault.

She did a great job. She did a great

job. How old are you? I'm 37.

I'm 37, just turned a couple of

months ago. Plenty of time, really.

I got it figured I got 20 years,

at my pace. That could still happen.

But yeah, as a nomad,

if I had one wish,

I wish I could make my parents

as pleased as they deserve to be.

THUNDERCLAP:

Man, we've got weather coming in.

Woah!

(SOUTHERN U.S. ACCENT) When the wind blows,

the desert just stands up on its hind legs.

Goddamn! Goddamn!

So Ted came over a bit

maudlin in his cups last night.

I know how he feels, but

pull yourself together, man!

This wandering life is supposed

to be the pursuit of happiness,

not a lifelong

commitment to the road.

When you meet the right woman

and want to settle down

and start cranking out kids,

just buck up and do it.

That's my plan, anyway.

All in good time.

You don't always have to be that John Wayne figure,

riding away from the picket fence into the sunset.

People have the idea that the

West was won by heroic cowboys

and that kind of thing.

They get this idea from

movies and mythology,

but the key factor in the taming of

the West were, number one, disease.

Microbes, smallpox, that's what

really wiped out the nomadic tribes

on the plains, was these diseases

they had no resistance to.

And another really important factor

was the invention

of barbed wire fences.

Fences restricted the free

movement of animals and people

and enforced the new

idea of private property.

The nomadic Indian

tribes hated fences.

So did the nomadic trail cowboys

who had grazed their herds

up and down the plains.

Now the damn things are everywhere.

(SOUTHERN U.S. ACCENT) Don't

get me started on Goddamn fences!

This whole country

has been divided up,

it's had its spirit torn up,

brutalised by fences.

You've got your five-strand

barbed wire fence,

seven-strand barbed wire fence,

you got your round topped fences,

picket fences, Goddamn

round top split rail fences,

I'm talking about galvanised

tube or steel fences.

Don't get me started on the fence.

So the era of horseback

nomads came to an end.

The tribes were corralled

on reservations,

railroads came, bringing

the iron horse, and in time,

the railroads produced a new and

distinct American form of nomadism.

Transient labourers started

riding the freight trains

as a way to get from

one harvest to the next.

They were called hobos,

and their hungry heyday was

the Great Depression of the 1930s.

After the Great Depression,

America forgot about the hobos

and tramps on its freight trains

but they never went away.

At best guess, 20,000 people

are still riding around

on America's freight trains.

I used to do it myself.

Most train hoppers today

are under the age of 30.

I've found one hitchhiking

by the side of the road

in Western Colorado,

a young kid out on his own.

Well, howdy, there. I'm Comfrey.

Comfrey?

I've never met a Comfrey before.

Yeah, neither have I.

It's a bit of a unique name.

I'm glad to call it my birth name.

So how come you're out on the road?

I travel off and on.

For years, I've been doing

travelling off and on.

Really hard the last

three years but before that,

I've been homeless off and on since

I was about 13. I'm currently 18 now.

But I just like... I don't know, it's

absolute freedom in a lot of ways.

Within limitations of the law.

The only problems I ever have

is someone trying to take my stuff

or take advantage of me

or the cops harassing me.

Other than that,

it's complete freedom.

Freedom from what?

Um, life in a box. Life in a box?

Sitting in an office,

9-to-5, in front of a computer,

letting my brain rot and listening

to the humming. Zzz-zz-zz-zz.

In some ways, I'm addicted to

travelling and being on the road.

I'm always looking for that next

great adventure to replace

that last one that just passed by.

At the next lake, you're

going to want to take a right.

Do you feel connected to any

kind of historical tradition

of transient America?

I mean, a little bit,

due to the current days

and ages of where we are.

We are in the second Great Depression

that this country's faced,

and in the first Great Depression,

that was the golden era of hobos,

I guess you'd call it. This is a

squat that people actually use.

They cut a hole in the fence and they

go way back there in that patio area

for the train, to go west.

So they sit out here

and just wait for it,

kind of hiding in the back,

just wait for a train.

We are in the gritty Western

town of Grand Junction, Colorado,

right by the side

of the train tracks.

So usually if people are

going to be hopping this area,

they'll be coming

in late, after dark,

probably coming to spend a couple

hours just sitting and waiting.

There's still actually some hopper

tags up here. Let's have a look.

Good old Luc Puc.

What's going on with this tag?

This is some travelling kid's tag.

You've got your train tracks

and then you have some

kind of severed leg.

Hopefully they didn't

lose their leg getting on.

How do you stop your leg getting

severed like that?

The trick I use getting on a train,

I count the lug nuts on the wheel.

If I can count every nut and

actually see every nut on the train

then I personally feel

it's not moving that fast,

it's moving at a speed that I

feel comfortable getting on at.

Anything after that is where you're

going to lose a leg or an arm.

And how is it that it happens

exactly, the severing?

You get caught under the wheels, man.

You're trying to hop up,

climb up or whatever,

you just kind of get sucked in because of this

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