One More Train to Ride: The Underground World of Modern American Hoboes

by Cliff Williams

Drawn from intimate interviews with 14 modern-day "steel rail nomads," One More Train to Ride provides a revealing picture of today's American hobo. Interspersed with their stories are original poems and songs echoing the ancient lyricism and loneliness of life on the road. Their connections with the past make the experiences of these hoboes even more striking, as they ride freight trains and jungle up in hobo camps, light years away from the 21st-century cyberworld―yet touching the very core of American freedom and individualism.

Cliff Williams skillfully elicits details of family background, motives, and clear insights into the daily life and philosophy of the modern hobo. With its evocative link to the past, One More Train to Ride continues a long tradition of books on hobo oral history, including Nels Anderson's The Hobo (1923) and Thomas Minehan's Boy and Girl Tramps of America (1934).

Genres: Nonfiction, Trains, History, Sociology

184 pages, Paperback

First published October 8, 2003

Reviews

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

One More Train to Ride: The Underground World of Modern Hoboes by Cliff Williams (Oats) (Indiana University Press 2003) (305.568) (3831).

Author Cliff Williams is a college professor whose interest in hobos was ignited when he attended the “National Hobo Convention” in 1990.

Immediately prior to reading his book about 21st century modern-day American hoboes and hoboing culture, I read Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression by Errol Lincoln Uys (Routledge 2003) about hoboes during the golden age of hoboing in the 1920s and 1930s.

I mean no offense to Cliff Williams, but I must be frank: One More Train to Ride: The Underground World of Modern Hoboes was written by a wannabe hobo and fanboy. It is clear that the author has drunk from the cup of hobo koolaid, so to speak. He is obviously captivated by the romance of life on the road (the rails), and this volume is simply a paean to amorphous freedom.

This volume features poems and a few songs written by hoboes about life on the rails. There are interviews with modern-day hoboes, and practically every single interview subject appears to suffer from some type of intellectual deficit or disability. The modern day hoboes which the author managed to find and interview were mostly young people who had been riding trains for only a short while. In fact, the book’s final featured interview was with a seventeen year old girl who shared that she had been hoboing for exactly….one month.

I commend this book to readers who want to vicariously experience a minstrel’s glorified view of hoboing life. Readers who wish to learn about the nuts and bolts of the misery involved in the lifestyle should instead pick up Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression by Errol Lincoln Uys.

My rating: 7/10, finished 7/14/23 (3831).

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun little book to read. Williams relays the stories of various men and women who continue to live as hoboes, the train-hoppers that started significantly during the great depression. Provides first rate insight into the philosophy these individuals carry, what motivates and attracts them to this lifestyle, and random tricks of the trade so to speak. A short book, but provides a nice glimpse into a lives that I think many of us forget even continue to exist.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting to read the stories told by hobos old and young. A little dhistory of the life.