Iowegin Rick, the Hobo King for 2022, is a man of few words, but the steam engine tattoo on his forehead hints at his history. The Waterloo, Iowa, native has been on the road for most of his 66 years, a lot of them in boxcars heading west and south. He rode the rails for more than three decades, until age and health problems intervened, about ten years ago.
Iowegin (his hobo moniker, a nod to his Iowa origin) caught freights regularly, worked as a day laborer and often slept in hobo jungles. In the summer he might head to Spokane, Wash.; in the winter to Muscle Shoals, Ala. He said travelling in a random boxcar can be a shaky itinerary: “I once left Indianapolis knowing I’m goin’ to Cleveland, but I wound up in Cincinnati.” His least favorite place is Stockton, Calif.; “A dirty place, not many hobos, but a lot of bums.” He likes Washington and Oregon.
He managed to get to Britt, Iowa, for 30 years straight for the National Hobo Convention, where the festivities include electing a hobo king and queen. It was there, 23 years ago, that Iowegin met Minneapolis Jewel, who recalled, “He was a hot mess – no bedroll, no water.” Jewel, whose non-hobo name is Julianna Porrazzo-Ray, has been a Holland neighborhood resident for 36 years. She’s been Hobo Queen five times herself.
On a mid-August afternoon, in her shady and comfortably-cluttered back yard, Jewel, Iowegin, 2022 Hobo Queen Half Track and 2021 Hobo King Bazzman sat at her picnic table, musing about their past travels. Each of them had their own stories of a shared love for train-hopping and the hobo life. In a corner of the yard there was a small cemetery for the ashes of beloved rabbits, dogs, and several hobos. Half Track (her hobo moniker refers to her past as an Army veteran), grew up in Minneapolis but now lives in Little Falls.
Jewel has spent most of her life in Minneapolis, minus a few years out West, and bought her Washington Street house in the mid-1980s partly because its back yard was next to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad tracks. She has been a restaurant cook, a lingerie model, a merchant mariner and for more than 35 years, a licensed adult foster care provider. Less than a year ago, while Iowegin was in a homeless shelter in Rochester, Minn., Jewel talked to caregivers there and arranged to have him live in her house as a “foster adult” for an indeterminate period. She hopes to get him help for his difficulty in walking; he has a history of cerebral palsy.
A clear definition of “hobo” is elusive; one writer on the subject calls a hobo “An itinerant worker; someone who travels and finds work. A ‘tramp’ travels, but mostly does not work. A ‘bum’ neither travels nor works.” But life and work intertwine, and some hobos travel just to travel, for the freedom from the ordinary, or the escape from it.
In Jewel’s 2021 memoir, “Wisdom and Nonsense: My Adventures as a Train Rider and Hobo Queen” (I found copies for sale at Sentyrz’ supermarket), she recalls her first train ride, in 1979. She and a riding partner found an empty boxcar in the St. Paul train yard and hopped aboard, their destination the Britt hobo convention. Because the train’s engine was pointed south, they thought they were headed to Iowa, but several trains and long hikes in Southern Minnesota and Wisconsin found them hitchhiking back to Minneapolis, ending up with a nightcap at Moby Dick’s.
The next year she made it to the convention, starting a 40-year run, joining the hobo life and getting her first hobo crown in 1986. She’s ridden trains to Montana, Washington State, California and throughout the Midwest. She did this while raising a daughter, Sarah, becoming an independent living skills specialist, and getting an adult foster care license. She cared for foster adults in her duplex apartment and later in her own home, bringing two of them along with her to the hobo conventions for more than 20 years. Jewel was elected Hobo Queen in 1986, 1991, 1997, 2011 and 2017, the same year her husband Tuck was elected Hobo King.
The town of Britt, population 2,000, is 60 miles southwest of Albert Lea. A converted movie theater on Main Avenue houses the National Hobo Museum, run by the non-profit Britt Hobo Days Association. Their website says the group is “Dedicated to hosting the annual National Hobo Convention and preserving the history of the life and times of the American Hobo.” The museum houses a collections of hobo artifacts, photos and memorabilia and a theatre for viewing documentaries. The town’s Evergreen Cemetery has within it the National Hobo Cemetery, where the ashes of many hobos are interred. A park next to the east-west rail lines for the yearly Hobo Jungle includes a solitary boxcar and a camping area.
The National Hobo Convention began in 1900 and is held on the second weekend of August. It’s the largest gathering of hobos and rail-riders to celebrate the American traveling worker and their modern-day followers. Hobos come to town to set up in the hobo jungle, vote for hobo king and queen and join the parade. Between hobos and tourists, over a thousand people attend each year.
Hobos are largely a 20th century phenomenon. By 1900, most of the rail lines which now exist, and a lot that are long gone, were in place, and trains were by far the fastest way to travel. As opportunities for work and possible success opened up out west, people headed that direction any way they could. The Great Depression of the 1930s spurred even more train travel, and a free boxcar ride fit the budget of a penniless worker. Camps appeared along the rail lines, and a network of knowledge came out of the experiences of the thousands of hobos who rode the rails.
After World War II, the introduction of jet airliners and construction of the interstate highway system, rail traffic changed in a couple of ways: Trains carried mostly freight as passenger numbers declined, and steam engines were replaced by diesel engines, which required fewer stops and allowed higher speeds. As fewer people hopped boxcars looking for work, part-timers and adventurers joined the hobo ranks.
Around 2001, Jewel took her last boxcar ride, to visit the site of the Pullman rail car factory, near Chicago. She went with former kings Adman and Frog and former queen Connecticut Shorty. Asked if she knew it was her last trip then, she said, “I knew I was getting close to it.” Trips to Britt after that were by Greyhound until she got a car of her own. But her home has remained a way station for hobos, familiar or not. Jewel estimates that she’s put up well over a hundred hobos for a night or more, and many more who have dropped in for a visit as they passed through town.
She said that hobos all over the country are part of a large, loose family, a community bound by friendship and shared experience. She refers to herself and her contemporaries as relics, and recognizes that there are new groups of riders, many with scanners, cell phones and GPS, but with the same spirit of adventure. “That will keep the legacy of the rail-riding hobos alive.”
Jewel’s advice on riding the rails: “It’s illegal and dangerous. Go with someone who’s done it before, and only hop on trains that are standing still.”
Below: View of the BNSF lines from Minneapolis Jewel’s back yard. Half Track, Bazzman (standing), Iowegin Rick, neighbor Jeremy and Minneapolis Jewel gather behind her house. (Photos by Mark Peterson)