Dirty Kids by Chris Urquhart

Author:Chris Urquhart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2017-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

Soup catches up on sleep underneath the house rules at the House of Ill Repute.

MICHIGAN, AUGUST 2010

I need to caffeinate, to eat, to calm down a little. At the corner store across the street from THOIR I meet Scott, one of the inhabitants I haven’t encountered yet. He offers to pay for my iced tea tall can with his food stamps card so that he can nab my dollar. I want to interview him, so he takes me to the Meat Mansion, to where Becky and I sat earlier. His eyes are swirling. Someone told me to stay away from travelers whose eyes spin in a certain direction, but now I can’t remember if it’s left or right. Scott’s speaking and I have a microphone in my hand, so I shove my feelings down. He takes out a tub of strawberry ice cream and slurps the pink goo from a plastic spoon, speaking eloquently about why he travels.

“Freight train riding is the last American endeavor. Everybody feels like there is some freedom that is loosely based upon traveling. I do travel for the freedom. A couple years ago I would be lucky if I went into a town and met one person that was a freight rider. .. Now, if I go into a [rail] yard, you know, you’re going to see a huge place, it’s going to be covered in trash [from travelers].

“There was a girl—whose name I’m not going to mention—but she had died, she had died getting on a freight train, she was hit by an Amtrak. There was a little tunnel where everybody used to sit in California, and we would hop out right there. ’Cause she was drunk, she got on it, she died, she got hit by an Amtrak. Now, situations like this make it more difficult for people like myself to get in and out of the yard, harder for us to get on trains, harder for us to make our ends. A lot of travelers fly signs and busk and panhandle. Take an example like this: Punk Week in Ann Arbor. You’ve got about 1,500 of these young kids—not that they’re bad kids, but you have 1,500 of them—and they all got guitars, they all got ukuleles, they all got mandolins, and they’re all going to go downtown, and they’re all going to do the same thing. Which is going to drain the money from the local community, and it’s going to make it more difficult for individuals like myself to go into that community and ask for money, whether it be flying a sign, busking, what have you—you know?”

Scott continues like he’s reading from a book. He needs few prompts, as it’s clear he has something to say.

“I know this guy, he’s an old FTRA guy, and he said: ‘Nowadays you guys call them “oogles,” the new kids, the kids that are just fresh off the boat. Back in the day, if they came into our jungle, outside of our freight yard, we’d smash their skull in.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.