DOWN SOUTH

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 DOWN SOUTH

  I turned 17 in Vancouver on August 18, 1997 and around the first of September Lance and I headed out to catch my first freight train! Syd had gone ahead of us and crossed illegally because she was from Austin, Texas. We told her we would see her in Portland, Oregon.

  We took the SkyTrain to New Westminster where there is a train tussle (bridge) where the train has to slow down to make the turn. I will never forget this ‘till the day I die. The sound of the powerful engine shaking the ground beneath my feet, the smell of the railroad ties, the sound of steel on steel, and the adrenaline running through my body. I said to Lance, “This is us, fucker,” waited for the engines to pass, found a grainer, and jumped on. What a rush!

  On Canadian grainers there is a hole in the center and when you squeeze yourself in there are two more holes on either side that you can get in. It’s tight but not too bad and you’re totally hidden, but if you get an american grainer this is not the case, because you only have the one hole and it’s too small to hide in.

  The train was a southbound (SBD) B.N.S.F (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) from Vancouver to Everett, Washington. We made a quick stop at the border where some other tramp jumped on our grainer and we thought we were busted at first.

  From there we hauled ass fuckin’ wicked doing 60 all the way. When we were leaving the yard in Everett, we had to go through a huge patch of thorn bushes, and it fuckin’ sucked! It was probably around four in the morning when we got there. The trip had probably taken 5 hours.

  There is a city bus you can get to Seattle for a couple of bucks so we got on the first one that left in the morning. While we were waiting for our bus we found a garbage bag that was full of T-shirts. I found the coolest shirt ever. It said SOMETIMES WHEN I’M DRUNK I MAKE MISTAKES and it had a picture of a drunk moose fucking a tree with a little bird flying out of a little hole at the top of the tree saying WHAT THE #$%%. It was classic.

  One thing I like about the northwest was that you can catch city buses way out of town. So, if you’re hitchhiking it works well because you’re not stuck trying to get out of five lanes of traffic going super-fast.

  Lance and I only hung out in Seattle long enough to get drunk and pass out on the sidewalk and deal with my first american cop. I thought we were going to get deported bu the cop just told us to fuck off, and that’s what we did.

  We took a city bus down to Tacoma where we spent the night. I wanted to sleep anywhere we could find without too much trouble bu tLance said that we had to find a hiding spot but even that didn’t work. Everywhere we laid down we would get woken up by cops on bikes. It was retarded. Lance said we could go to jail for this. Wow, what a shock. Fuckin’ the states are fucked like that. 

  First thing in the morning we got on another city bus to Olympia, Washington and from there we started to hitch to Portland. Since it is only a couple hours’ drive from Seattle we were there later that day. We ran into Syd downtown in Pioneer Square where we went drinking and where I witnessed my first of many drunken American fights. I don’t remember what the kid done to get his ass kicked; it was probably nothing but them just being drunk off $5.00 bags of wine. What I like about the States is that when a bunch of kids get into a fight the next morning it’s usually all good and then they do it again the next night. Drink, Fight and Fuck!

  We split up for the hitchhike to San Francisco because three people and a dog is too much. Syd wouldn’t hop trains which pissed me off since I had gotten my first taste of riding and I didn’t want to hitchhike anymore or better known as BITCH HIKE. Supposedly, the first train Syd had hopped she seen her friend get his head cut off and she didn't want to get arrested and lose her dog, Why. I would have ridden a train by myself but I had no clue what I was doing.

  So I hit I-5 by myself and made it to Eugene by that night, stayed the night and got drunk with some kids I met, and hit the road in the morning. I was super stoked when I crossed the state line into California and seen mile marker signs saying Los Angeles 850. “Wow I’m really in California,” I thought. 

  From Sacramento I jumped on I-80 West, which was a little over 100 miles East of San Francisco. I caught a ride fairly quickly by this nice black woman that was going all the way to Oakland which is right across the bay from San Francisco. The B.A.R.T trains, which were the subway, were on strike so I had to get on a city bus which took forever to get over to S.F, but was worth it because I got to cross the Bay Bridge and see Alcatraz and the amazing skyline of downtown San Fran! Man, I was so happy. I’d give anything to go back to that moment.

  Well I finally made it minus the cigar, but I was here. Lance told me they would meet me up on Haight Street and Stanley in the Golden Gate Park. What a sight to be seen. The whole front of the park was people with tents set up camping out. There must have been like 100 tents set up.

  There are so many more homeless people down in the states compared to Canada. They don’t get welfare checks like us, they get fuckin’ food stamps which in my mind kind of defeats the purpose because where ya gonna cook your fuckin’ steak! Most people just sell them for half price or whatever.

  I was walking down Haight St. that first day I was there, andI had to take a piss so I went into a restaurant and on my way out there was a purse on the ground with no one around so I grabbed it and made 40 bucks and went and scored some crack.

  Syd and Lance weren’t in ton yet and it was hard for me to meet most of the street kids there because I didn’t know anyone and there was a gang of kids around that weren’t the nicest folks that called themselves the San Francisco Scum Fuckss (S.F.S.F) They were always drinking and fighting.

  I must have been there for a week when I hear “Hey you fucker” from across the street. They had finally made it. Lance had been there before so he knew some of the kids, so that was cool.

  I had this wicked vest with a Subhumans patch on the back of it that this S.F.S.F kid stole from me when I left to go take a piss and left my vest with some girl, and she wasn’t going to tell me who took it. I found out later that it was a guy named Lee. We ended up becoming friends a few months later. He’s a good buddy of mine now, fuckin’ cock sucker! Every time I bring that up he says he doesn’t remember. Okay, Lee.

  I was panning on Haight St. and this guy dropped me $50.00 so I went down to 16th and Mission which is  a big drug area and got some 101’s. You ask what a 101 is? Well, they are balloons that have a half a point of black tar heroin and a half point of coke in them that the Mexicans spit out of their mouths after you give them the money. A few years later I seen the cops grab this Mexican by the throat and made him turn blue before he spit out all the dope he had in his mouth on this corner.

  I had tried heroin a couple times in Montreal and it didn’t really appeal to me, so I gave the heroin to Lance and kept the coke. Later that night I had one 101 left and when I went ot open it the fuckin coke went flying out so all that I was left with was the fuckin dope. I was pissed and threw it away. Later that night when I saw Lance and told him this he got pissed. I don’t blame him, I wish I had that right now!

  One night I was stumbling around on Haight and there was this dude passed out on the sidewalk with a backpack next to him. “Well I wonder what could be in there?” I said to myself. It turned out that there was $80.00 and 5 bottles of some type of pills. I just took the money at first, hid the backpack somewhere and headed down to 16th and Mission. I wanted to get some coke.

  I found some guy that said he could get it for me so I gave him some money and when he came back he told me we had to find a lemon. I was like “Why the fuck do we need a lemon?” It turned out that he had got crack instead and we needed the citric acid in the lemon to break down the crack. I was pissed at first, that is till I did it. It didn’t disappoint.

  After running around all bug eyed and paranoid I made it back up to Haight Street and I ran into the guy that I took the backpack from and he was in tears. He came up to me and told me that he had lost his stuff and asked me if I had seen it. I told him thatI hadn’t seen it and felt kind of bad, I almost told him where it was. AfterI left him I went back to where I put his backpack not really thinking it would be there but sure as hell, there it was. I searched it more thoroughly than the first time but all that was left was the pills. I had no clue what they were, all I knew was that they had that sticker on them that said “don’t take with alcohol.” Fuckin’ right. The next day a bunch of us got all fucked up on them. They were pretty fuckin good pills, whatever they were.

  I had my most intense hallucination of my life on acid one night while I was there. I was in McDonalds ordering a burger and the cashier’s face turned into a lizard for a split second. The girl behind the cash must have been like “wow, what the fuck is this kid on” because I couldn’t stop  laughing. It was pretty fucked up.

  After a couple weeks in San Francisco we decided we were going to head to Los Angeles. We jumped on the B.A.R.T train to get as far south as we could on the 101 highway. The three of us were going to try to get a ride together. We were on the ramp for maybe 20 minutes, when the next thing we know we were being grilled by the state troopers. Well it turned out that Lance had some stupid warrant for unpaid fines so they took him in. Syd and I went back to the city to wait for him. He ended up getting out later that night so that was cool.

  We convinced Syd to hop out so we all went over to Oakland to try and catch out over to Roseville, and from there we could catch out or get on I-5 to L.A. Well this didn’t work out either. We waited a day for a train that didn’t come so they got tired of waiting. I wanted to stay there; I had ridden my first train and I was hooked.I had no idea what I was doing so reluctantly I went back to S.F with them. 

  It was a day or two later when I hit a city bus down to Santa Cruz. I remember Lance telling me about the Mexicans that hide in the bushes by the river selling coke. He said it was funny as fuck. So I stopped there for the day, went downtown and made some money and sure as hell, when I went down by the river Mexicans started popping out of the bushes asking me what I wanted.

  I got jacked up by the pigs for panhandling and he ended up being a real cock sucker and went through everything I owned. He found some needles and almost took me in for possession of drug paraphernalia. He  let me go though, so I was like “fuck this town” and hopped on another city bus and went down to San Jose.l I stayed the night in San Jose, got ripped off for a ten piece of crack and hit the 101 in the morning.

  I got a ride to a place called Salinas and the guy that picked me up took me to Burger King for lunch but when I returned from the bathroom he was gone. He had taken off with all my shit. What a fuckin tool! I thought “what the fuck am I going to do now?” I had nothing. I found a truck stop later that night and met a trucker that was going back up to S.F and then to L.A after. So I explained whatI had just happened to me and he said he’d give me a ride so that was cool as fuck. We went back up to S.F and he unloaded in the morning and then we were headed south all the way to L.A.