DO NOT HUMP

I survived the marathon over the Golden Gate Bridge in 4 hours and 20 minutes. Not a great time, but I reached my goal, which was to finish the race. After a day of rest it was time for the trip home.

We hitchhiked over to Oakland and picked up a train heading north. Not much happened as we were beginning to feel pretty confident with our freight train riding abilities.

As the train rolled into Eugene Oregon, we were feeling so confident that we stood in the open door of the boxcar and waved to the cars stopped at the train crossings. We decided to stay in the boxcar as it went through the yard, so we wouldn’t have to hike so far.

They were in the process of breaking up the train and re-aligning the cars. I need to tell you about some signs we use to see posted on the cars. All the cars usually had a little wooded bulletin board on the outside where they would post things about the contents or whatever. Often we would see a sign in big bold letters that said: DO NOT HUMP.

We didn’t know what that meant, but thought it was pretty funny. Now we were going to learn what it meant. The yard engine took our car and pushed up a little hill in the middle of the train yard. It then went down the other side of the hump and a controller in a tall tower would operate the switches so the car would line up on the desired track.

It came down the 'hump' probably traveling at 10 to 15 mph and then crashed into the line of cars it was being attached to. The car we were in had a broken door that was stuck in the wide open position.

When we crashed into the line cars we instantly found ourselves lying our back and the door slammed shut! We jumped up and tried our best to pry it open, but it wasn’t going to budge.

You can imagine the thoughts that were going through our head about being trapped inside a boxcar. There were a few pieces of 2x4 wood lying around so I tried to use that to pry open the door. Just as I was applying pressure there was a loud bang and I found myself on my back again.

We had just been 'humped' by another boxcar slamming into us. The good news was that it caused the door to open slightly. I immediately stuck the 2x4 in the newly opened crack to prevent the door from closing again.

We decided it was best to just stay sitting until the 'humping' was done. We sat there never knowing when the next hit would come. We continued to be hit by more cars being lined up on the train. With each hit the door opened a little more. The hits became less violent as the train grew in length.

Finally the door was open wide enough for us to get out. We started hiking down the train yard to find a train that would take us north. Just up ahead we saw a man in a suit walking towards us. In train language, he was known as a bull, a train yard cop.

Apparently when we were waving at the stopped cars the police had seen us and radioed to the train yard to be on the lookout for us. We were taken down to the police station for questioning.

I had the foresight to carry with me a notarized note from my father giving his permission for me to travel. Not bad for a Dad who was a Lutheran minister. My friend K. did not have such a document so the police phoned his mother at work.

I don’t know what he had told his mother he was up to, but she was not happy. The police finally told us we needed to get out of town and suggested a bus. At this point we were quite tired of life on the train and so we ended our trip by taking the Greyhound bus back to Seattle.