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The Documentary: Rulebreakers: Veteran on the tracks

Veteran on the Tracks

26/08/2020 GMT

Veteran on the tracks

Rulebreakers

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Rulebreakers, Veteran on the tracks

The handbook for train hopping American hobo culture and the man behind the guide

The handbook for train hopping American hobo culture and the man behind the guide.

There is a secret map passed down from hobo to hobo. You can’t buy it in stores or download it online but if you’re lucky enough to get a copy you can travel anywhere in America by freight train. They call it The Crew Change Guide and it is a sacred document for those who still ride in boxcars like the hobos looking for work in the great depression. This state by state guide has grown from one man’s obsession into a network of everything you need to get from Aliceville, Alabama to Wendover, Wyoming - all for “low or no dollars”. Complete with details like which hole to crawl through and the best places to hide from the railroad police, it preserves in its pages the constantly changing terrain of American hobo culture. Fiercely protected by those who depend on the lifestyle, getting a photocopy of the guide is part of a ritual within the community and reserved only for those who have proven their worth.
 
This programme explores this underground document and the man behind the map, a 72-year-old Vietnam veteran known only as Train Doc. His life’s work has never been about leading an underground movement but he is an icon for hobos and his guide has evolved over the years from a train hopping handbook into a historical document, preserving the history of his culture in America.

The Documentary: Rulebreakers

We invite filmmakers more used to telling their stories in pictures to tell them in audio.

Rulebreakers -  a five-part series from BBC World Service in collaboration with Sundance Institute where we invite film-makers more used to telling their stories in pictures to tell them in audio.
In this series, hosted by the Iranian Artist and film maker Shirin Neshat we’ll meet  the imprisoned victims of more than 70 years of Danish colonial policy...in Greenland.  
There’s a young man who dreamed of  hacking the Pentagon from a laptop in his bedroom - and has had to live with the consequences ever since.
We’ve tracked down a Vietnam Veteran who’s spent 50 years mapping an America you’ve never heard of while riding freight trains.

We join Muhammad, a Palestinian Shepherd and his flock in the South Hebron hills of the West Bank who breaks all the rules of the land he walks through simply by existing.

And in Japan if you want to disappear from your life you can just pick up the phone and  a ‘Night Moving Company’ will turn you into one of the country’s ‘Johatsu,’ or literally ‘evaporated people.’ You can cease to exist.

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