Shoestring the railroad bum

Kadizzle at the Train Station

Poor old Winky had her knee replaced yesterday, which left Kadizzle with some time to kill in Flagstaff. First stop: breakfast at Cracker Barrel. The food was fine, but the place was eerily empty. Kadizzle was the only customer in the whole restaurant. You have to wonder—how do they keep the lights on?

With nowhere in particular to be, Kadizzle drifted over to the train station. Flagstaff is one of the busiest rail corridors in the world; nearly everything coming out of the ports in Los Angeles thunders through town. Sitting on the platform, Kadizzle decided to pass the morning watching the endless stream of freight cars.

A man with a backpack sat nearby. Before long, a conversation started. He explained he had a master’s degree in counseling but was now homeless. Still, he found comfort in watching the trains roll by each morning. He even mentioned that one of the passing freights carried nuclear waste. Kadizzle offered him a few dollars, but the man politely refused. When asked where he slept, he simply said: “In the forest.”

Talk turned to hobos. Kadizzle brought up Shoestring—a legendary rail rider who filmed his adventures until his death. To Kadizzle’s surprise, the man had actually met him on the rails. He confirmed that Shoestring’s favorite riding spot—inside the little nook on a grain car—was indeed the best place. “But you always need cardboard,” he explained. “Otherwise the steel freezes you.”

They laughed about the “drone”—the pusher engine at the end of the train. Kadizzle always thought it would be a good spot to ride since nobody’s inside. The man agreed and added that locomotives have bathrooms, a luxury for life on the rails.

The trains kept roaring through as they talked. Kadizzle asked about accidents, and his companion grew somber. While cars rarely get trapped on Flagstaff’s tricky crossings, pedestrians sometimes do. And then there are suicides. He told a grim story of witnessing one: someone stepping in front of a train, their body torn apart. The image was hard to shake—those freights never slow down.

Another topic: railroad pirates. Thieves, he said, target trains parked on sidings in remote areas. Kadizzle had seen it himself—once spotting a container door swinging open, its contents gone. Another time, a car full of tires with half of them stolen.

By the end of the morning, Kadizzle realized it had been a strange but fascinating sit at the train station. A quiet meal, a random encounter, and a window into a world most people never see—all while the trains kept rolling, unstoppable.

---