The Hobo Handbook

For decades, train hoppers have maintained—and guarded access to—the Crew Change Guide, a handbook for riding freight throughout the US and Canada. “You can’t buy such a book, can’t download it, can’t trace its often multiple authors,” Jeremiah David writes. “But if you run in the right circles, all you have to do is ask.” For The Paris Review, David, who never properly asked for his own copy, tells the story of how he came to possess one anyway. His essay is a fascinating literary history of an underground text, a lyrical appraisal of its contents, and a sparkling study of yearning. Take the ride.

I took to walking the train tracks at night, learning the routes and schedules and watching the gutter punks scurry out noiselessly from under a bridge near the rail yard. I even packed a sleeping bag once and spread it out on the bucket of a parked grainer—a train car with a small covered porch. I lay there in the dark for hours before stumbling home at first light. The train hissed and sputtered but never moved an inch.

When I relayed this latest disappointment to a friend, he finally pitied me enough to give me his copy of the Guide. He was a mid-thirties seasonal firefighter with a long blond mullet and a black canvas jacket he rubbed with beeswax to waterproof it. He handed me a bundle of unbound pages. No raising my right hand, no oath, no witnesses. “I think you need it more,” he said, tossing the bundle in my lap.