Part 1: "Butchered Up"

By the mid-nineteen-nineties, the United States population of train tramps and hobos dropped to only a few thousand from their Depression-era numbers of two million plus. This turn-around began in 1941, when the U.S. began actions during WWII, which led to the military draft, and "the creation of millions of jobs in defense and war industries.” The man we're telling you about today started hopping the rails as a full-time hobo lifestyle in 1991, half a century after the Second World War. He lived as ruler in a kingdom as expansive as the contiguous United States, yet as slim as the space between the rails of the nearly 140,000 miles of freight tracks crisscrossing the country. A nearly unstoppable man, in a world where violence was the law. He called himself Sidetrack.

Episode Host: Josh McCullough

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