My first hobo ride was in a laundry basket, the next on the cowcatcher of a freight train, and then the rail journeys roll in this hobo life overview.
| Aug 22, 1900 | § The first Hobo Convention is held at Britt, Iowa, and to this day hobos and the curious gather with execs in the hobo jungle. There is a Hobo newspaper, a grapevine of symbols on RR water tanks, and the most successful hobo college in a Chicago hub of the expanding rail network. |
| 1949 | § Steven ‘Doc Bo’ Keeley is born in Schenectady, NY
§ At six months whisked in a laundry basket on the back seat of a ‘40 Mercury to Santa Cruz, Ca. |
| 1978 | § While driving a VW van, I’m hit by a freight train and carried 200 yards on the cowcatcher for the first hobo ride. |
| 1981 | § Experimental ride with Freedom Frey from Salt Lake to the Ogden Golden Spike.
§ Ride the rails from Salt Lake City to LA and learn the hobo ropes from two masters. § Nabbed by Canadian immigration during an unplanned border crossing inside a grain car. § Havre, Mt., to Minneapolis by rail and caught by the first bull who issues a warning. § Robbed by Minneapolis tramps and ask police to sleep the night in an empty cell. |
| 1982 | § Sell Michigan Garage Nirvana to tramp the country.
§ Cross-country hitchhike with twelve rides in four days from Michigan to San Diego. § Travel to southwestern missions with a Franciscan monk. § Pinned on an LA sidewalk by a demented man with a .45 pistol and a tin leg. § Join a Clydesdale wagon acting troupe along the California coast for a week. § Hobo throughout the West standing in food lines and staying in missions. § Invent boxcar handball. § Visit the Rajneesh ashram in Antelope, Oregon. § Climb Mt. Rainier. § Sacramento to the Britt, Iowa, National Hobo Convention, and back by freight. § First executive hobo trip Denver to Grand Junction with a Denver businessman and Australian pilot. § Second executive hobo trip Las Vegas to LA with two San Diego businessmen and a psychologist. § Surrounded and punched by four hoods while rescuing a San Diego victim. § Drunk redhead begs to show what’s ‘inside her pants’ and pulls out a hunting knife. § An epoch ends of spending one hour for about 3000 straight nights standing without a drink in bars across the country. |
| 1983 | § Finance travel with annual writing storms to create backlogs for mother to submit to magazines.
§ Drive a Chevy van around the USA with an invisible fish-line attached to a 7’ rabbit riding shotgun to wave down interesting people. § Sacramento to Salt Lake to Denver to Chicago to Minneapolis to Seattle to Sacramento by rail. § Near suffocation riding near the locomotives through the 6-mile Colorado Moffat Tunnel. § LA to Jacksonville to Newark by freight. § Freight from California to Dallas on the old Southern Pacific for a family Christmas. |
| 1984 | § Sacramento to Britt with hoboette ChooChoo Chelsea for the National Hobo Convention.
§ Caught on a moving freight ladder over the Salt Lake Causeway. § Hitchhike to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, and freight the transcontinental rail to California. § LA to Dallas and back by boxcar for a family Christmas. |
| 1985 | § Near-death from exposure trapped on a winter flatcar between Colorado Springs and Denver.
§ Say, “That’s enough!” through spaghetti in frozen beard on the high rail between Spokane to Minneapolis. § Sleep in a coffin lined with electric blankets through the Michigan winter. § Teach a sociology course “Hobo Life in America” at Lansing Community College in Michigan. § Write Hobo Training Manual for the course. § Profiled in a documentary hobo film. § Volunteer stints at Lansing nursing homes, adolescent and geriatric psych wards, orphanages and schools for the blind in a one year study of the mind. § Speak to the NYC Junto on hoboing. |
| 1986 | § “Hobo Life in America” is cancelled after one term by the college president due to an uproar—“The bum is teaching our kids to be tramps.”
§ Wilderness survival class from Peter Carrington. § Michigan to Indiana by rail with Locomotive Lotus for ‘Hands Across America.’ § Minneapolis to Spokane to Sacramento to St. Louis to Chicago with celebrity hobo Iowa Blackie. § Fall asleep covered with cockroaches on a Minneapolis kitchen floor when a lasso of Borax fails to repel them. § Hitch to the Missouri national Rainbow Gathering. § Sacramento to Britt with Hobo Queen candidate Silver Sidekick. § North Platte to Denver by freight with celebrity Hobo Herb. § First tattoo at a skid row parlor of a Road Mouse with a smile and teardrop. § Address the Aspen Eris Society about Executive Hobos. § Grand Junction to Sacramento by boxcar with financier Doug Casey. § Spokane to Chicago to Toledo by rail with hoboette Boxcar Beetle. § Chicago to LA and hook up with the National Hobo Association of movie star and yuppie riders. § Contributor to the NHA Hobo Times |
| 1987 | § Hike three months on the California Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Lake Tahoe with a custom fanny pack.
§ Sacramento to Britt to the Eris with hoboette Mappy. § Ride in his cherry Cadillac and the rails with Hobo King Steam Train Maury Graham § Third executive hobo trip from Grand Junction, Co., to Roseville, Ca., with Doug Casey and LinuxCare CEO Art Tyde. § Nabbed by the Salt Lake bull and to court where the judge slams the gavel, ‘dismissed with prejudice.’ § Three days in the LA County Jail for jaywalking from a bank robbery in progress. § LA to North Carolina by rail for a family Christmas. |
| 1988 | § Freight the USA perimeter working odd jobs and frequenting the Willies, Sallies, and Goodies for collectibles.
§ Hardest day’s work ever ketchin’ 2500 chickens with four retarded youths in deep Georgia. § Bay Area’s ‘Best Sunday Magazine Feature’ with a hobo ridealong reporter to Mt. Shasta. § Escort hoboettes Mappy, Silver Sidekick, and ChooChoo from Sacramento to the Britt convention and back. § Caught skinny dipping with the three hoboettes by the North Platt RR bull. § Recumbent bicycle with a wind sail the 500-mile Baja Cortez coast. |
| 1989 | § Sacramento to Grand Junction to Eris by freight with hoboette Silver Sidekick.
§ Grand Junction to Portland by rail with Doug Casey to inspect gold mines. § Save the life of an Oregon ‘apple knocker’ stuck on the latch of a rolling boxcar. § Ride the RR ‘low line’ from Washington to Chicago to Pittsburgh visiting a string of associates. § First and only life drunk on hopping down from a boxcar near Wilmington, De., to visit a girlfriend bartender. § Start cheap living to save money for travel: French-fry hotels, basement, shed, garage, cellar, laundry room, trailer, motorcycle sidecar, and a boat. |
| 1990-4 | § Mother dies in my arms.
§ Tour NYC subway and steam tunnels to ferret out HUDs (human underground dwellers). § Hike and canoe the Okefenokee Swamp; swept to sea on a tidal bore. § Travel under a backpack to 100 countries. |
| 1995 | § Return to Manhattan to compile a list of ‘Low-Life Indicators’ for commodities such as long cigarette butts in a bull market that catches print in the New York Observer and Barrons.
§ Ride a boxcar from Jacksonville, Fl., to New York and borrow a suit to wear to a meal with George Soros at the Four Seasons restaurant. § Explain hobo economics at global banking seminars. § Cast a skeleton list of near-deaths in writing Catman Keeley’s Memoirs during a one-year sequester in a Connecticut stairwell. |
| 1996 | § Artist Linda Mears paints Hit by Train as part of Adventure Art that become jigsaw puzzles.
§ Return to alma mater MSU to lecture on hobo and world travel. |
| 1997 | § Hike the 500-mile Long Trail of Vermont.
§ Hike the 600-mile Florida Trail alligator gauntlet from the Everglades to Georgia. § Black Friday, October 27, 1997, Dow mini-crash and The New Yorker takes a swat at Keeley for it. |
| 1998 | § Walk the 130-mile length of Death Valley and stumble on the bleaching bones of a mysterious man.
§ Hike the 600-mile Baja coast from Cabo San Lucas until forced out by rattlers. § Hike the Colorado Trail 500 miles through the Rockies from Denver to Durango. § From Education of a Speculator (1998, Victor Niederhoffer)—“When all’s said and done there’s the Hobo (Bo).” |
| 1999 | § Retire to a desert burrow as a hermit near the California-Mexico border.
§ The turn of the millennium passes unnoticed in the desert with Sir the Sidewinder doorkeeper and laptop computer. |
| 2000 | § Second person to walk the 220-mile Mojave Road from Needles to Barstow.
§ Hike with a llama two weeks along the Sierra Nevada crest. § Freight from Reno to Colorado for Eris. |
| 2001 | § Fifth executive hobo trip from Sacramento to Denver and back with the LinuxCare CEO, a Canadian stock broker, NY speculator, and Bay Area head of emergency response. Trip ends on 9/11 terrorist attack, which clamps security on hoboing.
§ First person to walk 250 miles on the California Heritage Trail. § Begin a series The Desert News in scorching Sand Valley, Ca. |
| 2002 | § Hitchhike the perimeter of Baja Mexico.
§ Hike from Mexico to San Bernardino on the Pacific Crest Trail. § Walk 24 hours waterless and lost in a Sonora desert, near death. |
| 2003 | § Liberty Magazine article shames a Florida peace officer after ‘36 hours in the Broward County Jail.’
§ One hundred posts of hobo and travel yarns at Websites of Daily Speculations, International Man, Swans Commentary, and North Bank Fred |
| 2004 | § Resident consultant to Rancho Costa Nada: The Dirt-Cheap Desert Homestead (Phil Garlington).
§ Trapped by flash floods in Sand Valley for one summer as three die in the heat. § Spokesman for the Canadian Safety Pak for survival. |
| 2005 | § Rail across Canada with South African CPA Tom ‘Diesel’ Dyson.
§ Ride disguised as Mexicans with Diesel Dyson and Central American immigrants through Mexico to the USA border. |
| 2006 | § Executive Hobo trip with Baby Jack Black (Hollywood TV show) from Eugene to Seattle.
§ Grammy songwriter Shandi Sinnamon writes and performs ‘Baby Black Jack and Bo Kerouac.’ |
| 2007 | § Bo Keeley Executive Tour Services founded as a businessperson’s ‘outward bound’ on the rails. |
| 2008 | § Executive outing to the Baja Santa Maria Mission ruins. |
| 2008 | § Belen, NM, to Clovis, NM., and back with retired IBM Applehead. |
| 2009 | § “Lost on the Rails” from Colton yard San Bernardino with computer executive Rail Mariner. |
| 2010 | § Ride the Mexican rails with anthropologist Boxcar Dolly and Central Americans from Guaymas to Juarez.
§ Orange County district court switches DNA on a Conservancy trespass charge resulting in case dismissal. § Executive trip with Rev (Medical Devices president) from Colton RR yard to Tucson. § Peter Gorman’s Renaissance on the Rails profile wins 1st place for the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies ‘best feature of the year.’ § Halloween trick or treat on the rails with Boxcar Dolly from Sacramento to Cheyenne to Portland. |
| 2011 | § Take to the rails on being fired trying to stop a ‘playground war’ at the Blythe, Ca., Middle School.
§ Keeley’s Kures: Alternative healings from the trails and trials of a world-champion hobo-adventurer published. § Executive Hobo: Riding the American Dream published. § Become an itinerant expatriate writing from select global Shangri-Las including Iquitos, Peru, San Felipe, Mexico, and Lake Toba, Sumatra. |
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