Banner Graphic, Volume 13, Number 110, Greencastle, Putnam County, 15 January 1983 — Page 2

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The Putnam County Banner-Graphic, January 15,1983

Kings of the road Riding the rails and spinning the tales

By IVER PETERSON c. 1983 N.Y. Times News Serv ice YUMA, Ariz. George stood in the boxcar’s gaping door as the Sonora Desert slid by under winter stars, Arcturus raced over the Picacho Mountains and the manlike saguaro cactus. Telephone lines dipped and rose, dipped and rose along the tracks, and over it all rang the clatter of an empty freight car, pitching and rocking and pounding through the Arizona night. “If you do too much of this, it gets in your blood,” he said at last. “If you get to riding the trains too much, you sign up for the duration.” George was traveling with his blanket tied up in plastic clothesline and a paper bag holding a half-eaten loaf of bread and some sandwich meat. He calls himself a tramp, but whatever the name, he is part of a rising number of people who travel the dangerous and illegal road of a railroad hobo. Some of the newcomers ride because they are unemployed and, in the long recession, havelost the means to look for jobs by car or bus. Others ride because it is an easily mastered way of life with a style, a language, even a history of its own. Many keep on riding simply because they have no place else to go but the freight yards. And women are joining the ranks of the tramps. They still usually travel with a man, but are also spotted alone, waiting beside the tracks with the telltale badge of the tramp, a plastic gallon milk jug full of water. A freight train ride can go on for hours and no passenger services are provided. With George in the empty boxcar westbound from Tucson was a man called Leonard, the only name he offered. First-names-only is the rule on the freights, although George, who is 46 years old, eventually volunteered that his last name was Williams. A pair of novice freight-hoppers in the boxcar had already learned that riding the rails is 10 percent riding and 90 percent waiting. This day began with George and Leonard waiting in a little park across from the Southern Pacific freight yards in Tucson, peering east for the lights of a locomotive, and listening. Shortly after noon a Tucson policeman drove up and chased the men out of the park. “Fellas,” he said in a tone that was exasperated but not unkind, “the people in those houses are afraid to use the park with you in it.” Across the road, in a narrow no man’s land under a power line between city property and the railyards, the men camped to resume their vigil, and talked a bit. The two old-timers had worked fairly steadily in recent years, George for an oilfield equipment company in Odessa, Texas, and Leonard for a foundry in Tulsa, Okla. Both were laid off before Christmas. George was headed for Los Angeles and a vaguely described family, while Leonard, who said he had no family, was going to Indio, Calif., where he expected to find work in the vegetable harvest. Hitchiking, with any certainty of reaching a distant goal, is out of the question these days, they said. “Remember all the people doing all the hitchhiking in the 60s? Most of them are riding the trains now,” Leonard said. “You just don’t get the rides any more. The love generation grew up and put a lock on the door.” For many, however, riding the rails seems as much a choice as a necessity. “This is my winter vacation,” said Bill B. Young, waiting for a train on the California side of the Colorado River from

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Banner-Graphic “It Waves For All” USPS 142-020) Consolidation of The Daily Banner Established 1850 The Herald The Daily Graphic Established 1883 Telephone 653-5151 Published daily except Sundays and holidays by LuMar Newspapers. Inc. at 100 North Jackson St.. Greencastle. Indiana 46135. Entered in the Post Office at Greencastle. Indiana, as 2nd class mail matter under Act of March 7.1878. Subscription Rates Per Week, by carrier *I.OO Per Month, by motor route ‘4.55 Mail Subscription Rates R.R. in Rest of Rest of Putnam County Indiana U.S.A. 3 Months *13.80 *14.15 *17.25 6 Months *27.60 ‘28.30 ‘34.50 1 Year ‘55.20 *56.60 ‘69.00 Mail subscriptions payable in advance . . . not accepted in town and where motor route service is available. Member of the Associated Press The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to the use for republication of all the local news printed in this newspaper.

Yuma. He said he was an underwater welder. “I could have a thousand dollars in my pocket and I’d still ride a train. It’s enjoyable,” he went on. “I've met 10,000 friends around this country riding freights. I know where to get free meals, free clothes, free haircuts, free showers. Not that I useshowers that much. I had one a couple days ago." If that sounds romantic, there are harsher truths about the people a tramp meets on the rails. George counts on his fingers the tales he has heard of drunken riders falling under the wheels of the trains. Everyone has a tale of being robbed or assaulted, sometimes knifed. "Many of these people are not the nicest people you will meet,” said Rich Hall, a spokesman for Southern Pacific in Tucson, who agreed that the number of freight hoppers has risen. “Many are a kind of lumpen-proletarian criminal class.” he added, with considerable accuracy. George, for example, spent two years in Folsom Prison in California, for, as he put it, “lying to the judge.” “I said I was innocent and she found out I was guilty,” he explained, omitting what it was he was found guilty of. George’s intricate stories of police harrassment, arrests, threats and shakedowns, all related without a trace of rancor, revealed the turmoil of his life in his native Los Angeles. So did the scars on his body, including one 27-stitch gash nearly running from ear to ear around his neck. “My girlfriend did it,” he said kindly, “but she didn’t know what she was doing at the time.” For Leonard, a tidy man in his 30’s who combs his beard and somehow keeps a crease in his faded jeans, an imprudent youthfulness and the money he thought could be made from narcotics ended in a term at Deadwood, another California prison, where inmates fight forest fires. Not just any train will do to ride. A freight that pulled in during the daylong wait in Tucson, for example, was a “piggyback," a string of flatcars carrying truck trailers and ships containers, with a few car carriers loaded with new automobiles. At sunset a westbound freight pulled into the freight yard and stopped. Only a car-carrier was accessible from the side the travellers were on, but the westering sun, shining through a crack in one boxcar door, showed that its doors were open on the far side of the train. Also on the far side, looking down the train, was the railroad guard. “I think that car carrier’s our ride,” said Leonard. “I don’t like it.” said George. “The bull is waiting for us. If that train pulls out and we're not sitting here, he'll know where we are and he'll stop it someplace and throw us off . ” "Either this is our ride or it ain't, and we ain't gonna know til we try.” said Leonard, heading for the car carrier. “Snooze, you loose." The others followed. Presently the train started again and once out of the yard, the men relaxed. “You know," said George, “I think that bull knew u-e was on this train and let us go. He just wanted us out of his yard.” Later, after a stop by the train, the men had moved five doors down to the empty boxcar, sleeping rolls spread out before its cavernous doors, hobo sofas for a tramp's picture window. Cheese and crackers followed a small flask of tequila from hand to hand. For hours, nobody spoke until, after six hours, the slowing tempo of the heels and warm, moist air of the Colorado RiverValley announced their arrival in Yuma.

Judge bans Sunday '6O Minutes" segment

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - CBS vowed to quickly appeal an order by a federal judge who blocked the broadcast of a “60 Minutes" segment this Sunday after lawyers for police accused of brutality said it would “seriously prejudice” their defense. U.S. District Judge Adrian Duplantier on Friday issued the handwritten order barring broadcast of the report after CBS refused to show him a script of the program segment. There was no hearing in open

Farm-owned grain reserve exceeds expectations

WASHINGTON (AP) - Huge amounts of excess grain are moving into the government’s so-called farmer-owned reserve program, which has helped strengthen prices a bit, says the Agriculture Department. But global and U.S. grain stocks are still at record levels and are continuing to thwart any major price boom in the near future. That does not take into consideration, however, the

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court. Duplantier conferred w'ith the lawyers in his office before issuing his order. Robert E. Barkley Jr., a CBS attorney in New Orleans, said the judge’s order amounted to a nationwide blackout of the program. Geraldine Sharp-Newton, a spokeswoman for CBS News in New York, said in a prepared statement that CBS would appeal the ruling today to the sth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here. Lawyers for seven New

effect of federal acreage programs on 1983 output. A new supply-and-demand report issued Friday said that entries of feed grain in the far-mer-owned reserve “have been above expectations” for the past month. Grain in the reserve is under price support loan and for the time being, at least must be kept off the market until prices rise enough to trigger the

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Mouth open wide and still as a statue, "Robby,” a huge sea elephant at the Duisburg Zoo in West Germany, awaits his daily food.rations. Animal keeper Martin

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Orleans police officers awaiting trial for alleged civil rights violations in their investigation of the Nov. 8. 1980. murder of Officer Greg Neupert had asked to have the segment banned. The lawyers said the "60 Minutes" report was based on interviews with people listed as “victims” in the indictment. The “Algiers Seven” were charged with threatening and physically abusing people questioned in the Neupert killing, violating their civil rights.

grain’s release. A feature of the "payment-in-kind” program announced by the administration earlier this week is to use the reserve stocks to pay farmers for taking additional land from crop production this year. The analysis did not go into the PIK program’s impact, since PIK will primarily affect the supply and demand situation in 1983-84 and beyond.

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AiDertaz has the daily duty of making sure ''Robby” gets his fill and keeps both his disposition and his slim-and-trim figure. (AP Wirephoto).

“Among other things, the officers handcuffed or tied persons in their custody to a chair, struck them over the head with a large book, struck them in the chest with their fists, and 'bagged' them placed a bag over their head and sealed it off at the bottom to cut off the person's air supply,” a grand jury indictment said. The seven are scheduled to go on trial Feb. 7 in U.S. District Court in Dallas. The trial was moved to Texas because the defense successfully argued

With larger entries oF feed grain into the reserve, corn prices now are expected to average $2.20 to $2.40 per bushel in the 1982-83 marketing year which runs through Sept. 30. That is up 5 cents from prospects a month ago, but is still below the average of $2.45 last year. Sorghum prices also could be up a nickel from the December forecast and average $2.20 to $2.35 a bushel, about the same

that pre-trial publicity made a fair trial impossible in New Orleans. Neupert, who was white, was killed with a .38-caliber pistol while sitting in his patrol car near a black housing project in the Algiers section of New Orleans. Police then conducted a sweep of the neighborhood, a tough area where authorities seldom venture without a backup force. Four blacks were shot to death by police in the city in less than a month.

as last season’s $2.25 average. The outlook for wheat supplies is “virtually unchanged” from last month, with farm prices expected to average $3.40 to $3.50 per bushel in the wheat marketing year which will end May 31. Last season wheat averaged $3.65 per bushel. Soybean prices, estimated at $5.25 to $5.75 per bushel, are unchanged from prospects announced last month.

Climber believed dead survives Everest fall KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) A Belgian mountain climber presumed killed more than two weeks ago in a 164-foot fall on Mount Everest returned unharmed Friday, saying he survived with the help of Tibetan villagers who at first thought he was the Abominable Snowman. It was the second time Jean Bourgeois, 46, was lost in the Himalayas. In 1966 he and another climber survived for 10 days after avalanches swept them from peaks in the Hindukush range in Afghanistan. Arriving in Katmandu by truck from Kodari, on the NepalTibet border. Bourgeois said he fell Dec. 30 "on the wrong side of the mountain (Everest). If it would have been on the Nepalese side. I would have been killed in the fall along the steep ridge. I am happy to be back.” The accident took place when Bourgeois was descending after giving up his attempt to go to a 22,960-foot camp along with four other members of a French expedition trying to climb the west ridge of 29,028-foot Everest, the world’s tallest peak.

Reagan sees no disarray c. 1983 N.Y. Times WASHINGTON - President Reagan Friday rejected criticism that his ad-1 jninistration was in disarray and contended that faulty news stories, not his leadership, was the problem. “I came in to point out to you accurately where the disarray lies,” the president said during a brief news conference in the WTiite House press room. “It’s in those stories that seem to be going around, because they are not based on fact.” Reagan, rebutting the most intense criticism thus far in his two-year-old administration, denounced as inaccurate a spate of recent news stories quoting unnamed officials with negative criticism of White House procedures on budget management and foreign affairs. He said there had been “such disarray approaching chaos in the press corps” on arms control stories lately that he felt obliged to come forth to reassure the Western allies. “It is true that I ask and want to hear differing viewpoints on things,” the president declared, maintaining an even tone and smiling at one point as he complained to reporters about their coverage. “But then, I make the decisions. And this has been working very well.” The stories Reagan complained of focused on two recent events, a series of major lastminute changes in his budget strategy, and a decision to replace some of the administration’s principal disarmament negotiators only weeks before talks are to resume with the Soviet Union. The president’s decision to come forth and deal directly with the criticism followed his mandate earlier this week to silence anonymous, unauthorized comment by White House staff aides. This unofficial but traditional pipeline for information, a symbiotic procedure over the years for various administrations and the press, was singled out for criticism by Reagan. “This has been very inac* curate things that are only options being presented and in which there has been ho decision,” the president said, discussing recent stories about the budget. In these, staff aides told of intense searches for lastminute budget devices, including the acceptance of tax increases and defense spending reductions earlier considered anathema to the president’s position. “I have asked for the widest range of options.” Reagan said. “And then I see them suddenly announced, as rumored that I have made a decision or that I have decided on this or I’m willing to go this way or not. That is w-here, as I say, that the leaks have been very inaccurate and I just don’t think you should place so much confidence in them.” The president, whose political successes over the years have garnered him the reputation as “the Great Communicator,” historically was following the mid-term precedent of earlier presidents in showing increasing sensitivity to criticism in news stories and political editorials.