The hobo briefly chronicled, with various degrees of accuracy, both McClaughry’s political accomplishments to that point and highlights of his hobo days. Among the former were working on Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign, serving under Vermont senator Winston Prouty and Illinois senator Charles Percy, being named to presidential commissions by both Nixon and Jimmy Carter, and being a speech writer and policy adviser to Reagan. Among the latter, the time Feather River John and Hot Shot Timer jumped from a moving freight train and the latter busted up his nose. “The ‘Hobo in the White House’ piece is not a trustworthy source for anything,” McClaughry cautions.
Blackie the VP and Feather River John its secretary. Hot Shot Timer, aka Vogel, was the foundation’s lawyer. “The best part is, I’ve never had to do anything; they’ve never had any trouble,” says Vogel. “Which is good, because I’m not licensed in Vermont, let alone Iowa.” While opening the museum may be the Hobo Foundation’s most visible accomplishment, that wasn’t its primary mission, at least not to start. “Hood River Blackie was really concerned about the ultimate fate of old hobos,” McClaughry explains. Hobos, by and large, don’t have retirement plans. So the Hobo Foundation was created to help house elderly hobos. One project was raising funds to lease government land for a hobo retirement
important for all views to be heard. And I have great respect for his willingness to continue to speak out.” Roper, president of the Ethan Allen Institute, calls McClaughry “the conscience of the Libertarian wing of the Republican Party. He’s an extremely principled person who doesn’t play politics with his ideology at all.” Roper cites a June 4 op-ed McClaughry penned for VTDigger.org titled “The school property tax deadlock.” As Roper puts it, McClaughry “basically sides with the Democrats over [Gov. Phil Scott]” on education funding. McClaughry declines to delve too deeply into his politics with Seven Days — he’s more interested in talking about hoboing. But, asked if he sees a connection
YOU SEE A DIFFERENT PART OF AMERICA THAN YOU DO WHEN YOU’RE BARRELING DOWN A HIGHWAY PLAGUED WITH BILLBOARDS. H O T S H OT T I M ER/ BARRY VOGEL
A HOBO’S LUCK
Contact: dan@sevendaysvt.com
FEATURE 35
There’s another way to hop on a train besides absconding in a boxcar or hooking a ladder on the fly. But it’s best saved for a last resort. “You can swing into a moving boxcar, if you’re sufficiently athletic,” advises McClaughry. Boxcar doors have a lever, he explains. When they’re open, you can grab
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between his hobo days and his political life, he is clear: “There is no connection whatsoever.” That may be true. As Palieri, Moylan and Vogel all note, for many modern, post-steam-train-era hobos, hoboing was more a passing era of their lives than an enduring vocation. But those looking to square Feather River John with John McClaughry might do so by considering the namesake of his Libertarian-minded think tank, the Ethan Allen Institute. McClaughry notes that, in his frequent letters to the editor of the Hartford Courant, the Green Mountain Boys leader typically signed off as “Ethan Allen, lover of liberty and property.” While hobos may not be known for their acquisition of property, few people live as freely as they do, with as few regulations and restraints. “The IRS had a lot of questions,” McClaughry recalls of incorporating the Hobo Foundation. “So I sent them a letter saying they needed to tell me why providing a safe, comfortable resting place for elderly Americans is not a social purpose. And I guess that did the trick.” And so the train rolls on.
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camp. According to McClaughry, it never amounted to much, and the land was already in use, albeit informally, as a hobo jungle. “Hobos are big on informality,” he notes. The altruistic intentions of that project might surprise Vermonters familiar with McClaughry’s conservative politics. But former Vermont governor Jim Douglas says they’re not out of character. “John has always served the interests and needs of his constituents well,” says the Republican who held the state’s top post from 2003 to 2011. Douglas has known McClaughry for years in various political capacities. Most notably, both were on the Republican ticket in 1992, when McClaughry ran for governor against Howard Dean, who won the election. Douglas sought and won reelection for secretary of state. If one views hobos as McClaughry’s constituency, then it makes sense he would work for their interests, just as he’s long taken up the causes of economically struggling farmers in Kirby. “It was a charitable cause,” says McClaughry of the Hobo Foundation. “And there’s crazier things that have been incorporated.” “John is very principled, very articulate, and is someone who has the courage of his convictions and is not afraid to express them,” says Douglas. “John’s views may be less and less in the mainstream as Vermont becomes bluer and bluer,” the former governor continues, referring to McClaughry’s farright Jeffersonian politics. “But I think it’s
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Hood River Blackie did get at least one thing right: McClaughry’s role in the formation of the Hobo Foundation in the mid-’70s. Along with Hood River Blackie and a hobo king named Steam Train Maury Graham, he established the organization as a nonprofit and registered it in Vermont as a 501(c)(3) in the late 1970s. Though McClaughry was no longer involved by this point, in 1989 the foundation was responsible for starting the National Hobo Museum in Britt, Iowa. Britt, also the site of the National Hobo Cemetery, has long been the center of hobo culture in the U.S. It hosts an annual celebration, Hobo Days, that draws thousands of hobos from around the country to see the annual crowning of a hobo king and queen. The title carries little responsibility; it’s more of an honorific. Compared with the other two founders of the Hobo Foundation, “John was more educated — not necessarily smarter, but more educated,” says hobo queen Connecticut Shorty, aka Betty Moylan. Moylan, a 75-year-old former insurance worker from Hartford, Conn., rode the rails in the 1990s as a retiree, logging 5,000 miles. She never hoboed with McClaughry, though he did once meet her father, Connecticut Slim, who hoboed for more than 40 years. And she and her sister, New York Maggie — also a hobo queen — visited McClaughry once in Kirby. “He had the skills to get the Hobo Foundation incorporated as a nonprofit,” Moylan observes. Steam Train Maury Graham was the foundation’s first president, Hood River
the lever and swing your feet up into the car. “There’s a risk of ending up on your butt on the side of the tracks, but it can be done,” he continues. “I’ve done it.” After they left the police station in 1962, Feather River John and Hot Shot Timer began hoofing it north in the direction of the railyard in Oroville, Calif. Thumbs out, they tried hitchhiking. The first car to pull up alongside them belonged to the railroad agent. “You guys are going back to try and catch that train, aren’t you?” he asked through the window. “Well, it did cross our minds, yes,” Feather River John responded. “All right, climb in. I’ll get you up there,” said the agent, checking his watch. With Feather River John and Hot Shot Timer in the back, the car took off. “I know what train you boys want, and I wanna get you there,” the agent said, hitting the accelerator. When they reached the yard, the train had already pulled out toward the main rail line. So the agent pulled onto a dirt road that ran alongside the track, racing the train to get ahead of an empty boxcar. When he had enough of a lead on the boxcar, the agent slowed. The hobos bailed out of the moving car, flung their bags into the also-moving boxcar, grabbed the handle and swung in. Safely aboard, they waved goodbye to the railroad agent. Inside the car, a couple of other hobos had been watching the scene unfold, bewildered. “This was beyond anybody’s experience,” recalls McClaughry, “that a railroad agent would deliver a couple of hobos to a moving freight train. There were naturally some questions.” He remembers the other hobos’ expressions of wary skepticism. Neither McClaughry nor Vogel is quite sure why the agent picked them up. “I guess he just took a liking to a couple of young hobos,” suggests Vogel. Or maybe he knew something that only a few daring individuals have experienced: There’s no adventure quite like riding the rails. “It’s a different way of seeing the world,” says Vogel. “You see a different part of America than you do when you’re barreling down a highway plagued with billboards.” “It’s a sense of independence and freedom that you can’t really replace in a structured life,” says Moylan. Then again, maybe Feather River John and Hot Shot Timer were simply in the right place at the right time. “What can I say?” says McClaughry. “Sometimes you just get lucky.” m