Read This, Not That

Youth & Flames

The culture of young drifters - “train hoppers” and “squatters” - is widely misunderstood, dehumanized, and ignored. The youths that take to the road and rails are often written off as troublemakers and criminals, but, as with any group so marginalized, there’s much more to be found beyond the accusations of the straight world. Writing for the Boston Review, Danielle Morton investigates a handful of lives lost to a squat fire in New Orleans and in doing so offers us a glimpse into this obscured world.

I didn’t ask many questions, and  [my daughter]  didn’t volunteer much. She didn’t think I’d ever understand why she had to go or what she was seeking when she left. The most she and her friends offered by way of explanation were stories about hopping trains.

Like the August evening she and her traveling buddy Joey Two Times hopped a Cadillac grainer out of Alabama. The grainer’s front and back angle to a wide V that funnels the cargo out a spigot in the bottom. The Cadillac feature is its fenced porches, fore and aft. This is where they lounged as the train pulled away from the heat of the barren yard. Within an hour or two, the moon had risen, and they were snaking through the lush southern summer singing at the tops of their lungs.

I could see that. I could feel it. And because of that, I didn’t believe that what I valued and what my daughter did were now so far apart that we no longer shared a common language. I had to admit there were moments when I admired her bravery, and her timing.

…

Then in the early hours of December 28, 2010 eight people, some of whom she knew, died in that terrible conflagration in New Orleans. Suddenly we had the common language of grief. The dead—aged 17 to 29—were from Wisconsin, Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Nebraska, and New Orleans. I knew how they died, but I didn’t know how they lived. How had they ended up in the squat on that night? What forces had pushed them onto the rails, and what had they left behind? Was I an outlier among those eight sets of parents, or were there others like me? Perhaps Marissa was right that I couldn’t understand, but this tragedy made me want to try.

I knew I’d never be allowed into this clandestine and suspicious world without my daughter as my guide. I asked her to take me there. To my surprise, she agreed.

Read the full article here.