Apr

18

Hat on Head

Doc Bo Keeley's Hobo Timeline

Aug 22, 1900

- The first Hobo Convention is held at Brit Iowa, and to this day hobos and the curious gather 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, N.Y.

At six months whisked in a laundry basket on the back seat of a '40 Mercury to Santa Cruz, Ca.

1978

Hit driving a VW van 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 Brit, 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 too 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 Brit 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.

Says,' 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 school for the blind in a one year study of the mind.

Speak to the NYC Junto on hoboing.

1986

Hobo in America is canceled 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 kitchen floor when a lasso of Borax fails to repel them.

Hitch to the Missouri national Rainbow Gathering.

Sacramento to Brit 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 hoboing.

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 Mexcio to Taho with a custom fanny pack.

Sacramento to Brit to the Eris with hoboette Mappy.

Ride in his cherry Cadillac and the rails with Hobo King Steam Train Maury Graham

Third Executive trip from Grand Junction to Roseville with LinuxCare CEO Art Tyde and Doug Casey.

Nabbed by the Salt Lake bull and to court where the judge slams gavel, 'Dismissed with prejudice'.

Three days in the LA Country 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' award with a hobo ride-along reporter to Mt. Shasta.

Escort hoboettes Mappy, Silver Sidekick and ChooChoo from Sacramento to the Brit 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, sidecar and a boat.

1990-4

Mother dies in my arms.

Tour NYC subway and steam tunnels to ferret HUD's (human underground dwellers).

Hike and canoe the Okefenokee Swamp; swept to sea by 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 catch 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 a one-year sequester in a Ct. stairwell to quantify near-deaths on the rails and world byways with a dream goal of Catman with 'nine lives'.

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 through 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.

2000

Second person to walk the 220-mile Mojave Road from Needles to Barstow.

Hike with a llama two weeks along the Sierra Nevada.

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 that clamps security on hoboing.

First person to walk 250 miles on the California's 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 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 dailyspeculations.com, swans.com/main.shtml, northbankfred.com/stories.html and internationalman.com.

2004

Resident Sand Valley, Ca. consultant to Rancho Costa Nada: The Dirt-Cheap Desert Homestead (Phil Garlington).

Trapped by flash floods in Sand Valley for the first full summer as three die in the heat.

Spokesman for the Canadian Safety Pak for survival.

2005

Rail across Canada with South African accountant Tom 'Diesel' Dyson.

Ride disguised as Mexicans with Diesel Dyson and Central American immigrants through Mexico to the USA border.

2006

Executive bo 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 Keely Executive Tour Services founded as businessperson's outward bound on the North American rails.

2008

Executive outing to the Baja Santa Maria Mission ruins.


2009

Lost on the Rails from Colton San Bernardino with executive bo Rail Mariner (Computer services).

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 to dismiss the case.

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, Rails and Trials (Free Man Publisher).

Hobo Jungle: Tales of the Iron Road (Free Man Publisher).


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