Gandy Dancer

 A Gandy Dancer

 

​A gandy dancer is the most primitive form of railroad worker. It is a small closely knit group of men bound tightly by the burden of their great toil. In the summer of 1979 after leaving A-Basin in Colorado, I was ski bumming and found myself in Kendricks Crossing of Wyoming on my way to ski Jackson Hole that following winter. Being broke and destitute I found myself living on a railroad siding in the middle of nowhere Wyoming and sleeping in converted rail cars, washing in shower cars and eating in dining cars.

​The rail was laid onto the rail road ties in one quarter mile pieces and because of the heat of the plains where they joined together they would often overlap as much as two to three feet. A large front end loader was brought in and a twenty foot piece of rail was suspended by a logging chain. The men were lined up on each side of the piece of rail. A maneuver known as bumping rail was performed. By striking the one quarter mile piece of steel with the twenty foot piece, we would take hours if not all day to move the larger piece the distance required to couple the rail together. There was often a song or a cadence shouted or sung to establish a rhythm.

​Thinking about it know, they were some of the best years of my life. The adventure and the humanity of the school of hard knocks. However, I did get to ski Jackson Hole that year.

Written on the plains of Kendricks Crossing, Wyoming

 

Gandy Dancer

 

Steel,

cold, hard, heavy,

steel sings, ring.

 

Gandy Man,

blisters upon your hands,

understand life’s lot.

 

Blue, so very god damned blue,

is the color that I choose,

just a starrin down at my tattered,

hiking shoes.

 

Grey,

grey is the color of my pants,

as yet one more,

of they’re working ants.

 

Writing my poems by the light

of a kerosene lamp,

my arms too tired,

to slide under my pillow,

looking toward another day closer

to a future filled with great white hope,

but a night time filled warding off

the smell of industrial soap.

(The Thoughts of the World’s Greatest Ski Bum)