Hobos outed

We’ve all seen car transport vehicles but the one I saw last week traveling north on Green Avenue had something different about it.

The car on the top farthest away from the cab of the truck had a blinker flashing on and off.

I was curious how the turn indicator got turned on with the car up so high.

The blinking light on the car in transport took me back 47 years ago when I was just out of college and working as a cub reporter for The Madill Record.

I was on a ride along with the Madill Chief of Police when he got a call they were going to stop a freight train traveling through town with automobiles aboard.

The thing was, when the train would go around a bend the engineer could see blinkers on some of the vehicles lighting up.

It was determined the train had stowaways aboard and they were in the vehicles playing with the turn signals out of boredom.

So the police units all got into position and the train came to a halt right in the middle of Madill about 10 p.m.

I recall all the officers had their weapons drawn for the take down of what turned out to be a bunch of Hispanics who were catching a free ride on the rails.

The chief looked at me and then looked at his weapon.

Knowing I had no such piece of equipment on me he handed me a small billy club.

It was going to be like going to a gun fight with a switch blade.

I decided  the better part of  valor would be to just sit back and let the local lawmen do their thing with me way in background.

They got the people off the train and into the clink and I had a front row seat for the story of the week in the newspaper.