When I was young, I spent a lot of time in train yards. I was really into graffiti, and freight trains were like rolling art galleries on metal where you could see work by people from across the country. One of the most prolific writers was Colossus of Roads, who scribbled the profile of a cowboy’s face on what seemed like every boxcar in America. Under each profile was a cryptic message—“big mistake,” “audience expands,” “never came back.” It was rumored that Colossus was a railway worker who had been at it since the 1970s.
He drew his moniker in the folkloric style of hobo art. In the 1930s, during the depths of the Great Depression, a large number of Americans illegally hopped freight trains in search of work. Legend has it that they communicated with one another through pictograms. Each symbol carried a meaning: “this town has work,” “doctor here won’t charge,” “religious talk gets free meal.” These symbols were a way to make a dangerous journey safer for fellow itinerants.
In 2015, I found someone talking about Colossus of Roads on a menswear message board; it was his nephew. I couldn’t believe it. The poster agreed to put me in touch with his uncle, Russell Butler (who turned out to be a former brakeman on the Missouri Pacific Railroad). I told Butler how much his work had inspired me, and he agreed to sign the back of my Schott Perfecto. He tagged it with the same graphic I had seen so many times in the dead of night, then wrote “fragments of contumacy” underneath. I later had the jacket relined in antique Japanese boro. Now it’s a connection to a special time in my life that feels increasingly distant, much like the view of the station from a boxcar after the train departs.
This story appears in the March 2024 issue of Esquire
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