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(The following column by Jill Callison appeared on the Argus Leader website on March 26, 2009.)

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — You can squeeze yourself so snugly into the corner of a boxcar, Mark Nichols says, that no one knows you’re there but you and God.

“Sometimes you squeeze in so far, I don’t know if God knows you’re there,” he says.

Nichols would know.

For almost 20 years, he has lived as a professional hobo, someone who relies on freight trains to travel the country, free from an 8-to-5 job, yard work and family responsibilities.

To those who frequent the Argus Leader reader blog and forum, Nichols is known as Shoestring1989.

For months, he has shared stories of his life, entrancing those who do work 8 to 5, mow their yards and raise their families.

Along the way, friendships have developed. When 38-year-old Nichols, who suffers from several medical ailments that he prefers not to make public, sought a sleeping bag or a heavy blanket before he headed south early in the winter, people he knew only as riteon, TankCommander and WarrenPhear, among others, responded.

In fact, he didn’t ride the rails on that trip home to his family. Instead someone on the forum purchased a bus ticket so he would have more protection from the elements.

Nichols is back in Sioux Falls for a few days. His “itchy britches,” combined with treatment that has improved his health, pushed him out of Texas for a while.

And Sioux Falls, he says, feels like a second home.

It’s odd that he even ended up in Sioux Falls, Nichols says, since the city isn’t a hub of train traffic.

“I’d been through here half a dozen times by train,” Nichols says.

“Usually that was by accident because there are no rails that run straight through Sioux Falls. A local out of Sioux City (Iowa) or Willmar (Minn.) will come here directly or dead-end here.”

Nichols says he has seen tags on the wall near Union Gospel Mission that indicate other hobos have come here by accident, thinking they were going to one of those two cities.

Nichols adopted his “Shoestring1989” tag because of a Mel McDaniels song about a hobo named Shoestring who caught a southbound train to Florida.

He heard that song in 1988. The next year, Nichols himself was riding the rails.

He was 19, emerging from a childhood that saw 26 moves before high school graduation. His father and his stepfather worked for nuclear plants, transferring frequently. The longest Nichols lived in one place was nine months; the shortest, 17 days.

“We used the same boxes we moved in with,” he says. “They already had our names on them.”

Did the frequent moves lead to a life on the rails, or is it just coincidence? Nichols himself isn’t quite sure.

But after a brief stint in the Army, he decided to try hitchhiking. Six weeks later, in Laramie, Wyo., he looked into a train yard and saw a man and his dog.

“Where do you want to go?” the hobo asked Nichols, who chose Seattle.

The man gave him precise directions, but after boarding one train, the novice Nichols stayed on until it reached Stockton, Calif., two and a half days later.

From that first ride, he was hooked.

“It’s so soothing, and it’s a way to escape,” Nichols says.

“No one can make fun of you, no one can throw stuff at you, you’re not judged. If you’re hitchhiking, you have to talk to somebody. Most times, they’re weirdos. They pick you up so they can prophesize you or something.”

Hoboing has led to a police record. Nichols has been in jail, usually once a year for an overnight stay. His longest stretch: 20 days in Pensacola, Fla., when he came before an unsympathetic judge.

He has been deported from Canada three times, he says, but Canadians don’t evict him for criminal reasons, only because he has little money.

When Nichols does need cash, he picks up day-labor jobs. That’s usually when he needs new jeans or to replace his boots.

Or for disposable cameras.

Nichols now rarely travels without a camera, photographing the trains in the yard or the boxcar corners he curls up in or the scenery he passes.

Sometimes he photographs other riders. That doesn’t happen as often as it once did. Up until the mid-1990s, it was common to ride a freight train with half a dozen others.

After the terror attacks of 9-11, security on trains tightened up. Most of the security guards know him, Nichols says, and continue to let him ride. Newer riders were tossed out.

Rail workers often make his trip more comfortable, Nichols says.

“They get on the yard radio and get information for me, make sure I got bottled water, get food out of their lunch pail, hand me a couple bucks for the next stop,” he says.

His favorite train: the KCS, or Kansas City Southern. It runs down to Shreveport, giving him access to trains going to New Orleans or Houston.

Plus, it’s a pretty run, he says, going through Missouri and the Ozarks.

Nichols will leave Sioux Falls on Friday, again traveling by bus, this time at the insistence of the friends he has made at the medical clinic in Texas he visits.

But in Kansas City, where he has a four-hour layover, he plans to leave the bus depot and ride a city bus to the train station.

“I’d have time to go to the Union Pacific-KCS yard,” he says, longing in his voice. “The KCS has just started doing their logo in orange instead of the old gray.”