| Years before hitting the road at 13 years old as a mandolin player in Lester Flatt's band, country rocker Marty Stuart heard the call to ride the rails. "I grew up near the railroad tracks," Marty says. "The trains would stop to deliver steel for the factory. As a little boy, I would go down and talk to the old guy in the caboose. He gave me flares and I set the woods on fire.
That's where I met my first hobo. I thought hobos were the coolest. He told me stories of riding the Orange Blossom and the Seaboard Coastline Railroad. I went home and told my mom I wanted to be a hobo. So, then I became the next lowest thing--a musician."
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