By TANYA EISERER / Abilene Reporter-News'Preacher man is Hobo Jungle's last resident
By TANYA EISERER / Abilene Reporter-News
Photo by Gerald Ewing
Roy Ward, known as the "Hobo Preacher Man," is the last full-time resident of an isolated strip of land known as Hobo Jungle.
Fire ants and primitive living conditions forced other residents to abandon Hobo Jungle, situated south of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Bridge across the Union Pacific Railroad tracks.
In the late 1980s, shacks and hovels - made by transients and homeless folks like Ward - once dotted the wooded landscape around Hobo Jungle.
"It's kind of dead now," said Patrolman Mark Watson. "There's not hardly anybody down there."
At one point, about 25 people made Hobo Jungle their home, he said.
"Most of them were people that had jumped the train," and most collected cans to finance their drinking and smoking habits, Watson said.
"They were more scared of us than we were of them. They were kind of out of touch with society," he said.
Watson said the rise of Hobo Jungle seemed to parallel Abilene's economic downturn fueled by falling oil prices. Conversely, Hobo Jungle cleared out as Abilene's economic fortunes rose.
"A few them may have also died off," Watson said.
Ward, 67, became known as the "Hobo Preacher Man" because he tries to witness to fellow transients. His "house," located in the heart of Hobo Jungle near Cedar Creek, is little more than a shack made with lumber and covered with layers of carpeting.
"I built this all by myself," Ward said. "It took me quite some time to fix it. I made sure it doesn't leak. If it ever comes a good wind, it'd blow the place down."
Cigarette butts litter the ground of Ward's ramshackle structure. A dirty yellow recliner is just inside the front entrance.
Ward grew up on a peanut farm in Comanche County. The Navy trained him in electronics, and after the Korean War he assembled airplane instruments in California.
He later worked with earthquake equipment and repaired radios for a while. He was divorced in 1963.
In 1979, Ward quit his last full-time job, as an air conditioner repairman in Midland, and began hitchhiking around the United States before settling in Hobo Jungle in 1987.
A radio provides Ward's only regular contact with the world. He listens to the news every morning and has opinions about events ranging from the beating of Rodney King to the shootings at Ruby Ridge.
He still keeps up with the day and time.
"Today is the 19th," he replied correctly when asked. "I usually keep a record."
Ward has weathered the travails of Hobo Jungle for a decade. Not even a flood could drive him away.
"I took my chair and sat on top of the bed," he said. "Finally I was sitting on top of that chair and the water was up to my knees."
By morning, the water subsided and Ward went back to life as usual.
Fire ants
The elderly hobo didn't let fire ants drive him from his home, either. He just devised a way to keep them from his bed and his food.
Taking pans and whatever other containers he can find, Ward fills them with water and strategically places them so the ants can't crawl up to reach him or his food.
"That's what keeps the ants out of my food," Ward explained.
He opened an ice chest to show that the ants hadn't gotten to his food, and he pulled out a spoiled package of bacon retrieved from a Dumpster.
"The outside is dirty, but they're sealed. It's plenty good to eat," he said.
The chest also contained rotten eggs and moldy bread.
"I get the food out of the Dumpster," said Ward, adding he knows all the best trash sites in town. "I can tell what is good.
Using Havoline plastic oil bottles as fuel, Ward cooks on a 55-gallon drum inside his shack. Soot has turned the walls almost pitch black.
A Christian man
Ward preaches temperance. He doesn't drink anymore, and he doesn't swear.
"The Lord's kept me sober for 33 years," he said, explaining he was "saved" in 1963. "I knew I had to live for God or die. I said, 'If I hate, God will kill me.' "
Wearing glasses, Ward pointed with his grubby fingers to a Scripture in his soot-covered Bible. The pages inside the book are still clean and white.
The same man who claims God has spoken to him through visions and dreams of eggs and nails has memorized portions of the biographies of Christian philosophers D.L. Moody and John Bunyan.
His favorite book is the 17th century English classic, <I>Pilgrim's Progress.<I>
Ray "Pops" Crabtree, a former resident of Hobo Jungle, said Ward walks up and down the railroad tracks preaching.
He has a PA system, Crabtree said. "You could hear him all night preaching."
Though he's now of retirement age, Ward hasn't been able to collect Social Security.
"I applied for my Social Security," he said. "They said we won't give it to you until you've got your discharge papers from the military. So I got my discharge papers. Now they said we won't give you anything unless you have your birth certificate."
But he hasn't been able to find any record he was ever born.
"My daddy lived up there in Tahoka when I was born. My daddy probably never reported it," Ward said.
Without benefits or a job, Ward has no regular source of income. When he needs money, he gathers aluminum cans, he said.
Despite his lack of money or creature comforts, Ward proclaimed, "The Lord's been exceedingly merciful to me."