Editor's note: Press reporter David Cole took a road trip to Fargo, N.D., and Minneapolis early this month, in part to help a friend move to the Midwest. Cole returned by train.

It was light out when the train reached Minot, N.D. I was fully awake now, having slept since Fargo, and noticed the older gentleman. I first spotted the shoes. Either he or somebody else colored them with stars in red, pink and black marker.

He had a long, scraggly white beard and dirty clothes. He was slumped into a seat to my left, asleep.

I dug into my bags and began snacking, and got my water bottle filled in the dining car, which was the next car in front of my seat. I started my book on CD, "Siddhartha."

The gentleman seemed to sleep through breakfast. The smell of food was strong every time the doors opened as somebody entered or exited the dining car. The smell was tempting, but I stuck with my snacks.

Soon the gentleman was awake, staring out the window, but hardly moved as lunch rolled around.

Eventually, the last call came for full-service lunch in the dining car.

It was obvious the gentleman would be skipping lunch, too. I was due for a good deed, so I grabbed his shoulder and asked if he wanted to eat. His eyes bulged like he was witnessing a miracle. He said he was damn hungry, and quickly accepted my offer.

He wasn't sure-footed, so I helped him walk to a table in the dining car as the train swayed from side to side. The waitress said to me, "Hey, weren't you just in here?"

I had been, and downed a turkey chili and baked potato and multiple juices for lunch. She saw I had company this time and she gave him a few minutes to decide.

I still didn't know the man's name, and his voice was so soft I couldn't understand much he tried to say. There was a thumb-sized streak of dried dirt below his left eye, and the hair on the sides and in back of his head was long and wild like his beard. I caught that he was 83, maybe 84, and was adopted at age 6.

He managed to communicate he wanted coffee and scanned the menu for a few minutes before I recommended he choose the Angus steak burger. He thought $9.50 was a bit expensive.

Though we weren't traveling in a boxcar but on Amtrak's Empire Builder, he called himself a hobo, and said he'd been all around the country. I was thinking lunch with a genuine hobo on a sunny Monday afternoon aboard a train with eastern Montana whizzing by beat a day at the office.

The burger arrived quickly and it wasn't long before a good amount of ketchup clung to his beard. The four or five teeth he had left tore easily through the meat.

He occasionally mumbled, "If I had any sense."

As in, "If I had any sense at all I wouldn't have gotten on this train without something to eat, or some money to buy food."

He told me he was from Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He pulled eight or more Amtrak ticket stubs from his blue sports coat with sleeves ripped at the wrist. The stubs were collected as he made his way, in short stretches, west.

While I had been sleeping, he'd boarded at Rugby, N.D. Police there had paid for a hotel room for him after he had lingered too long at the train station.

I finally got his name from the stubs and the hotel room receipt, which he also pulled out for my inspection - Robert Esser.

Later, I Googled "Robert Esser, Wilkes-Barre." My search landed on a March 7, 2012, newspaper article headlined: "Wilkes-Barre fire claims two lives."

The story said Esser was a survivor of the blaze, and quoted him directly: "I wasn't afraid of the fire. I ain't got nothing to live for anyway."

Esser and I sat in silence as he shoveled food into his mouth.

He said he was tired of Pennsylvania and was on his way to Portland, where he had a couple friends. His most recent stub said he was to get the boot at Malta, Mont.

He had a few potato chips, the lettuce from his burger, and a pickle spear on his plate when we reached Malta.

I walked him back to his seat, where an overcoat covered his bag.

At that moment, a young woman with dreadlocks offered me $10 for my red-and-white Montana trucker's hat, which I accepted. I'd only paid $6 for it at Lincoln's 50,000 Silver Dollar Bar, in Haugan, Mont. It had been roughed up during the past several days.

By the time I had the $10 bill in hand, Esser was gone.

As the train pulled away and worked up speed, I wondered how a hobo like Esser would come up with the money he'd need for the next stretch on his westbound journey to Portland. It was a place he'd never been, and I wondered also how he would find his friends.

For hobos, I recalled, there is special meaning in the words "westbound train."