He’s a long, lanky drink of water with a laconic sk8r-boy vibe. And could the dude’s name be any cooler? It’s Drayke with a y, drawn from Old English and Norse, meaning “dragon.”
A scruff of dark hair brushes his neck from under a black baseball cap. He pads silently through the aisles of model trains and model train parts and accessories, many new, some vintage, some European, at The Original Whistle Stop, located on the slightly seedy east end of Pasadena’s Colorado Boulevard.
The shop, with its spectacular outdoor neon signage, has been a fixture there since 1951.
Checking details and examining a few items closely, he nods and confers with his equally lanky father, Joe, who looks like a badass rocker because he actually is one.
Joe’s a lyricist, vocalist, composer and guitarist who performs and records under the name Joe Normal — the family name is Hutchinson — and his album titles include “Just a Normal Day in Normaltown.”
A native of Elizabeth, New Jersey, Joe’s hard-driving, working-class, blue-collar catalog may bring to mind music by other musician sons of the Garden State, which include Bon Jovi and Springsteen.
The Hutchinsons seem like the ultimately chill father-son duo, sharing a few seemingly telepathic jokes as they pore over the train components.
“We’re total nerds, geeks,” says Joe with a broad smile. Drayke’s YouTube channel, Runaway Trains, is gaining subscribers, and this makes both father and son happy. Only after you get into Drayke’s space to ask him a question do you realize that Drayke is different.
He is a person on the autism spectrum.
Autism is a term which crops up more and more in the current conversation. The term is often misunderstood, and people today with only a smidge of quasi-clinical knowledge are apt to self-diagnose by stating “I’m (or they) are on the spectrum.”
They may or may not be, in fact.
The “spectrum” part is worth knowing, because until quite recently, autism was often called Asperger syndrome. Autism is not an illness, but rather a neurodevelopmental disorder.
And, like nearly all conditions, autism is not monolithic. People with autism differ as widely as neurotypicals.
Father and son browse contentedly through the shop’s museum-like aisles of train merch, beneath walls filled with vintage train lanterns, art (some plucked from dumpsters), artifacts, and what are known as drum-heads to train-geeks, circular metal plates bearing a train line’s name and logo that were once affixed to the back end of a locomotive.
They’re regulars here, checking in at least once a week. The Home Depot and Hobby Lobby are other favorite stops.
Joe says, “This is our normal, this is our groove. When Drayke was born, I was in the room with my wife, Drayke’s mother, Gigi. Instead of putting our baby on his mom’s belly, the doctor handed him to me. And we’ve been like this…” — Joe holds up two fingers pressed together — “…ever since.”
In addition to music, Joe paints, does ceramics, and creates funky desk-lamps from glass insulators, usually Aegean aqua in color, used on telegraph and communications poles until the ’70s. He and Drayke display and sell the lamps at pop-ups and art fairs as a way to promote their YouTube channel.
Drayke’s fascination with trains is not unusual for individuals with autism. One of the characteristics of people with autism is a tendency to laser-focus on a specific type of object, and to take satisfaction in collecting, organizing and arranging their objects. Anyone who finds joy in, say, re-configuring their linen closet and creating neat stacks, or carefully filing recipes alphabetically, cross-referenced by type of cuisine, knows the feeling.
In addition to a keen interest in model trains, Drayke also loves the paranormal and ghost-hunting, and has his own spectral-sussing equipment. He also loves reptiles, sharks, the color green and his black cat named Indigo.
Because people with autism often are initially reserved in new social situations, in the past they have frequently been misdiagnosed as unable to hear or speak. Neither is true in Drayke’s case, although the 22-year-old is a man of few words who avoids eye-contact, at least at first.
His father comments “If anything, Drayke has supersonic hearing. He can hear a pin drop a mile away. He’s also sensitive to extreme smells.”
Joe frequently asks Drayke questions to prompt conversation. Drayke’s answers, at least when surrounded by strangers, are usually monosyllabic, sometimes just a shrug or a nod, but it’s immediately clear that Drayke possesses expertise in this passion-project which is more than just a hobby.
On camera when filming for his YouTube channel, however, a very different Drayke, animated and expressive, emerges.
A video from Joe and Drayke’s Runaway Trains YouTube channel.
Joe will sometimes speak with his son via telephone at home from a different room if Drayke is feeling overwhelmed or overstimulated.
He says “Drayke is typically shy around new people. He’ll use me to communicate for him until he is comfortable around the new person. But once he gets comfortable with someone new, he’s a real chatterbox.”
In generations past, individuals on the autism spectrum were frequently misdiagnosed and institutionalized as “unreachable.” Further complicating the experience of neurotypicals interacting with people on the spectrum is the added twist that many people with autism are intellectually gifted, British math savant Daniel Tammet, for example.
One also thinks of Dustin Hoffman’s film character Raymond in “Rain Man,” and the slyly enigmatic Chief in Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” In this way, a person with autism may seem like a walled garden, a library on lockdown, a buried treasure, remote and mysterious.
Joe holds the map and the key, hard-earned. Drayke also grants access to a few close friends who sometimes appear with him on his YouTube channel and accompany him and Joe on expeditions to railroading trade fairs and events, scouting for parts and introducing newcomers to his channel.
Whenever possible, they take the train.
The guys at The Original Whistle Stop, Bruce Openshaw and Paul Sheffer, say that they love seeing Drayke in the store.
Openshaw says, “I’ve been working here for about four years, and I remember first meeting Drayke. He was very, very quiet. But now, he’s more at ease here.”
Quite separate from the sheer geek-appeal of trains, this shop is a snapshot in time. Vintage gumball machines and a gallery of vintage Americana, known as railroadiana to those in the know, create a nostalgic vibe.
Sheffer comments, “Making model trains isn’t passive. It requires critical thinking, planning, fine motor skills, imagination, delayed gratification, learning from mistakes. All of this is good for kids, and I think this may be some of what appeals to Drayke—a sense of creative accomplishment.”
Joe adds that The Original Whistle Stop has gifted unique vintage trains to his son, adding “They really get him. We love that.”
Back home, the Hutchinson compound is a railroader’s dream, set on rambling grounds that were once orange groves with a foothills view. Container-gardens of squash and tomatoes struggle valiantly against a late-summer heat wave, and a rescued pomegranate tree is bravely bearing first fruit.
A statue of St. Francis beside a birdbath casts a benevolent gaze across the big yard as patchouli incense wafts sweetly from a joss-stick. A little dog named Spirit trots eagerly beside the Hutchinson men as they open the doors to the large, white-painted wooden frame structure they call “the barn.”
It’s a century-old man-cave that brings to life the great American romance with trains, captured in the American songbook with indelible tunes like Libba Cotten’s Freight Train, The Wabash Cannonball, The Orange Blossom Special, The City of New Orleans, John Henry, Midnight Train to Georgia, Peace Train, Long Train Runnin’, and too many more to remember.
Inside, the walls bear signage from the New York City subway system and other vintage gandy-dancer gear. Shelves brim with train cars, parts, tools and supplies including enamel paint for detail work, and a jar of a sticky, mint-green product charmingly named Bullfrog Snot.
The guys use Bullfrog Snot to increase traction of the engine wheels on the tracks, making the passage more sure-footed as the train whips over grades and around hair-pin turns. Sometimes wheel-surfaces need to be prepped with emery paper before applying the Snot in thin layers with a fine brush or even a toothpick. Excess cured Snot is removed with an Exacto knife.
Bullfrog Snot application requires the sort of patient, surgical precision that most neurotypicals find excruciating, and at which Drayke excels.
In the center of the room is a massive landscape layout crafted by hand, laced with tracks and depots where the trains terminate and depart. The engines whip around papier-maché mountains and even wind past a tiny cemetery with Tic-Tac-sized headstones on the outskirts of the miniature town.
“Scenic cement” is used as a spray to keep faux-snow, granite-like ballast and sand in place. Tiny plastic elk prance on the peaks, and cocktail-stirrer-size palm trees define a desert scene.
Drayke mans the controls, motivating what used to be called a streetcar to issue a spark from its overhead line. A push of another button results in a plaintive whistle-call from a passing locomotive engine.
Something buckles on the line, derailing the cars, and Drayke ducks low under the table-skirt to pop up through the opening in the center of the layout. And suddenly his voice is clear and direct.
“It keeps doing that because it’s the wrong connector, Dad,” he says firmly.
Drayke, along with his friends Earl, Nick and a few others, share a special love for the iconic Thomas & Friends locomotive adventures. And on the subject of love, Drayke also has a romantic interest. Her name is Theresa.
Joe surveys the layout as Drayke fiddles with a sprocket. “This guy is amazing,” says Joe. “He’s my teacher when it comes to persistence. This train layout will never be finished, really.”
“It’s always gonna be a work in progress. Just like us.”
Videos from Joe and Drayke’s extensive Runaway Trains YouTube Channel
