That changed in 2016 when he was housed in Ogden through a federal program then called Shelter Plus Care, which was designed to find homes for the chronically homeless with disabilities. The Standard-Examiner documented Harding’s initial transition into life between four walls through 2018.

In those difficult early days, Harding had moments where leaving his newfound bills, regular check-ins and other responsibilities behind him and skipping off to Las Vegas or somewhere seemed like a potential escape — a return to his own unique brand of normalcy. Rather than give in to that temptation, though, he made his appointments, followed the steps put out before him and built a new, different kind of existence.

And he wants the people who have followed his story and cared for his comings and goings to know he’s still doing alright.

“I think they’re taking evaluation of where it’s taken me. … Am I flaked out? Am I a big stoner? Am I a basehead or anything like that, a crackhead? I’m not,” Harding told the Standard-Examiner. “I got 1,700 movies. Because it takes me away from my reality. At least two, three hours, I could be gone from here. The movie hits my head. It takes me away.”

Born in Pocatello, Idaho, and raised in nearby Rexburg, Harding was put into the foster care system at age 10. Two years later, he ran away and eventually found himself jailed. At 17, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps and, over the course of his four-year service, he learned some of the skills that helped him survive what eventually would become nearly 30 years spent on the rails, on the streets and under bridges.

“They taught me camo, they taught me never to assume anything about nobody,” Harding said. “Because, oh man, that book might look real sweet to buy; you start digging into it and it’s an ugly bunch of chapters in there.”

Some things he had to learn on his own, like to keep his sleeping bag unzipped at night, the importance of having a road flare or two at his side for self-defense and the finer points of Bubble Wrap alert systems.

These days, Harding’s concerns could not be more different. Now, a good time for him is a movie, “four or five ibuprofen, a good chili dog or something, and a nice, pretty day.” He also likes to visit the Riverdale Road bridge and watch the trains at night with some music, smokes and his memories to keep him company.

“I’ve got that federal marshal down there so buffaloed, just by sitting there and smoking a cigarette and looking at the rails. It relaxes me and makes me feel more at ease watching the trains going in and out and stuff,” he said. “But he sits down there and he looks up, sees me up there, and I’ve got a ghetto blaster on my back. … He thinks I’m timing trains to see when to catch them or whatnot. He doesn’t know I’m retired, but he sat there for about 45 minutes one time, pointing in my direction until I go riding off.”

Retired or no, Harding says he does miss the camaraderie he felt with some of the people who were living the vagabond life with him, including many fellow veterans. Harding was a member of the Freight Train Riders of America and its precursors, loose organizations of freight hoppers. And he wonders how things might have been for him had he known then what he does now.

“Thirty-eight-year-old bod, with my mind right now, I’d go in there a little wiser, too, and be able to travel and know where to travel,” Harding said.

Nevertheless, he admits that those days are probably behind him. The desire to live life unbound is still there, at least in part, but he’s squarely focused on what’s ahead of him.

Recently, Harding has been transitioned to a mainstream voucher program. He now has fewer check-ins with his caseworker and, potentially, more freedom to be ported to new housing, provided it’s available and he continues to meet the conditions of his program. He credits Laura Peters, one of his original caseworkers at the Weber Housing Authority, for helping get him to this point.

“I said … ‘Laura, if there’s any way I can get it through to you, you got me in a place where I’d still be on a freight train with a 40-ouncer for a friend, probably peed my pants and dead on the tracks. Your position mattered,'” Harding recalled of a conversation he had with Peters.

His goal at this juncture is to make something of a fresh start, free from the people who would judge him for where he has been, and also the people who might look to take advantage of him in his current circumstance.

“I want to get out of these people, these nosy people who fill in the blanks with their own imagination about you,” he said, adding, “I don’t know who to let in and who not to anymore because, are you letting in a trap?”

To that end, Harding would like to move to Salt Lake City, where he says people can “disappear” into their own lives.

“People don’t eyeball you all the time. They’re not conscious of you all the time, wherever you go,” he said. “Here? Nosyville.”

Whether we’ll soon have seen the last of “Boy Scout” in Ogden remains to be seen. In the meantime, Lannette Westbroek, Harding’s current case manager, says he has continued to excel in his housing program.

“He has been doing really great,” Westbroek told the Standard-Examiner. “He is one that has been doing pretty good for a while and probably could have been moved sooner.”

Said Westbroek of the impact permanent supportive housing programs have had locally: “Honestly, some of these clients, even with case management, still struggle. You’re working with them over and over and over. … But, if we did not have these case management programs, these people would remain homeless. They would get housed and they would lose it in a few months and then they’re getting evictions and then they’re having a harder time getting housing. So, it would really increase those numbers again for homeless population.

“I believe the case management really, really helps these people, this clientele, with the disabilities and other barriers that they have to deal with. It really helps them get housed and learn how to remain successfully housed. You know, there’s always fallbacks but, usually, it’s like, ‘OK, you know what, let’s do it again. Let’s do it again.'”