Amorous Luminous Dirk, And How He Thinks He Does It

I'm often asked by no one ever about romance on the American hobo road. Well, in a word, it's.

In two words, it's complicated. 

With the penniless wandering and camping and being chased and beaten and arrested and beaten some more and re-arrested and the losing of toes and fingertips in winter, and the summertime bouts of poison ivy and malaria - and also the bad stuff - hoboes had enough on their plates. Initiating, developing, and sustaining relationships just didn't factor into the average hobo's plans.

Amorous Luminous Dirk was not the average hobo. He was spectacularly successful with the ladies, both hobo and non-hobo. He was the maestro of the hobo pickup line. The reality show bachelors of 2018 could take a lesson from this filthy drifter. 

[Editor's note: It was the 1930s. Times were different. Men were different. Women were different. Everything was different.]

In no particular order, here are Amorous Luminous Dirk's ten favorite pickup lines:

1. Hi. Yes, that is a lint ball in my pocket, but I am definitely happy to see you, nonetheless...
2. Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven - or from the running board of the refrigerated box car that carried you here from heaven - or the stock yards? Or Baltimore? I think you know what I'm trying to say, wink-wink...
3. Top of the evening to you, m'lady. I can just tell that you didn't vote for Hoover... 
4. My parents died of gangrene, after having their lower legs shredded by an angry mother black bear of whom they ran afoul along the Appalachian trail in 1928 - what horrible fate met your folks...
5. I'm sure you hear this a hundred times a day, but I would trade all the creosote and plywood in the world for five seconds of holding your hand...
6. I fought in the Great War, and I came home in one piece. My pension will afford us a lovely little home in Utica, with a yard and a white picket fence and a dog, and I promise you here and now that my drunken night terrors have all but cleared up, so whaddaya say, doll...
7. Do you like beans? 'Cuz I... Wait - where are you going...
8. Hey, baby - have I got a New Deal for you...
9. How d'you do, ma'am - Do you know what bio-luminescence is?
10. Hi. I'm sorry I am a hobo. I promise that I am a good and honorable, righteous and respectful man. May I please have this dance? I promise to disappear at your slightest frown of disapproval...

He had other lines, some more effective than others, but almost none of them landed. Until, that is, the night in mid-1942 when he snuck into the war bonds fundraiser under the stars in Allentown, where he tried #9 on Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick, and his whole world changed...

 

Train.