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| Solid First Draft. One of TWELVE. Photo by Joe |
I'm often asked by no one whether any of John Hodgman's 700 Hoboes had aspirations beyond mere survival. Of course they did! They may be fictitious, ridiculously-monikered caricatures, but they're only human. They had hopes and dreams, just like everyone else. For example, the Apron brothers - Leather, Lead, and Foil - were on the verge of striking it rich, licensing their three lines of aprons to Macy's of New York in 1928, when their own attorney stole their design specs and business plan, and presented the whole scheme to Macy's as his own. This kind of thing happens every day - to this day. Humans are apex predators.
Patton Taylor's future was not stolen by predation. His future was euthanized by the Great Depression and his own abject neglect.
His life began in miraculous, tragic fashion, in a humble two-bedroom ranch-style house in Gary, Indiana. His father, a longshoreman, helped deliver him and his stillborn twin on New Year's Eve, 1900. He was different from the start - smart, but sensitive, insecure and oddly angry at the world. By the time he graduated high school in 1917, he had developed a way with words. He could write. He found it simultaneously impossibly challenging and the easiest, most natural activity, and he was never without one of his notebooks, which he filled with observations, character sketches, and all manner of stories. His father, his few friends, and virtually all of his classmates derided his hobby as pointless, self-serving, impractical, and somehow unmasculine. It would never make him a good factory worker, longshoreman, or businessman, so it was utter folly. Over time, he developed callouses on his psyche.
This protective layer of hardness was just enough to enable him to, over the span of the next decade, produce a dozen first drafts of novels. He and a couple of trusted friends thought two or three of them might have even had potential. Life, as it often does, got in the way of any fledgling plans for publication of these stories, and they lived as a heavy, handwritten family of untapped potential, in a canvas bag that Patton carried everywhere. In November of 1929, he lost his job as a stableman at the Gary Trolley Company, and joined the ranks of America's unemployed, spending his days queued up for scarce day jobs, queued up for cups of soup and crusts of jagged bread, and queued in the long, long line awaiting death and/or salvation.
His parents died within two months of each other, in early 1930. His mother, a waitress in a speakeasy, was crushed by an illegal barrel of hooch. Patton's father, profoundly distraught, but stalwartly standing in line for work on the docks, was struck in the head by a homemade baseball, a wayward foul off the bat of a thirteen-year old playing stickball on the street. He died less than instantly. These were, as such events often are, the final straws, for Patton. He packed up his novels and all his portable worldly possessions and hit the road, searching for work and belonging and a way forward. Within months, he was a card-carrying (which here means stick-and-bindle-carrying) citizen of Hobo Nation.
He walked the rails, hopped trains, got chased by man and dog alike, spent nights in jails, spent nights in churches, bartered with lint and whatever possessions he could carry, and survived. Both of you dear readers - and you, New Reader, can fill in the blanks. The hobo as we know him is not devoid of honor. He wanders homeless across the miles, always seeking whatever work he can find, but not too proud to accept the charity of strangers. He can tell a Mikado locomotive from a Pacific, by the sound of its whistle, two miles away. There's a hobo code, and he sticks to it as best as he can. It's not an easy life, but it is a life. And life is life.
This hobo, who quickly earned the moniker "Solid First Draft Patton Taylor," walked the rails of the Chicago and Northwestern, Illinois Central, and Baltimore and Ohio railroads throughout the 30's - his thirties - and came to be known as a capable and resourceful hobo. He helped his fellow 'bo, shared when he had enough to share (and even sometimes when he hadn't enough), embraced any work that he was offered, and kept walking - all the while carrying with him a dozen novels, his pride and joy and shame.
One night, outside the Western Ohio Hobo Jamboree and Hootenanny in Eaton, in a weak, inebriated moment, he showed his work to Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick. He figured that if, upon perusing his manuscripts, she failed to haul off and stab him quick[ly], then maybe - just maybe - his writing might have a smidgen of merit.
Ol' Barb had many gifts. Okay, she only had one that anyone knew of - her propensity for quickly up and stabbing people. Unbeknownst to her hobo brethren until this night was her gift for reading - speedreading, actually. She skimmed his earliest work, "Tiny Scars," about his childhood in the terrible Gary Indiana public school system, and his survival thereof. She plowed through "Worcestershire In The Embalming Fluid" and its sister novel, "Sand In The Worcestershire In The Embalming Fluid." Zombies - yuck. "Falling Off The Universe" had potential; she loved the characters and the outer space stuff, but it needed work. Then came "Buck Mope Catches The Westbound," about a pair of young lovers and their hundred-year old hobo friend. Again - potential. Ol' Barb would never, ever admit it, but she shed a little stabby tear over this one.
Next, in rapid succession, she zipped through "Bane's Existence" - hmm... ghost romance is complicated - and "Undead Drunk" (zombies, but funny), and "Party At Ground Zero" - what the heck is "ground zero," Patton? She soldiered on through "Plan Nine From Inner Space," which felt like a fever dream. No one wants to read someone else's dream, let alone someone else's fever dream. Things picked up around 4:30am, as Ol' Barb dug into "Milo And The Art Of Nodus Tollens." She shook her head at Patton and declared that he was indeed not at all a hobo, but a writer. As dawn broke and her eyelids grew heavy, she speed-read "Back To Somewhere Else," and repeated her conclusion. "Why haven't you published these, you lunkhead?"
"I don't care for rejection letters," he deadpanned.
"Write one for me."
"What? Why?" he asked.
"Because you can, and I asked you to. Also if you don't, I'll stab you..."
"Quick?"
"SO quick," she affirmed
A month later, he showed her his newest creative effort, "Songs From Later," and she became slightly sad. "Okay, it's not great, but even this one can be polished up into a real gem. Listen to Ol Barb - if you hit .300 over a ten-year baseball career, you're going to be in the Hall Of Fame. You got a dozen of these things, and three or four of 'em got potential. That's around .300, You're the Hall Of Fame player who never tried out for the team..."
"I'm just a hobo who makes up stories, is all," Patton sighed. "It's okay if no one ever hears 'em."
She shook her head. "No siree. You are a goddamn writer. Don't make me tell you again."
"Big deal," he said, fully cognizant of the risk he was taking by talking back to the infamous Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick. "I'm still just a hobo."
"You have a ticket out of this life, my friend. Use it. You've bought the ticket; take the ride. Maybe the ride goes nowhere, sure. But maybe - just perhaps - it takes you to better worlds. You wanna die trackside in the cold gravel, with an unused ticket your pocket?"
"No?" he said tentatively.
"No. Now - about this 'Songs From Later' one - is it my imagination, or is your protagonist suspiciously similar to me in several meaningful ways?"
"No. Maybe. Are you mad?"
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