Jimmy "New Man" Neandertal And Hugo Stares Are Not On The Same Page

 

"I have a message from the universe, but never mind." Photo by Joe

On a warm late-September afternoon in 1939, 30-year old Jimmy "New Man" Neandertal - so named because of his penchant for reinventing himself - was following the Southern Railway mainline north out of Charlottesville, Virginia, deep in thought. He was formulating the next incarnation of his persona, and felt that he was getting close.

"I feel that I am getting close," he said over his shoulder, in the direction of his traveling companion, a fellow hobo five years his senior, by the name of Hugo Stares. "Wanna hear what I've come up with? Hugo?" He turned to find the space previously occupied by Hugo now fully empty, save for a few gnats and a nosey dragonfly. Hugo had stopped about thirty feet back, and was now standing between the rails of a switch that led to a long siding. He was staring into a dogwood tree, hands on hips. Jimmy rolled his eyes and backtracked his way to where Hugo was standing with his gaze fixed somewhat accusingly on a sparrow sitting in the dogwood.

"Whaddaya suppose this guy's problem is?" Hugo growled, not interrupting his stare-down with the bird, who seemed puzzled, but undeterred from his chirping. "What the hell you want, ya dumb bird? What you think he wants, Jimmy?"

Jimmy looked at the sparrow, and the bird gave him a look in return, one that said, If I could shrug, sir, I most assuredly would. "I would be apt to wager that your diminutive avian acquaintance desires only what any sparrow would have - a meal, a song, a mate, and a nest - not necessarily in that order."

"Well I don't like him."

"Peep!" said the bird, as he made a tiny hop to the left and bent forward slightly, possibly in preparation for departure.

"My friend, it would behoove you to stand clear of that switch," Jimmy suggested, "lest you wish to find yourself here and there, a victim of the oft-overdue local freight, on its way to utilize this very siding at any moment."

Hugo finally turned his attention from the bird to his hobo companion. The sparrow decided that this was as good a time as any to depart, and departed - vanished really. "I see the switch, Jimmy - wait. Why you talkin' like that? That sounds familiar..." He thought for half a beat. "Say - are you quoting Foreign Tomas, The Strangetalker?"

"Um, yes - I guess so. More or less. That's what I was trying to tell you when I discovered that you had been waylaid by that malevolent presence, perched as it was so menacingly in a dogwood tree that you were left with no choice other than to engage it in an inter-species verbal tussle with nary a point in mind..." 

Hugo was staring at his friend, now. "What's wrong with you?"

Jimmy shrugged. "Nothing. I'm just tired of expressing myself, you know, not good. So, while my aim is not to imitate Foreign Tomas, or to be the next Foreign Tomas, I do indeed aspire to a more refined manner of verbal expression."

"Oh, I get it. You fixin' to become a new man again, mister New Man Neandertal? Again?"

"I am. It's what I do."

"Your pop was a two-star general in the Great War, and you guys was set to ride out the Depression just fine, but you took off, because you liked trains..."

"True enough," Jimmy agreed.

"And you decided to live up to your family name of Neandertal - never did understand how that could really be your actual honest to god name, by the way - and you spent your first five years as a 'bo using nothin' but grunts to communicate."

"Right. Admittedly not my most savvy move..."

"Yeah - you suffered more ass-whoopings than a delinquent in a nunnery - and that was mostly before I met you. Then, you assumed that tough, hunky Johnstown steel mill foreman persona. I gotta admit, you got the accent down pat, but you were not believable as a tough boss man type."

"Not my proudest few years," Jimmy sighed. "But I made it through, and you must admit, these last couple of years of being super-laid-back South Florida hobo Jim have worked okay for me."

"Eh... So-so, buddy. Everyone just thinks you're slow or something. And yeah - on the one hand, that takes the pressure off of me tryin' not to be the dumb one, but on the other hand, I kinda like bein' the dumb one, man! Fellas would ask me how I manage, takin' care of myself and my slow friend, and I had to just shrug like an idiot, and they'd walk away goin' 'well, birds of a feather and all that...' I hated it."

Jimmy put his hand on Hugo's shoulder. "I'm sorry, friend. I've been trying to put a stop to that dynamic for some time now. I only just came up with this 'talk like a smart and/or weird guy' persona. I memorized a lot of Foreign Tomas' sayings, and I think I can extrapolate from there. I think I can talk better. More interesting, you know?"

Hugo had found a wooly bear caterpillar making its way north on the polished steel of the outer rail of the Southern main, and he stopped to stare it down. "I dunno, Jimmy. Sounds like you might be headed for a whole bunch more ass whoopin's. Now, whaddaya suppose this little monster's beef is? What's your problem, fella?"

"Well, I intend to try it on for size, my old friend. I shall eat time and convert it to life, watching seconds become inklings, minutes begetting thoughts, and so forth... You're not even listening to me, are you?"

Hugo was not listening. Hugo was gearing up for a decidedly one-sided altercation with an insect.

"Good talk, Hugo. Good talk."

Mad Max And The Goose And Not The Goose: A Christmas Story Sort Of

With snow and everything! Photo by [Maris]

Mad Max was in no mood. His feet were soaked and nearly frozen. Much of the rest of him was likewise damp and/or painfully cold. His sidekicks were fussing and bickering, which was not helping matters at all. "I am in no mood, you two!" he spat. "I gotta find us some shelter from this freezing rain - I'd settle for an awning, about now. I can't handle another Christmas like this. I wish I'd taken your advice and headed south a couple of months ago, The Goose."

The Goose growled out a low sequence of throaty sounds that could be approximately translated to, "Told you so." Under his breath, he added, "I'm just happy to be waterproof, tonight."

Maxwell Small hadn't always been mad. In fact, he wasn't at all fond of the "Mad Max" moniker his hobo brethren had bestowed upon him in the early 1930s - mostly because he didn't see himself as even remotely crazy (or angry, if we're going to split hairs). He'd had a normal childhood in Bedford, Indiana. He graduated high school and started work as an apprentice mechanic, repairing everything from Model A's to the newest farm equipment. He buried both his parents (double-fatal yo-yo trick accident), joined hobo nation, acquired a clingy Canadian goose, and later a German shepherd-golden retriever-half-albino Labrador mutt who thought she was a goose, and like it or not he became Mad Max.

The Goose and the dog, who came to be called Not The Goose, were best friends from the moment they met. It was often hard to tell whether The Goose thought he was a dog - or Not The Goose thought she was a goose - or both. They chased each other. They mimicked each other's speech patterns and dialects. They slept together, curled up like a pair of kittens. They stole each other's food and fought and made up and vied for Max's affection. But one of them... was a goose.

Most of the time, this fact was not a problem. It was cute. "Oh, look at that crazy hobo," they would say, "with his odd-looking dog, and his goose that thinks he's a dog. So cute." But Halloween would come, and then everything from St. Louis to Atlantic City would turn brown and dead, and just like that it was open season on critters that looked like The Goose. Getting past Thanksgiving in one piece wasn't too hard, but soon after, he'd start hearing the words "Christmas" and "goose" together, and things would take a turn.

"This is ridiculous," Mad Max groused, "We're going south, next year - if we live that long."

"Honk honk, hisssss, honk," said The Goose.

"Aroo rowrowooo," Not The Goose Agreed. And they shared a good long laugh.

The Goose had put on a pound or two since the previous December, so apparently he looked more appetizing than ever. As Mad Max had led his anserine and canine charges east from Dayton to Zanesville to Wheeling to Morgantown, they were harassed by a dozen cleaver-wielding maniacs, bent on turning The Goose into the centerpiece of Christmas dinner. Max and Not The Goose had been extra vigilant since Thanksgiving, and had fought off every threat, but they were exhausted. 

"I love you, The Goose," Mad Max groaned, "but I think if we find a fella with a campsite - or just a proper fire - I might let him have you, just so that I might warm my toes before they die and fall off. I'm sorry."

The Goose laughed it off, as if Max was obviously joking, but he shook his feathers from neck to tail, and hunkered down defensively.

They passed a shed along the B&O main into Cumberland, and found themselves bathed in a warm glow. "Say, strangers," a gravelly voice called after them, "care to share a fire?"

They turned. The Goose hissed reflexively, then relaxed a bit. Not The Goose growled reflexively, then stood tall and let her tail wag - just a little. Mad Max braced himself for another attack on his plump waterfowl, then likewise eased up. "Great day in the morning, guys - it's JACK SKUNK, working his way as far east as he can get before New Year's! Jack, ol' buddy - you're a lifesaver and a saint - a true gentleman. We can't repay your kindness, this cold and rainy Christmas Eve, but we will gladly walk the rest of our days in your debt..."

And the three wet, frozen travelers huddled around the fire of one of the smelliest hoboes ever known, and were welcomed and warmed and not eaten, and it was good.

Mister Torso, The Legless Wonder Hitches A Ride

 

I failed subject-centering class. Photo by Joe

I think by now it's been well-established that life was hard for America's hoboes. We've probably also touched on the added difficulty of hobo life for minorities and women (I'll check later to confirm that). But to all of the above hoboes, tonight's 'bo says, "Hold my beer..."

Try traveling the country and hopping freight trains whilst having zero legs, and presumably just as many feet. How would that even work? Some sort of wheeled conveyance, and a ton of upper-body strength? A horse? Cyborg legs? For Mister Torso, The Legless Wonder, it was mostly the wheeled thing. 

In late 1940, he lost his job as a side-show attraction in the Cruel Horrible Circus, and became a hobo. He did indeed use a kind of homemade cart to get around. It was a lightweight plywood box with oversized rubber tires. It operated much like a simple wheelchair; he sat on his leg stumps and worked the wheels with his hands. It worked great on smooth, flat surfaces, but for obvious reasons, it was rubbish on railroad tracks and the gravel ballast in which they rested. He could steal rides on trains, but they had to be very slow-moving trains, and it really only worked if he was on a train-adjacent freight or passenger platform, as said train rolled past. Even then, it was incredibly challenging to grab one of the train's iron ladders with one hand, and the cart with the other, and then not die (or drop the cart).

The cart-dropping bit happened, one miserable, rainy night in 1941 - in Gary, Indiana. He rode the train until it stopped in Cleveland, racking his brain for ideas, but apart from "build a new cart," ideas wouldn't come. He was summarily evicted from the train by an unsympathetic yard cop, who recommended that he find a shopping cart and a gondolier's pole, for the getting around. Mister Torso pulled himself through the jagged ballast and out of harm's way, next to the tracks, and felt the weight of his disability. Woe was him. Some hours later, the rain dried up and the sun warmed everything just a bit, and he noticed a big, square silhouette stomping purposefully down the yard lead track toward him. The figure stopped when it was perpendicular to Mister Torso's trackside moping spot.

Atlas Flatshoulders was huge - at least six-foot four and 270lbs. - and he stood for a moment assessing Mister Torso and his situation. "Brother, where you bound?" he said at last.

"Pittsburgh," Mister Torso replied sadly. "Or, that is, I was - until I lost my wheeled cart. I'll never get there, now."

Atlas thought, scratching his big square chin. "Well, brother... How do you feel about heights? You okay sittin' up high?"

"I guess so," Torso speculated.

"I ain't had a traveling companion in I don't know how long," Atlas said. "And I've always wondered what use I'd ever have for these oddly flat shoulders of mine. What say we try an arrangement?"

For the next seven years, the two hoboes were inseparable. Atlas Flatshoulders had a friend, and Mister Torso The Legless Wonder had a ride - and a great view. And a friend.

The End.

 

Fatman And The Creature*

 

"Don't bother me. I'm... I'm pollinating." Photo by Joe

"I don't see how that's any of your business, but as a matter of fact I have had plenty of girlfriends," Fatman declared with righteous indignation. His wandering companion, The Creature, was needling him again. "Besides," he continued, "it's not like you're one to talk. I figure I ain't ever seen you with a dame, not once."

The Creature retorted with some odd clicks and slurps and grunts that only Fatman could understand.

"Yes, I know that's because you're a creature. But when I was a kid, even our old bloodhound had a girlfriend. Never seen you with a girl creature. Just sayin' - maybe don't give me so much guff about a thing you ain't exactly excelling in."

More clicks and guttural sounds from The Creature.

"Sure, bub. She's from Canada. I wouldn't know her. Whatever you say. Let's change the subject..."

Growls, a snort, two coughs and a long throat-clearing.

Fatman stopped shuffling westward and removed what was left of his cap, clutching it to his chest. "You're right. It is the 27th. I completely forgot the anniversaries. Here's a moment of silence to honor my dearly-departed mom and pop. May they rest in peace... What? I know I've never told you what happened to them. I don't want you making fun of me - or them."

Weird noises from The Creature.

"No, they did not jump into the lion yard at the zoo and get eaten. What's wrong with you?"

Snorts and gurgles.

"Obviously they were not cut down by tommy gun-wielding gangsters. My folks were good people. Never so much as crossed paths with the mob. They ran a candy shop. That much, you know. But if you're going to keep tossing ridiculous guesses at me, I might as well tell the stories. There's not much to them, anyway. Mom forgot her hairnet once in all her years in the shop. Just our luck - it was on taffy-pulling day. Not a lot of people know how powerful that machine is. Pulled her head clean off. Ruined a batch of peppermint."

Alarmed squeaks.

"I'm not being callous. Just stating facts. Anyway, exactly one year later, my old man was making a batch of cinnamon hard candies, and-- no, he didn't choke on one of them. Stop interrupting. Good guess, though. He inadvertently inhaled some cinnamon and coughed so hard he fractured his skull on a metal shelf."

Subdued grunts and a sigh from The Creature.

"Oh, that didn't kill him, no siree. One of the nurses at the hospital did. With a pillow. She said he was never going to wake up anyway, so she wanted to free me or some such nonsense... No, no - it's okay. She was probably right. Although it did trigger my year and a half of grief-eating, leading to my metamorphosis from a regular fellow named Arthur, to a stinky old hobo called Fatman. But it's still okay. I got an okay life. I got more lint than the average 'bo..."

The Creature emitted a question-y sort of sound.

"Oh, I do! I adore lint. It's not merely currency, to me. I like to pull mine from my pockets, roll it into a big fuzzy ball, and just stare at it and pet it. It's almost as entertaining as reading hobo graffiti on sheds and telegraph poles. I'm also pretty handy with a buck knife, and my skills in the area of squirrel cuisine ensure that I'll never go wanting for company, out here on the road. Speaking of which - it's getting late. Better nab me some dinner before the little fellers all head to their nests. I hear Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick and a couple of her gal pals will be passing through on their way east. I further hear that one of her friends likes her men a little portly, so I'm fixin' to make this a good night."

The Creature was pointedly silent.

"Oh I see what you're doing. I don't care what you say or don't say. A man can dream, can't he?"

*(Note: There was no creature) 

El Top-Hat Swindlefingers And PomPom The Texas Dancing Dog

 

A dog that's neither PomPom nor dancing, but you get the idea. Photo by [Maris]

It was a match made in hobo heaven. It was Thanksgiving weekend in Amarillo, and El Top-Hat Swindlefingers was sure he wouldn't make his self-imposed arbitrary revenue goal for the year. The harvest festival circuit had been a major disappointment. It was 1934, and the first wave of the drought that would come to be known as the Dust Bowl had taken its toll on northwest Texas. With failing crops and everyone down on their luck, there were precious few pockets worth picking, in Amarillo. He hoofed it to Lubbock. No better. So he headed west, hoping that Phoenix, or maybe southern California would provide more fertile scamming and stealing grounds.

Of course, El Top-Hat wasn't always a Swindlefingered hobo. He was born Derby Grabbinghands, to the Oklahoma City Grabbinghands, and his childhood was completely normal - apart from his grueling hours-long after-school lessons in grifting, pick-pocketing and assorted swindles. Then, in 1927, his father was indicted for embezzling from his employer, and while out on bail drowned himself in crude oil (There was a lot of oil in Oklahoma, at the time. When it got deep enough, indicted ne'er-do-wells could drown themselves in it.) His mother remarried within a year, and lived okay ever after. Derby made it through high school, graduating in May 1929. He enrolled at Oklahoma State University, but by the end of his first semester, the Great Depression had come along and ruined everything, and he dropped out.

After months of failing to find work, he gathered his things and hit the road and joined hobo nation, wandering the central and southern plains and stealing, grifting, and pick-pocketing his way though every town. He was good at his profession, smooth and careful and quick - and when he added a found top hat to his wardrobe, he became an elite street criminal. Sleight of hand relies on misdirection, and pickpocketing doubly so, and as top hats were rare in southwestern towns in the early 1930s, his served as a built-in rube distractor. He made out like a proverbial bandit for a while, and even thought about returning to the real world, getting a little apartment in a big city, and plying his trade on the populous. He just needed to bring his game to the next level.

He met his ticket to the next level in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in the form of PomPom The Texas Dancing Dog, a prancy little white four-legged hobo stray. She was bopping about in a downtown park, just having a grand old time - and, El Top-Hat was quick to note, distracting the living daylights out of everyone. She danced like any dancing dog, but without a human partner/handler. It was enthralling, and a crowd of passersby stopped and stared. El Top-Hat had his most profitable pickpocketing day yet. He hatched a plan - a simple one with almost no hatching even required. 

PomPom The Texas Dancing Dog was a true hobo, in that she wandered the railroads, chased - and sometimes stole rides on - trains, and was as fiercely independent as she was reliant on the kindness of strangers and/or said strangers' susceptibility to being robbed. She could be tricky to follow, but follow her, El Top-Hat did. They became the pickpocketing and petty street theft dream team. PopPom was a fabulous distractor. El Top-Hat was a gifted thief.

She unknowingly helped ol' Swindlefingers accumulate a hobo's fortune (which here means just enough cash for a couple of months' rent on a grubby one-room loft in a bad part of a mean town). They drifted northwest, away from the worst of the horrid Dust Bowl, and by the time PomPom peacefully crossed the rainbow bridge in 1939 (the hobo vet estimated that she was about thirteen years old), Top-Hat's hobo's fortune had doubled. He found a cheap room in a Portland flop house, bought a secondhand suit, and did the unthinkable, for his kind.

He returned to the world. Went straight. Got a legitimate job. Met a nice widow. Got married. Lived happily ever after. 

He did, however, continue plucking the occasional wallet from a random pocket, just to stay in practice - because you never know...

Constantly Sobbing Forrester Has A Moment

Point of Rocks - E. Baldwin, Architect - photo by Joe

Constantly Sobbing Forrester was lost. Again. He had been striding confidently along the B&O tracks through Harpers Ferry, across the Potomac and southward into Brunswick. He turned left onto Maple Avenue and was about to take the next left at Potomac Street, where he knew of a church that never failed to provide a bite to eat and a glass of milk to a hungry hobo.

Suddenly, he had no idea if left was the way to go, or right. Or was it straight for another block, up the hill to "A" Street? He stood there on the corner, turning slowly and studying the street and its buildings and storefronts, and just when he thought he had his bearings, a terrible panic buzzed through him. Not only could he not discern which was the right direction to go to reach the - what was he looking for? Diner? Hobo jungle? Church? Before he could come to terms with not remembering that, a second, heavier panic wave hit him, nearly knocking him off his feet. How did I get here? I can't even retrace my steps, he thought. I can't remember ANYTHING. He sat on the curb and sobbed.

At sixty-one, Forrester was impressively old, for a hobo. It was October of 1940, and he'd been a card-carrying member of the nation's wandering poor (note: they did not carry cards) for twenty years. He was born to a Civil War vet - would never divulge whether Union or confederate - and his nurse-turned-bride, in 1879. He carried with him vivid memories of ice skating on a frozen pond, and wintertime trips to the outhouse, and the sound of chalk on slate. Clear as day, he saw his mother, young and strong, showing him how to blow out the candle on his birthday potato pancake. He could still feel the sting of his father's belt, from that time when he unthinkingly swiped a few bits from the collection bowl at church. He was so little, and he saw coins, and grabbed them. Why? Why did that warrant such an assault. Things were never quite the same, after that.

He knew every curve of the B&O tracks, from DC and Baltimore to Cleveland and beyond. He could tell you what kind of train was coming - and the name of the engineer - from the signature of its whistle as it echoed off the hills of the Potomac Highlands. But he couldn't tell you how he got to this intersection, in this town he'd visited a hundred times. Lately, he was sobbing more often than not. His body was still strong - well, strong enough - but his mind had gone. He could see his childhood and his mum and his pretty, doting sisters with sparkling clarity, but he couldn't remember the steps leading from the train tracks to this spot, a hundred yards away. 

It was beyond cruel. Forrester sobbed, and sobbed. After that, he went on sobbing. After an hour - or maybe forty-five seconds - a strong but caring hand on his shoulder.

"Friend," a voice said, neither a question nor a statement.

"Sob," Forrester sobbed.

"Friend, you seem lost," said the stranger. "Let's get you back on track, before trouble finds us both..."

"Okay..." Forrester felt himself rise to his feet.

"This way," the stranger said. "Back to the tracks. I saw you earlier. Looks like you were headed south..."

Forrester shrugged.

"Toward Baltimore? Or maybe DC?"

Forrester knew those words. Those were cities. Small, but with many trains. He nodded.

"Let's go," urged the stranger. "Are you okay? Can you walk?"

Walk, thought Forrester. I know what walk means. I understand! He nodded again.

The stranger led the old hobo back to the railroad, and they walked southward (which here, in railroad terms, is "east") for two hours, past the east end of Brunswick yard, and along the Potomac past Catoctin creek and round the big curve to Point Of Rocks. He asked the old man questions, and the old man shrugged or said "I don't remember." 

Forrester sobbed off and on, as they trudged onward. He knew that these rails were his home. He knew what a hobo was, and that he was counted among them, but for a million dollars he wouldn't have been able to tell you how he had come to join their ranks - or why.  But then they rounded the rocky outcrop that demarked the north end of Point Of Rocks, and he saw in the distance the churchlike structure that was its train station.

"Baldwin," Forrester managed to say, between sobs.

"Beg pardon?" said his new friend.

"That's Point Of Rocks station," Forrester declared, wiping away some tears, "Designed by Ephraim Francis Baldwin. You can tell by the roofing, and the way it looks like a church. Devout Christian, he was. I'm not - but I can feel his faith in his designs. He did Kensington and Bryn Mawr and all kinds of other stations. I remember this place."

They walked on in silence until they reached the bricked passenger platforms of the station, and Forrester stopped and gazed up again at the church-y train station, illuminated by an autumn sunset, with a pile of cottony clouds behind its spire. "I know this place," he said. "I don't know how I got here, but I know where I am. This is good."

The stranger looked up at the structure and tried to see what the old hobo, who was once again sobbing, although now somewhat differently, could see.

"This is good," he agreed.

Curing Bingo-Balls Nick Chintz And Fourteen-Bindelstick Frank

 

Lined up to rejoin the main. Photo by Joe - 2001

If had a nickel for every time no one asked me about the mental health issues of the American hoboes, I'd have all the nickels in the Mariana Trench. Of course hoboes endured all kinds of mental illness; they were people. As you might expect, they experienced such maladies with much greater frequency than did the general population. They were homeless, malnourished, often the victims of violence, and they spent a lot of time alone. Alcoholism, schizophrenia, lint addiction, depression, and anxiety were common. Less prevalent was the disorder we now call hoarding.

This is primarily due to the fact that hoboes tended to carry all their worldly possessions on their person - usually in sacks, or stick-and-bindles - so as a practical matter, it was hard to hoard anything much larger than pennies or lint. But it wasn't impossible. In an amazing coincidence I just made up, two of John Hodgman's documented hoboes knew each other, and were friends.

Bingo-Balls Nick Chintz grew up as only child Nicholas Schmidt in Charleston, West Virginia. His father operated the coal tipple at a nearby mine, and his mother was a homemaker who dabbled in freelance laundry cleaning, a job that became full-time when the Depression hit. In 1931, when young Nick was sixteen, Mr. Schmidt ate a pound of anthracite coal on a bet, and died of a bowel obstruction - or complications thereof. Nick's mother remarried a few months later, desperate to keep a roof over their heads. Her new husband, an undertaker, was a broken veteran of The Great War, and terrifyingly abusive. Within a year, Nick and his mother fled their house of horrors and joined the ranks of the wandering poor. Nick took to the hobo life rather easily, but despite his best efforts, he couldn't keep his mother from returning to that awful man. He walked on, assuming the worst. When she left him, she gifted him with a bingo ball (B-11), which his father had swiped from the church and given to her after bingo night - their first date.

The rest, as they say, is history. For reasons known only to him, Nick began stealing bingo balls, one at a time, from churches from Maine to Missouri, bent on acquiring a complete set. He carried them in an old flour sack, and though they weighed very little, after a while the bag became rather bulky. It is believed that he didn't stop collecting when he completed one set of balls; he just kept acquiring. And acquiring, and acquiring. He was hoarding bingo balls.

He met Fourteen-Bindlestick Frank in East St. Louis, Illinois in 1933, and they immediately became friends. Frank was busy collecting more bindlesticks than he could carry, and Bingo Balls Nick Chintz had more bingo balls than he could carry. Together, they helped each other's hoarding disorder grow and thrive. In an interesting (to me) twist, Fourteen-Bindlestick Frank's path from child to hobo was exactly like Nick's, except that when Frank's dad died. it was from watermelons, and he gave his widow a bindlestick as a first-date keepsake, and when she remarried following his death, the new husband was an absolute sweetheart. 

Word of Frank and Nick and their co-enabled hoarding habits spread, which is a testament to the busybody network of hobo comms, as it really shouldn't have concerned anyone else. Eventually, their case came to the attention of one Dr. Nobel Dynamite, the renowned hobo shrink and slight-of-hand magician. "I must cure them," he declared to the hobo media, who promptly misquoted him and made him sound weak and stupid (out of context).

A meeting was arranged. Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick provided security, although at first, no one knew why that was necessary. The three men met behind the B&O's "HO" tower, in Hancock, Maryland. "Fellas, I aim to cure you of your destructive neurological disorder, and free you from the shackles of mental illness," The doctor declared grandly. With that, he grabbed as many of Frank's fourteen bindlesticks as he could carry - including the one containing Nick's bingo balls - and ran away, laughing. Ol' Barb prevented them from giving chase. 

"You're cured!" the good doctor yelled as he ran off through the woods. 

"He's just lucky I keep Ma's souvenir B-11 ball in my trousers," Nick said.

"I'm grateful that he left me with one stick-and-bindle," said Frank.

"Well, looks like we'll have to get back to collecting."

"We sure will, pal. We sure will."

When Craine T. Eyebrow-Smeller Met Chelsea Bacon

There's magic 'neath that old roof. Photo by Joe, 87 years ago

As a fake expert on fake hoboes, I'm often asked by no one about the famous series of hobo speed-dating events that took place from 1934 to 1938 in the B&O's Baldwin roundhouse in the Mt. Clare section of Baltimore. If you're one of those who have previously asked me about this, you needn't read on, for no new information follows. If, however, you fall into the category of literally everyone, here's a peek at a typical encounter at one of these meet-ups.

The events were held on Sunday evenings, the only time the roundhouse and surrounding Mt. Clare shops weren't crawling with workmen. There were two night watchmen, but as luck would have it, they had a soft spot for lonely hoboes - and a rather startling addiction to hobo wine. With the guards outside drinking their bribes, the hosts (Sausage Patty and Gummy Miles, a married hobo couple) would arrange pairs folding chairs and crates on the turntable in the center of the cavernous roundhouse. Attendance varied, because hoboes, but on most nights there would be about ten to twenty single 'boes, ready to mingle. They paired up for five minutes at a time and hurriedly familiarized themselves with each other. Hookups often followed, as well as fisticuffs, and - rarely - a real connection.

Sausage Patty yelled, "Gentlemen, switch," and all the men switched stations. 

Chelsea Bacon looked up at the exceptionally tall, wiry man as he approached and lowered himself onto the crate opposite her chair. When he sat, his long legs creaked and bent, and he looked like a grasshopper. But his freckled face was kind, and his tired eyes smiled - and he clutched his ratty hat to his chest, minding what manners he could remember from his time before. She offered her hand and he took it, gently but confidently. "Chelsea Bacon," she said, "Charmed, I'm sure."

"Pleased to meet you. I'm Craine T. Eyebrow-Smell-- er, sorry. I'm Craine."

"Eyebrow what?" she asked, head tilted quizzically.

He looked away for a moment. "Eyebrow-Smeller. It's not what it sounds like."

"Well that's lucky, because it sounds like maybe you have a penchant for sniffing people's eyebrows."

"I'm just tall, is all. When I became a hobo, they gave me a lot of guff about how my nose was right at the height of everyone's eyebrows, and, well... you know how stupid men are. It doesn't make a lick of sense, but it stuck. As God is my witness, I've never smelled an eyebrow."

"What's your given name, then?"

"Craine Thomas Browsmellier."

"Huh."

"Enough about me. We have so little time. Let's talk about you. Is your name as silly as mine?"

She stared at him for a moment, fighting the urge to pout. "Chelsea Beacon is my real name."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"I like bacon," he offered nervously, "and Chelsea is pretty. So, where are you from? How did you come to be a hobo? Sorry - I'm not very good at this." She smiled and he fell in love a little.

"You're doing fine. I grew up in Cincinnati. My parents died not long after the crash, when I was seventeen, and I hit the road with a couple of girlfriends from school who were in similar straits. They've both died since then, as well."

"Good Grief!" he gasped. "That is a lot of loss for one person to endure. I lost my parents, too. Mine were taken."

"Taken?"

"By President Hoover's gypsies, yes. What happened to yours?"

"My pa was a shoe salesman. One night, while stocking his backroom shelves with the latest shipment, he stepped on a wooden shoehorn and it snapped, sending splinters of wood flying. One zonked him right in the eye, and he died three weeks later, of getting hit by a streetcar."

Craine frowned thoughtfully while his brain struggled. "Gee whiz..."

"And my ma, she was a school nurse. She kept working after Pa died, but little did my brothers and I know, she was taking all sorts of drugs from the school, and one night, she drank a whole bottle of ipecac syrup, and she vomited to death."

"I'm so sorry," he said sincerely. He thought for a moment and added, "This is a strange date."

"Indeed. So, Craine T. Eyebrow-Smeller, the man who doesn't smell eyebrows but is merely very tall - what were you before? And are you ever going back, or are you a lifer?"

"I was a freelance lightbulb changer in Richmond, but after the crash, jobs went from scarce to nonexistent, so I hit the rails and I've been doing the best I can, ever since. I take whatever day jobs I can find, and I try to keep to the code and avoid stealing any more than absolutely necessary. Mostly, I just keep walking. I have this fear that if I stop walking, I'll stop hoping, and if I stop hoping, well that's that, isn't it?"

"What are you hoping for?"

"Something better. I don't know if that means a way back to the world, or finding peace with this life, or just finding someone to walk with. You know - something good."

Her eyes widened and she drew a profoundly long breath. "That's exactly why I keep walking," she whispered.

"Which one - the something better, or--"

"All of it," she said. "Just - all of it. I keep walking. It's what I do. I've seen so much loss, as you say, so much despair and dirt and sickness and godlessness and hopelessness. I cling to my hope like it's my own newborn baby and jackals are trying to grab her. It's all I have left. I guess that sounds silly."

"That sounds anything but silly, Chelsea. I see Sausage Patty is checking her watch. Our time is up. If I may be so bold - would you like to walk a while with me? I've only my hope left, as well, but I'd be happy to share it with you."

She smiled again. He fell in love a little bit more. She stood and took his hand, and led him toward the door. They walked a while together and pooled their collective hope. 

Solid First Draft Patton Taylor, For The 394th Time...

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?"

Beef-or-Chicken Bob Nubbins Tries To Explain

 

Choose wisely. East Brunswick, MD - 1992. Photo by Joe

As I've reported numerous times in these stories of John Hodgman's 700 hoboes, there were many who deliberately chose the life of the wandering poor. These men and women embraced the freedom of the road and were beholden to no one and nothing but their own hunger. Beef-or-Chicken Bob Nubbins was not one of those hoboes. He lived among the ranks of hoboes who had lost everything and now spent their days searching for work, desperately seeking a way back to normal, back to the world as they had known it. 

He was born in 1913 to a working-class couple in Philadelphia. His father was a longshoreman at the seaport, and his mother was a homemaker who often washed and mended neighbors' clothes, when money was tight (money was always tight). The only store-bought toy they were ever able to afford was a big canister of Tinkertoy - essentially just a bunch of wooden dowels and spools with holes drilled in them. Little Bobby Nubbins adored Tinkertoy, and created impressive engineering works with them. Miniature carnival rides, cranes, bridges - even a replica steam locomotive - were all part of his repertoire, much to the chagrin of his mother, who had to navigate the floors of their small apartment with great care. When he was six, and his little brother Jimmy was four, their mother died suddenly, having not navigated the floors of the small apartment with great enough care, tripping and falling atop a particularly spectacular Tinkertoy Ferris wheel. Those little wooden dowels had punctured both of her lungs - and her aorta in two places.

Bobby became Jimmy's primary caretaker, while their deeply depressed father trudged back and forth to daily double-shifts at the docks. When he turned fourteen, he began working at the port, himself. A couple of years later, in June 1929, his father died of salmonella poisoning after a coworker had handed him a thermos of seafood bisque and said, "Does this taste right to you?" By the end of the year, Bobby Nubbins was laid off, and soon after found himself and his kid brother evicted. Jimmy was lucky; he had a girlfriend, and her parents were able to take him in - as soon as he married their daughter, which he immediately did at the courthouse, using his last couple of bucks for the license. They had no room for Bobby, so he hit the road in search of work, and was a full-fledged hobo within six months. 

He obtained an odd moniker, as hoboes do, and came to be known as Beef-or-Chicken Bob Nubbins. The what of how that came to be was simple; the why of it, less so. After years of caring for his brother, Bob had developed some of the best characteristics of good providers, the most important being generosity, and the ability to put other's needs before his own. As a result, he was always quick to offer his fellow hoboes - especially those worse off than he - whatever he had, with humility, grace, and humor. Whenever someone approached his campfire, he would grab an old bowl from his pack and say "Beef? Or chicken?" His visitor would stare at him, puzzled. "Would you like beef," he'd ask, "or chicken?" At this point, his visitor would either state a preference (always beef), or simply continue to stare. "Hahahaha," he would laugh, "I haven't any beef or chicken - can't you see I'm a hobo! But I do have some pigeon meat, and lint, and I think there's still some squirrel - and I've got a couple pieces of venison jerky. What's mine is yours..."

This didn't always end well, for him. The hobo's life was a hard one, and many of them had long since had their humor worn away. But Beef-or-Chicken Bob Nubbins' little joke landed at least as often as it missed, and eventually he developed a reputation. Hoboes who knew him knew that he had neither beef nor chicken, but they also knew that he was going to share with them whatever he had. His kindness was rewarded now and then, with referrals for day-labor jobs and the occasional interview for real employment. Great Depressions are Great Depressions, though, and he was of course a dirty vagrant, to any prospective employer. He kept at it, and saved his pennies in the hope that one day he could buy a suit of clothes, and rent a room and get cleaned up for an interview. And he kept walking.

One cold December night in 1934, as the Depression dragged on and there had been no work for weeks, and things seemed especially bleak, Newton Fig approached Bob Nubbins' campfire. Bob was cooking a pot of real kidney beans, which he had procured in the crossroads town of Chillicothe Ohio by way of begging - something he truly hated to have to do - and he was looking forward to his first full stomach in ages.

He looked up from his pot and smiled, dirtily but warmly, at Newton Fig (who was called that because he came from Newton, Massachusetts and his surname was Fig - hey, not all hoboes got super-clever monikers!). "Hey there, brother! You look hungry. Beef or chicken?" 

"Hardy-har-har," Newton deadpanned. "I know damn well you ain't got no beef or chicken, but friend, I'd love to have a sit by your fire, and maybe just one bite. I had a decent meal just yesterday at a church near Richmond Dale, and by the looks of you, that pot of whatever you got there is the first food you've had all week."

"Well, you're right about that, Newton," Bob sighed, "but what's mine is yours."

"You're the best hobo I know, Beef-or-Chicken Bob Nubbins. A better friend than any of us deserves, but you mind if I ask you a serious question?"

Bob laughed. "Is it about my hobo name?"

"Sort of."

"Fine. Ask away. I'll do my best to answer."

"We all know why you're called Beef-or-Chicken - that's obvious. But, why do you do it?"

"Mostly 'cause it's funny..."

"Yeah, but I've heard stories of you gettin' pounded pretty bad for your little joke - and robbed and whatnot," Newton said.

"Oh, that was only a few times," Bob assured him. "Besides, there's a lesson in my dumb joke."

"A lesson."

"Yup."

"There's a lesson in your offering strangers two options for dinner - neither of which you have?"

"Yup. Everyone knows there's no beef, and what hobo has any chicken..."

"Well..." Newton interrupted.

"Okay, yes - that one time, Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick had a whole chicken for Christmas dinner - a stolen chicken, I might add. Anyhow, everyone knows I got no beef or chicken, and I know they know it, but there's that little bit of hope in the offering, isn't there? That tiny optimistic voice inside that says, 'hey - maybe this time there really is beef or chicken.'"

Newton looked skeptical. "Okay - I suppose..."

"And here's the important part," Bob continued. "There may not be chicken or steak, but there's always something. As bad as things get - and we know bad, don't we - there is always something to be had. Like, maybe there's more than just two choices, in life. Maybe there will never be any beef or chicken, for us. But there will always be something. And if there isn't something today, there can be, tomorrow."

"You're an odd bird, Nubbins," Newton laughed, "but God bless you and your odd bird heart."

"Well, thank you, brother." He reached into his pack and pulled out an old bowl and a wooden spoon, and leaned over the pot steaming away above the fire. Now - will that be beef, or chicken?"

 

 

The Wisdom Of Professor Ω

This phenomenon is called inverted rubberclouding.

Remember when I made my half-assed resolutions for 2021, about four days before we saw my super-presciently-predicted SMOKE in DC? No? Well, here's a post about some nuggets of wisdom left behind by Professor Ω, the smartest hobo of the 1930's (except for 1933, obviously).

Some people presumed a low level of education and/or intelligence, when they saw hoboes. These people, we now know, were stuffy elitist know-nothings with monocles and foot-long cigarette holders. Hey - Thurston Howell III - if you can't stand having a cigarette touch your lips, then maybe smoking is not for you! Anyway. The hobo ranks were choc-full of smart men and women, cast into the world of the wandering poor for a million different reasons, and some of them were college graduates. 

Professor Ω was one of them - at least, he said he was. You can be the judge. We all can! Come on - let us don our old-timey judge wigs, and get to some judgin'. Lucky us - we have actual written wisdom nuggets, direct from Professor Ω; not half-remembered hand-me-down oral histories, distorted by time and failing memory. Of course, they were preserved in the hobo hieroglyphs of the time, scrawled on buildings and bridges and whatnot, so we could still lose a bit in translation. But, has that stopped us before? No. No, it has not. Here we go...

• Baldwin's mountain-type locomotives weigh more than seven hundred pounds. Each!
  
• We cannot trust President Roosevelt to lead us back to prosperity, because his father is Theodore Roosevelt, and that monster shot bears for sport. I mean, who does that??
• Pluto is not a planet.
  
• The new boss is just the same as the old boss.
• Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick is neither old, nor named Barbara, nor fast with a knife.
  
• I left my tenured position at Yale and became a hobo for the simple fact that hoboes' lives are so much easier than professors' lives. That's why most professors are now hoboes. Studies have shown that, after the New Deal income taxes, the vagrant wanderer will actually be better-paid. Also, everyone knows hoboes smell better.
• Electric blankets cure polio.
• It's called a great depression because it's very large, and everyone is sad.
• Trains are the pinnacle of the evolution of travel. Nothing will ever surpass their speed, efficiency, comfort, or profitability.
• We should keep a watchful eye on Germany. Something tells me they're not quite done, yet.
  
• Wearing socks on the wrong feet brings bad luck. Shoes on the wrong feet bring blisters.*
  
• When this is all over, lint will replace the dollar as our national currency. 
• When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.
• The hokey-pokey really is what it's all about.
• Okay, Pluto's a planet.
  

There. Sounds pretty smart, right? Stay tuned for more wisdom from hobo and non-hobo alike, coming real soon. Or, pretty soon. Soon, at least. 

Okay, not soon.

We'll see...

*This line is courtesy of [Maris], who is quick to point out that she's not speaking from personal experience (no matter how painful it was).

 

Monkey's-Paw Patterson's Final Wish

 

I wish it weren't so dark in there-- no, wait!

Nope, nope, nope, thought Matthew "Matty-Patty" Patterson. I'm not falling for that, again. He frowned at his lucky monkey's paw - now 90 percent disintegrated - and dropped it into his ratty overcoat pocket. I'll take my chances with this dank old tunnel. "Not yet, paw..."

In December of 1934, after four years of unemployed, train-hopping hopelessness and near-starvation, Monkey's-Paw Patterson had only one wish remaining on his monkey paw. He had been about to waste his fifth and final* monkey paw wish in order to illuminate the interior of the Catoctin tunnel - which, if we're being honest (which we ARE), isn't long enough to require interior illumination - when he remembered the old fortune teller's admonition from three years prior. The rules were literally set in stone (somewhere): Thou shalt not wish for additional wishes, and thou shalt be wary of that for which thou wishes (wisheth?).

Monkey's-Paw Patterson's hobo-ing companion, Hell's Own Breath Hinkley stopped momentarily. "What?" he asked.

 "What what?" Patterson replied, hoping that he wasn't about to embark on an infinite feedback loop of "whats."

"Thought you said something - 'Not yet, pa?' Something like that?"

"Oh - yeah," Patterson laughed. "Sorry. Just thinking out loud again, I suppose. Almost used my monkey's paw to light up this tunnel, but I only got one wish left, and I ain't wasting it on that."

Hell's Own Breath Hinkley nodded in the semi-darkness. "Smart. Say - that thing ever really work?" He heard the sad sound of Matty Patterson's bum left foot as it dragged, zombie-style, across the railroad ties, occasionally sending a piece of ballast gravel skittering ahead of them - and he cringed.

"Well, yes and no, pal. It kind of works, but there's always some awful gotcha. First thing I did when I got it was wish for my parents to not be dead. They died of infected pigeon scratches, in the bird war..."

"No kidding? That's terrible," Hinkley said, laying a hand on his friend's shoulder.

Patterson continued. "Yeah, and I just wanted to say goodbye and tell 'em I loved 'em. So I took the paw to their grave and made my wish, and sure enough, the ground shook and split open and out they popped. They weren't dead - but they weren't really alive, either. They growled and lunged at me, and bit me on my foot as I struggled with them. I barely got away in one piece. My poor foot ain't been the same since."

"That's horrible," Hinkley said, inadvertently launching an invisible cloud of hell's own breath in the direction of Patterson.

Monkey's-Paw Matthew gagged. "Oh, God - Hinkley! You're killing me!"

"Sorry."

"Anyway," he coughed, "My second wish was so simple, I thought it was a sure bet. I was hung-over something awful, after a night of drinking hobo wine, and I had the kind of headache that makes you think dying might be better. I wished for that headache to go away, and POOF! Gone in an instant."

"...And?" prodded Hinkley, remembering to cup his hand in front of his mouth. "What was the catch?"

"My guts pretty much exploded out my backside - right then and there, and for the rest of the morning. I would have had to rally just to die."

"Good Lord!"

"Damn right," Monkey's-Paw growled. "So, my third wish was wished in the heat of the moment. Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick was fixin' to stab me - quick - so I wished for her to, you know, not stab me."

"That musta turned out okay," Hinkley said. "I mean, you're still here, ain't ya?"

"Oh sure, pal. She didn't stab me, no siree. She hit me with a hammer, instead. I think she probably fractured my skull. Took a half-dozen other 'boes to get her off me."

"You sure have had it rough, my friend. It's hard enough being a hobo, these days. Maybe you should throw that paw away. Sounds like it's more curse than blessing."

Patterson sighed heavily. "I might, I might. The fourth one was insulting. I'm telling you - it was just plain mean."

"What was wish number four?"

"Well - you know about my bum foot, right - on account of my undead old man biting me?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, that's not the foot that got bit. He bit my right foot. That was the gimpy one. So, I wished for it to go back to normal, and boy, did it ever! And just as quick - the left one went bad. It might even be worse than the right one had been. So, yeah. I gotta be real careful with this last wish..."

"You're a little slow on the uptake, ain't ya?" Hell's Own Breath Hinkley said absently. 

"Watch it, bub."

"Oh don't get sore with me - it's almost Christmas. And besides, you really should've learned your lesson by the second wish. So, what are you thinking for number five?"

"I don't think I'm supposed to tell anyone," Patterson semi-lied, having not been given that specific instruction. "Come on - it's getting dark. We better get camped, and get a fire lit..."

Late that night, with Hell's Own Breath Hinkley snoring stinkily away by the fire, Matthew Patterson stepped quietly to the edge of the firelight, removed the decomposing monkey's paw from his coat pocket, rubbed it gently, and began to wish. I'm begging you, paw - please make this Depression better. I want to work. I want a roof over my head. I want to see a doctor when I need one. I want to eat real food. I want everyone else to have these things. Please, please, please fix our broken country. I don't need the twenties back - the twenties weren't great for regular folk like me, anyway - I just wish we could all get well, okay? Not great. We'll take care of great. Just... fixed. Please?

A few days later, trudging through Hagerstown, Maryland, Monkey's-Paw Patterson saw a discarded newspaper. Its top two headlines: "America's Recovery Making Steady Progress Under 'New Deal,' and "Nazi Party's Swift Rise Alarms European Leaders."

"Well, hell," Patterson muttered. "I tried."

 

*We are well aware of the fact that W.W. Jacobs said the monkey's paw would grant three wishes, but we think that's dumb, on account of monkeys having FIVE digits, and the number of wishes corresponds to the digits and that's that. End of discussion.

Gravybelly Dunstan Is Doing Very Well

 

These are not railroad tracks.

 I can't believe I have to do this, again, Stitches The Railyard Sutureman muttered to himself as he approached a makeshift lectern made of stacked fruit crates, AGAIN. He looked out at the assembled hobo press corps - which here means the ten hoboes who could read and write - and sighed the sigh of a man defeated.

"Gentlemen, I'm pleased to report that Gravybelly Dunstan is doing very well. In the three days since sustaining his injury, in the Cumberland terminal hump yard, he has made great progress, and I am very, very impressed. I've never seen a patient make so much progress so soon after--"

"Excuse me, doc," one of the gathered reporters interrupted, "Did you say three days?"

"What?"

"You said it's been three days since Gravybelly's injury?"

"Oh, yes. That's correct. And as I was saying, given the nature of the injury, his recovery has been remarkable."

Another hobo raised his hand, sending a little cloud of dust into the cool Maryland air. "We were told that this happened early yesterday. It was all over the hobo telegraph. An empty boxcar came rolling down the hill from the hump and clipped him - took his left arm clean off."

The Railyard Sutureman frowned. "That's correct. Before dawn, yesterday. I cauterized the wound with a hot iron, which is an experimental technique I've invented--"

"I'm sorry," another grubby hobo reporter interjected, "to be clear - you're saying this accident happened early yesterday?"

"Correct. And he's really doing very great. So great. He's the greatest patient I've ever treated. I mean, to lose your right arm at the elbow, and and five days later, to be sitting up, eating beans and begging to be released from the hobo hospital camp - it's just amazing."

The raggedy press corps exchanged confused glances. The young reporter from Gravy Times stood up. "I think I speak for everyone here..."

"You don't," several others chorused, beneath their collective breath.

"...when I say that we are very relieved to hear this wonderful and encouraging news about everybody's most favorite hobo. Thank you for your wonderful work and groundbreaking new - what did you call it - cauterizing technique..."

Another hobo snorted. "People have been cauterizing wounds since five minutes after the discovery of fire - and did you say, 'five days later,' Stitches?"

"That's correct."

"But you just said it was early yesterday."

The hobo surgeon shook his head. He silently cursed himself for allowing his life to reach this point. In his pre-hobo life, he had been a student, two years into medical school at NYU. His dream of becoming a doctor had disappeared when his father was ruined in the first months of the Great Depression. His mother left them, one night, never to be heard from again, and his father contracted lethal hiccups soon after, and died from a combination of exhaustion and exasperation. 

Stitches (which was his given name), unable to pay for school - or to find work in the city - joined hobo nation in early 1930. He quickly gained a reputation as a skilled wound sewer-upper, and he wandered the eastern half of the country tending to hobo injuries large and small. He was admired. He was a contributor to hobo society. He came very close to respecting himself. 

Then, he was "hired" to be the private full-time sutureman to Gravybelly Dunstan, the most widely hated hobo since U.S. Fool. He paid in actual pennies, instead of the customary lint, but every other aspect of this "job" was terrible. 

He took a deep breath and looked at the hobo reporter who had asked the last question. "Correct. We cauterized the wound early yesterday. The incident that caused the injury occurred on Sunday. Simple explanation."

"Sunday was six days ago, sir," the reporter said.

"Exactly."

"So, you're saying that Gravybelly was maimed six days ago - not three or five or one-and-a half days ago?"

"Yes."

"And he's doing well?"

"As far as you know, yes."

"What?" The reporter shrugged at the hobo next to him and mouthed the words "Help me."

"As far as we know?" repeated the next hobo.

"It's very simple, fellas," Stitches said. "Gravybelly Dunstan was struck by a runaway caboose on the Western Maryland Railway outside of Frostburg a week ago Thursday, suffered a compound fracture of his lower right leg, was brought to me this morning for surgery, and is healing faster than anyone ever has from anything ever, because he is the strongest and smartest and best, and--"

"But--" 

"No further questions! God bless Gravybelly Dunstan!"