On This Thanksgiving Eve...

...Stewbuilder Dennis was dicing kidney beans, stolen carrots, onion grass and a radish and adding them with care to his stale beer, puddle water and witch hazel broth.  Tomorrow's pigeon stew had to be special.

...Cholly The Yegg was working on the heavy padlock that secured a refrigerated boxcar full of produce from Florida.  He knew that if he failed to open it, he would not eat, tomorrow.

...Holden The Expert Dreamtwister was running for his life.

...The Rza was chasing Holden The Expert Dreamtwister, who had twisted his perfectly agreeable dream of turkey dinner with the Roosevelts into a bizarre fantasy of torment at the alien hands of invaders from Venus.

...Jack Skunk was walking the Pennsylvania Railroad near Pittsburgh with his son, and hoping they had started moving east early enough to once again be the first hoboes to see the light of the new year, now only five weeks away.

...Jack Skunk Fils was walking the Pennsylvania Railroad near Pittsburgh with his father, wondering how many more Thanksgivings, eastward treks, New Years Days - or how many anythings - his old man had left.  He hoped it was many, but he feared the worst.

...Lord Dan X. Still-Standing was still standing.  He was scribbling charcoal hieroglyphs onto a piece of bark.  It was his turn to give the Thanksgiving toast at tomorrow's gathering in the big clearing by Evitts Creek, and he wanted to be sure he did a better job than last time, when he had managed to insult everyone in attendance, as well as several hoboes who weren't even there.

...Marlon Fitz-fancy was digging through his pack in search of a knife suitable for opening the only food he had seen in days.  It was a can of beans, of course, and he had already decided that he was going to give the whole lot of them to his dog, because she was far more important to him than he was.

...Bazino Bazino, The Kid Whose Hair Is On Fire was explaining for the fifteenth time this November that no, his hair was not literally on fire.

...Whispering-Lies McGruder said he had been invited by Douglas Fairbanks to a Thanksgiving feast in Hollywood, but nobody believed him.

...Nit Louse was thanking his god in advance for the wonderful things he and his daughter were going to say to one another on her next birthday, if only one of these years she would show up.

...Dan'l Dinsmore Tackadoo was drunk, but as he passed out beneath a trestle in Alabama, he said a little prayer of thanks, mostly for the fact that he hadn't had a night terror about his encounter with Hobo Zero in at least six months.

...Hobo Zero staggered through a chilly swamp in Georgia, still undead.

...The Silver Jacket Man was giving the whole Boxcar "family" the finest holiday haircuts he could.  He was also drinking tin can hobo wine.  A lot of it.

...No-Shoulders Smalltooth Jones was worried about getting food caught around that small front tooth of his, on the off-chance that he found food, tomorrow.

...Mr. Wilson Fancypants was desperately trying to remember what kind of stitch he had used on his ruined pants, because the ones he had tried so far were failing to securely attach his mousetraps, this time.

...Wicked Paul Fourteen-Toes was peeing into a sleeping stranger's flask, having stolen the last of the whiskey it had contained.

and on this Thanksgiving Eve, King Snake: The Eternal Mystery was somewhere else entirely.
 
            

700 Hoboes: Lord Dan X. Still Standing.

The next hobo on the list is Lord Dan X. Still Standing, and writing about him is extremely exciting to me. This is because he is number seven on the list (yes, I'm still going through the names in order), so when I finish talking about ol' Dan X, I will have achieved the call-your-mom-and-tell-her-to-turn-on-channel-four-worthy milestone of one percent completion of this ridiculous project. Which reminds me -- any new readers (haha - I just launched an outward-bound spray of Patron Resposado, nasally. New readers. I slay me.) should note that I did not make up these marvelous hobo names. They come from John Hodgman's hilarious book "The Areas Of My Expertise," and I do not have his permission to use them. I figure if each and every one of you nice readers were to run out and purchase a copy of this book, it would make him just that much less angry with me, should he find out about my use of his list.

Lord Dan X. Still Standing was one tough hobo. He rode the old Union Pacific rails throughout his 20s and 30s, during the '20s and '30s. His toughness was not an innate characteristic; it was a trait made necessary by his own inflated sense of self-worth. For a while, he had tried to call himself Czar Dan X, but when the great hobo known as Czar King Rex The Glorious Leader caught wind of it, well, that was the end of that.

It probably isn't fair to call Lord Dan X self-important; he was really more of a know-it-all. He was at least somewhat noteworthy in that he was one of a small minority of hoboes would could read and write, beyond the cryptographic signs and messages his kind left for one another on telegraph poles and such, and he mistakenly thought this skill could help him lord over his boxcar brethren with his fantastic knowledge of everything. He was wrong - on a couple of levels.

There were many things hoboes hated - yard cops, winter, padlocks, debutante balls - but the two things they most reviled in each other were literacy and bossiness. Lord Dan X was just literate enough to be exceedingly bossy. He would read a found bit of newspaper and instantly become a leading authority on world events (in which hoboes had absolutely no interest), or baseball, or the weather. He corrected his fellow hoboes' grammar, lectured them on politics, told them where and when to camp to avoid weather or cops and harangued them about their health and hygiene - all with an utterly intolerable air of intellectual superiority.

As a result, he was beaten up a lot. He was beaten with sticks, rocks, stop signs and cans of beans. On several occasions, he was nearly beaten to death. But he always got back up. Before long, he added the defiant "Still Standing" to his moniker. He didn't learn anything from his beat-downs. He never stopped trying to impress and control his fellow drifters with his vast knowledge. The beatings continued. He kept getting up. In 1940, he became one of only a few hoboes to successfully leave the vagrant's life behind. He won a seat in the Texas State Legislature as the last Tory candidate in our nation's history. His bossiness continued in that venue, as did the beatings.

But he kept getting up. He was Lord Dan X. Still Standing.