Troglodytic Amory Funt's New Roommate

Scram, Norfolk & Western - this is a B&O story! Photo by Joe

"Did hoboes ever establish a kind of home base," I'm never asked. If only someone - preferably someone pretty and/or young - would ask me that. I would then have the life's-trajectory-altering opportunity to say, "Yep." Or maybe, "Oh, you betcha, ya."

Amory Funt's road from boy to hobo was just like most others of his time. We've heard it repeated so often, it's hardly worth mentioning. Fourteen-year old boy wakes in his family's Adamstown, Maryland farmhouse to find a note from his parents, curtly informing him that they and his sisters are fed up with his constant throat-clearing and have left him there. "Don't try to find us," the note closes, followed by the post-script: "Oh, and you'll need to find a place to live, as the bank will be foreclosing on the house any minute, now. Bye!" 

Sound familiar? That's what I thought.

So he gathered his stuff and went. But his family left a lot of their belongings behind, and even at fourteen he understood the utility of a couple of pots and pans, some extra blankets, and tools and oil lamps and candles and all sorts of whatnot. He knew that as soon as he left the house, all those useful things were fair game. It was 1930, and if opportunistic poor folks didn't find this trove, the bank would be there soon enough. So he found a cave in a hard-to-reach spot near the confluence of Catoctin Creek and the Potomac River, and he spent the next 72 straight hours hauling cartloads of household materiel to his new home. On his final visit to the house, there was a new note, informing him that his parents had returned to retrieve some of their belongings, and something about wanting to talk about it. He scribbled "Don't try to find me," across the page and was gone.

For the next two years, Amory was technically not a hobo. He wandered the Baltimore and Ohio, from Sykesville to Point of Rocks on the old main line, and from Harpers Ferry down to Barnsville, on the new metropolitan branch, but he wasn't truly homeless. He just lived in a cave. It was the best-furnished and equipped cave on the eastern seaboard, but it was still a cave. He told other hoboes he encountered that he sheltered in a cave, but was careful not to give away the location, and was doubly vigilant about ensuring he was never followed there. He also sold its contents, so for a while he wasn't even poor. He would sell an old lamp or woodworking tool, and then eat for a month or more. This system worked for him, and helped to ease his transition to real hobo-ing.

There weren't a lot of other hoboes along this stretch of the B&O, and most of the few he met were "city 'boes," from Baltimore or DC or Rockville, so Amory Funt found it difficult to relate to them. But in 1934, about two years after he'd sold the last of the things he was willing to sell (he kept a pitcher and two glasses, a pot, an iron skillet, a couple of blankets, cooking utensils, and a tree saw), he met Fossilwise Opie Fingernail. Opie had heard of Amory, and it was he who was the first to share with Amory the hobo moniker he didn't even know he had.

"Do you get sore when people call you 'Troglodytic Amory Funt,'" he asked, almost in passing, as they walked the tracks between Tuscarora and Point of Rocks, not two hours after they'd met, further down the line in Dickerson.

"WHAT??? Troglodytic - as in like a neandertal or something?" Amory demanded.

"Not exactly. It's just that you always tell folks you have a cave that you kinda live in, is all. So they figure it's like you're a cave man, I suppose. You know - in the literal sense."

"Ah. I see. That's fair. I don't love it, though. So, how'd you get tagged with Fossilwise Opie Fingernail, and what's your story, friend?"

"Name really is Opie. Last name was Huffnail, but I have fingernails that could dig through the walls of Alcatraz..."

"What's Alcatraz," Amory interrupted.

"It's a prison in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Thick stone walls. No one's ever escaped. Anyhow, I grew up on a farm in Lusby, near Calvert Cliffs, down on the Chesapeake. Starting in second grade, I loved fossils, and I read every book I could find about them. Every chance I got, I was down on the beach near the cliffs, looking for shark's teeth and anything I thought might be a fossil. I became an expert on the subject. I still have about two pounds' worth in my bindle sack. Hence the name Fossilwise."

"Why ain't you a college professor or something? What happened," Troglodytic Amory asked.

"Same story as any hobo," Opie sighed, "My mother took off - literally - with some hot shot zeppelin pilot from Patuxent Station, my father had a shoe-tying accident and lost a fingernail, which got infected and before long he was dead - from running over himself with his own tractor..."

"Same ol' story," Amory nodded thoughtfully. "Boy, if I had a nickel..."

"Yeah, so that was five years ago, and I've been walking the rails and hopping trains ever since."

Troglodytic Amory and Fossilwise Opie became friends, sharing the common ground of their farm-based childhoods and identical hobo origin stories. They walked the B&O as far  east as Baltimore and westward to Cumberland, and did all those hobo-y things that hoboes did. Eventually, Opie talked Amory into letting him share his cave - infrequently at first, but with increasing regularity over time. They became an odd, mostly homeless pair of roommates. 

Until.

One day, Amory had left Opie asleep in the cave and walked to Brunswick to try to score a free meal at one of its churches. He was unsuccessful, and returned at dusk, finding an exhausted and filthy Fossilwise Opie Fingernail sitting on a tree stump outside the cave, proudly holding up what appeared to be a tiny stone skeleton for Amory's inspection and approval. 

"Keen, pal," Amory affirmed. "Where'd you... find... that..." He looked inside the cave that had been his home for years. The once-smooth floors were rutted and full of holes. The walls were riddled with divots. There were little piles of loose soil and rocks littering the entire space. "What did you do?"

"Sorry, buddy. I've been looking for this trilobite for years. Just needed you to leave me here alone long enough to finally dig. I hope you understand. It's the best-preserved specimen anyone's found yet. I didn't mean to destroy your cave, but the piece wasn't exactly where the old Indian said it would be, and one thing led to another..."

"Take your rock and go," Amory spat. "Are you even a hobo?"

"I am not," Dr. Opie Huffnail said. "Again, sorry about your, um, cave."

Amory though for a moment. “Oh, that’s alright, professor. You can stay and help me get my floor smoothed out. Fair enough?”

“Sure.”

“And when we’re done, I’ll kill you with a rock.”

Ante Vaccine Living, 1A - 1B - 027 - HO Arriba!

So. I owe my friend Godfrey O. Ozzenbarq III (not his real name) an email (yes, we still use email. sue us), and I haven't produced a blog post in almost two months. I'm nothing if not efficient (that's a lie; I'm not efficient - at all), so I thought I'd combine these two tasks and save myself like five minutes...

 

From: Your friend Joe, via Mostly Harmless Drivel

To: Godfrey O. Ozzenbarq III (not your real name)

Date: Saturday, February 20, 2021, 8:49 PM EST

Old-timey Dude,

Your list of categories of people who are ahead of you in the long and winding COVID vaccine queue was almost as amusing as it was depressing. I mean, you're behind blue-eyed Arabs, and it's not even close! Jinkies! That's bad. Carnival barkers and retro duckpin bowlers and Waffle House assistant managers in training - and ALL of the Roberts and Svens?? That list was daunting. I feared that your estimated vaccine appointment date would land several years beyond your expected life span. 

 

A small sample of the people ahead of you

 

But dig THIS!

I was checking out the 71 vaccine information websites for Maryland (2 of them were NOT 100% fraudulent!), and it turns out that you are in better shape than we thought. Yes, you're still behind appendicitis victims (2000-2012), Calvinists, Blockbuster Video clerks, self-parkers, all motor car operators since 1899 and everyone who has a "proper name," but there has been some kind of reassessment of prioritization. I'm happy to report that, because somebody sued the state of Maryland (probably that dimwit asshat Robin Ficker), you have officially moved ahead of:

• Teachers
• Nurses
• Police officers above the rank of recruit
• All other first responders
• The elderly
• Model train store operators, but only "O" and "027" and larger scales
• Movie theater lobby carpet sanitizers
• Ultra-high-speed poultry slaughter line monitors and their victims
• Hoboes
• People who still haven't tried the Popeyes chicken sandwich because they know damn well it's far superior to KFC's, and makes Chic-fi-la's (learn to spell, you assholes - and learn to make food) seem like a slurry of human thumbs, breaded in deer hair and deep-fried in cellulite. That's not really fair, that bit about Chic-fi-la, because that is precisely how they make their "chicken" sandwiches (although because I am a gentleman, I left out the step with the unhealthy person urine).
• Barbara Bach. Is she alive? If she's alive, you're ahead of her. If not, then sorry but you gotta get behind her.
• All "regular" bar patrons at Applebee's
• Me
• Okay, you were already ahead of me, on account of your advanced age, but I thought a reminder might make you feel better.
• Teetotalers
• Gen Z (it was determined that they are as unnecessary as they are invincible)
• Accountants (they are the WORST)
• Veterans of Up With People
• While we're at it - the Starland Vocal Band
• Other duties as assigned

So, yeah. Not so bad, right? Now, with our respective vaccination dates so fast approaching, let's get back to our normal routine of bitching about literally everything and inventing complex, vulgar, horrifically-insulting nicknames and descriptors for politicians and Kardashians. 

Yours in doom,

JMSeriouslydudewearejustasdoomedaswewereamonthagomaybemoreso

P.S. How's it going?

Elffriend Weingarten Spends Christmas

The Church of St. Christmas - Photo by [Maris], 1998

The End.

Okay, jumping the gun a little bit, there. Firstly, know my hobo world... [HERE]. Then, come in, and know me better, friend! There's no fire, but help yourself to a grog and tankard, and have a sit and a listen. K?

Winifred Weingarten left home on a Tuesday - February 11th, 1930 - a cacophony of poverty-fueled domestic violence and home-brewed drunkenness roiling behind her as she strode numbly away, as a too-cool action hero might stride toward the camera with Armageddon exploding behind him (which here means her). She was twenty at the time - on the cusp of spinsterhood.

"Why'd you leave, again?" Molly Bewigged asked. Again.

"I told you," Elffriend (nee Winifred) Weingarten deadpanned, "I was on the cusp of spinsterhood."

"Yeah, yeah - spinsterhood," Molly said, having long ago given up trying to prevent her eyes from rolling like locomotive wheels at such utterances from her occasional friend. "Big deal. Aren't we all spinsters, by now? I mean why did you really leave? What actually happened? Did your pa murder your ma, or visa-versa? My parents were buried alive under a hundred feet of dirty coal at the Allentown Steel Works. That's why I left home. Just tell me what happened to you, Weingarten."

Elffriend closed her eyes and calculated the most efficient way to answer her friend. She loved words, and loathed wasting them. A minute later, she said, "I got bored."

"You got what?"

"Bored?" Elffriend said with a tone that managed to convey her concern that Molly might not have known what the word meant.

"Bored? You got bored? The markets crashed. Our fathers all lost their jobs. Everyone went broke overnight, and hit the bread line at the same time - basically the whole world went to pot - and you got bored?"

Elffriend shrugged. "I didn't have to go. I was tough enough to handle Pop. I wanted to go. I loved trains and I loved men and I had heard stories of the hobo nation - and ofttimes I was so very bored, so I grabbed a few things and took to the rails. That's all there is to it."

"Oh, your poor, poor mother," Molly sighed, shaking her head with a heavy sadness. "We have to fix this." Molly was frequently a fixer, and her inability to fix Elffriend was vexing her. She had fixed the issue of her own abusive father by "accidentally" crushing him under fifty tons of anthracite. The guilt she endured for inadvertently including her innocent mother in said coal-alanche had been fixed with homemade hooch. She had then fixed her ensuing economic predicament by hitting the road at nineteen and learning to survive as a member of the wandering work-seekers known as hoboes. Now, fourteen years later, with the second world war dragging its way toward the end of 1944, she found herself desperate to fix her misguided friend.

"Whaddaya mean, 'fix?'" Elffriend barked, as she and Molly stepped carefully across the B and O trestle over the Potomac river at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, accompanied only by the soft, cold silence of falling Christmas Eve snow. "I left Mother surrounded by love. She had twin four-year olds, and--"

"Oh sweet Jesus, Elffriend! I forgot about the twins. You left her with no one to help with twin toddlers and a depressed, unemployed husband!"

"She had my brother. James was twelve when I left, and he was a better helper than I ever was. Mother was fine. She was probably glad to see me go. Can we change the subject? And pick up the pace - I want to make it to Frederick in time for the Maryland Hobo Co-op Christmas Jamboree and Hootenanny, tomorrow, so I can spend Christmas with some men."

"Molly Bewigged shook her head, sending a small shower of snowflakes swirling from her red and white Christmas wig. "We're not going to Frederick, sweetie."

Elffriend stopped. "What?"

Molly continued taking cautious steps along the tracks, looking through the ties at the frozen moonlit river below. "You heard me."

"What are you up to, Mol? We'll never make it to Baltimore by tomorrow."

"Not going to Baltimore, either."

"That's a relief. I thought for a second that you were going to try to take me home, and I've told you many times, there is no home. I tried to go back in 1935, and my family had moved away to who knows where. And even if they were still there, for one thing it's too late..."

"Never too late," Molly interrupted.

"...and for another thing, it's none of your beeswax," Elffriend insisted. "So, where is there to go that's better than a camp full of men?"

"Brunswick."

"Is there a hobo jamboree in Brunswick?"

"Nope. Come on. Keep walking," Molly said.

"Hootenanny?"

"Let's just say there's a Christmas dinner, hobo-friendly, and we're going and that's that."

"There better be men," Elffriend muttered. She felt a tiny warm flicker of relief at the thought of ending this hike twelve miles sooner than she had planned. She was tired, and she was cold. Tired and cold were nothing new to a hobo with fourteen winters on the road, but over the past couple of years, Elffriend had become increasingly aware of the cumulative effect of so many colds, so much tired. As much as she still adored the freedom and empowerment of the hobo life, she couldn't continue to ignore the nagging notion inside her that other lives were a possibility. She'd never be a daughter or a sister again, and probably not a wife or mother, but maybe she could teach, or cook or clean or write books or invent things or fix tanks and airplanes, or run for office on a pro-hobo platform. Just entertaining such thoughts for the first time in so many years gave her to know that change was not only possible, but actually desirable.

She didn't have the heart to admit any of this to Molly, however, because Molly was always adamant that there was no life for them but the hobo life. Going back to the world was laughably nonsensical, and she had ninety-four ways of explaining that to whomever would listen. So, hearing the words "never too late" fall from Molly's lips was disconcerting to Elffriend. On the other hand, a hobo-friendly dinner sounded a lot more Christmassy to her at the moment than did a hootenanny.

Several hours and eight miles later, the double-track main line split into quadruple tracks, before further branching into the yard at Brunswick, Maryland. "Hey Mol," Elffriend mused, "you've never told me how exactly you managed to bury your parents under a pile of coal."

"It wasn't easy," Molly said, somewhat absently. "Okay, here we are - up the hill two blocks to Mooseheart Drive..."

Elffriend followed Molly up a steep hill and along a street lined with skinny houses - basically row houses that didn't touch - until they reached a red one with a driveway and a 1939 Hudson that looked as if it had once been an expensive car. They stashed their bags in the bushes, then climbed six squeaky stairs to the front porch. Molly turned to Elffriend and nervously set about straightening her hair and coat, and wiping dirt from her face.

"What the heck are you doing, Mol? Lay off me!"

Molly rapped sharply on the front door, then kissed her friend on the cheek, leapt from the porch, and scampered off behind the bushes. "Good luck, sweetie. I'm sorry. Merry Christmas! Good luck!"

"What the-- Molly Bewigged! What did you do?" Elffriend heard footfalls inside, approaching the door. At the same instant, she noticed the brass door knocker, on which was engraved, WEINGARTEN. "Aw, shi--"

The door swung open. Molly watched from behind the hedge, as a man in his thirties in an Army uniform emerged and stared at Elffriend for a moment before wrapping her in a huge bear hug, soon to be joined on the porch by a white-haired man and woman, then a couple of additional adults and at least a half-dozen children. There were gasps, there was crying, and laughter, and the entire ensemble retreated into the house.

Molly stood on tiptoes, straining to see over the bushes and into the front windows. She saw only shapes moving behind foggy glass, but the shapes appeared to be hugging a lot. After a few minutes, the door opened and Elffriend Weingarten emerged. Molly resisted the impulse to dive straight back into the bushes, opting instead to stand on the front walk, smiling sheepishly at her friend. "Don't kill me," she said.

"Oh relax, Mol," Elffriend said, smiling and shaking her head. "This is the most wonderful family."

Molly relaxed and let go of a massive sigh of relief. "Hooray!"

"I mean, it's not my family, but they're really nice."

"What? That's not your family? Oh no! I'm so sorry. How did this happen?" Molly was mortified.

Elffriend laughed long and hard. "I'm joking, Mol. Of course they're my family - but you had that coming to you. Come on in - they want to meet you."

"Oh, you stinker!"

"Come in. You were right. It's not too late. Can I ask you something, though?"

"Sure, I guess."

"How did you find them?"

Molly Bewigged shook her head. "Well, it wasn't easy - especially since I didn't know that your first name is Winifred. How did you end up with a hobo name like Elffriend, anyway?"

"Oh, I don't know, Mol," Elffriend sighed, "opium is a hell of a drug."

They stepped through the doorway and into the warm glow of an entirely new world.

"Whoa," Molly said quietly, surveying their surroundings.

"I know," Winifred Weingarten said. "Merry Christmas..."

I'm back, I guess. I was spurred to action not only by this week's Two For Tuesday writing prompts (ofttime and/or frequently) from my friends at Our Write Side, but also by the return to blogging of my web-based friend Kelly at Naked Girl In A Dress. Writers gotta write, right?

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and here's to our collective survival in 2018... 

And Not Speak Again

Enough.

I must be about forty-five or fifty years old.  Seen a lot of things, known a lot of people.  Some of those things, the stuff of nightmares.  Some of those people, worse.  

And I've had enough. 

I was born in Baltimore, Maryland on what Ma always said was an exceptionally chilly October morning in 1888.  My school on North Howard Street had two negroes, and only one Jew - me - and no one ever said much about it, so I never thought much about it.  We were just kids, you know?

That was a long time ago, and let's face it - for all their wisdom, kids are stupid.  We had no idea.  We didn't know that we were were better than the poor black kids from Barclay, or the poor white kids from Dundalk or Woodlawn - or any of those gypsies and their bedraggled old glue horses.  We had no notion that we were nowhere near as good as the folks who lived in Ruxton.  I barely knew the significance of my being Jewish.  We were all just kids.

I never learned these social delineations.  Maybe it's because my parents perished when I was very young, before they had a chance to instill such things in me.  My father broke his neck, assembling my second-place-winning 1899 Charles Street Soap Box Derby car, and my mother, who turned to a life of North Avenue prostitution in order to keep a roof over my head, died of syphilis about a year later.  

So, after a couple of hard decades of street-sweeping and streetcar maintenance, when the Great Crash came, my inability to blame the blacks, or the immigrants, or the socialists, or the rich people or gypsies or anyone else made me an odd sort of outcast - and no one liked an odd outcast.  I hit the road, and joined the ranks of America's wandering poor of the 1930s.

I had been a loquacious child, and I was a loquacious hobo.  I simply loved to talk, and I abhorred the slightest pause in a conversation.  To me, silence was time wasted - time that could have been filled with the exchange of thoughts and sentiments and ideas.  I wanted to tell the world who I was and where I came from, and I had an unflagging desire to know everything about each and every fellow I met.  

I had questions, and oftentimes I had ready questions for the answers.  I craved discourse.  I wanted to know all the why's and how's.  I barely knew the difference between Lutherans and Presbyterians, or between Jews like me, and those mysterious Orthodox Jews.  And I longed to meet another man named Solomon, so that I could ask him if he knew just want his parents were thinking when they gave him that name.

I had questions - and maybe, I let myself believe, a few answers.

But no more.

I've said too much.  I've asked too much.  My words have started more fights and ended more friendships than I care to recount.  It's 1938.  There's a movement in Europe to wipe "my people" from the face of the earth, and no one can tell me exactly why.  War is coming, and it sounds bad.  My hobo brethren never cared for my talkative nature, to begin with, and now almost everything I say begins with the word, "why."  

No one  likes questions that start with "why."

I've been beaten and robbed and chased and bitten and arrested and beaten some more, and worse - and most of this, it seems, has started with my inability to hold my tongue.  But no more.  I will not speak again.

No longer will I answer to "Maryland Sol Say-too-much."  They can call me Sol Saynomore.


But I won't answer.


Yet another post prompted by my good buds at STUDIO 30-PLUS.  This time, we were given the "loquacious" and/or "talkative."  I know *I* fit the bill, but did my hobo?  Yes, probably.

Santa Fe Santa Jinglebell, The World's Most Christmassy Tramp

The last Christmas Eve train, a coal drag headed for Baltimore by way of Hyattsville, rumbled southeastward into the DC suburbs.  The light Mikado locomotive that had pushed it up the hill from Brunswick had turned around on the "Y" at Gaithersburg and was headed home.  Motor cars puttered in the distance.  The air hung motionless and frozen.  It felt like snow.  A lone figure, hugging himself against the cold, stepped out of the shadows and stood under one of the handful of street lamps that dotted the small downtown that stretched for less than a mile along the tracks.

He figured it was already at least seven o'clock, and if he was going spread any goodwill this Christmas, he would have to get to jingling, and soon.  He checked his shoes, he checked his sleeves and then his tattered cap.  With all his bells fastened tightly, he did a little dance.  Jingles filled the chilly air.  He wiped his face as best he could with his dirty old washcloth, then cleared his throat and let out a few practice "fa la la's."

Gaithersburg, Maryland was not by most accounts a hobo-friendly place, although to be fair, no place was.  The B&O mainline snaked through town, but there was no yard - only a short siding and the Y-shaped engine turnaround.  It was a small farm town, and its 25 mile distance from Washington, DC might as well have been 250 miles in the 1930s.  The lonely tramp beneath the street light had walked and ridden and trespassed his way here from New Mexico over the past four months.  

He had two reasons for making sure he was here for Christmas.  First, he knew he was unlikely to run into any other hoboes, here.  This was important.  None of the other rail-riding bums could stand him or his incessant jingling, singing or preaching about the Nativity.  Plus, he was a hobo, and most hoboes didn't like each other very much.

The other thing that attracted him to this sleepy little town was a small two-bedroom house on Chestnut Street, near the fairgrounds, and that's where he was headed this Christmas Eve.  He stopped a block away from the train station and did some jingling and singing.  Usually, this netted him a few pennies and a threat or two of arrest.  Tonight, the last-minute shoppers were many, and after a few minutes at the corner of Summit and Diamond, he had nearly three dollars and a new pair of second-hand gloves.

He bought a yo-yo, a cheap rag doll and a few candy canes at the drug store and jingled over to Chestnut Street, humming the Coventry Carol to himself.

He was earlier than last year, and the lights were still on inside the tiny house.  This meant a longer wait in the cold, but more importantly, it also gave the drifter a chance to peek inside.  He crept, keeping his jingling as muted as possible, up to the side of the house, to the window that he knew was the living room.   

They were still up.  Both wore flannel pajamas; James covered in firetrucks and little Caroline still in pink footy things.  He hadn't gotten a look at them last Christmas, so he was a bit taken aback at their increased size.  Their mother, adorned in her favorite Christmas apron, was helping them hang their stockings, trying to hurry them off to bed.  The drifter-turned-peeping-Tom felt a wave of hurt slosh through him.  They were fine.  She was fine.  The house looked well-kept.  There was, still, no man in sight.  He felt low - lower than usual. 

It had been five years.  He had never met Caroline, who was a few weeks from entering the world when he had left.  He only knew her name because he had seen it scrawled in glue and glitter on her Christmas stocking.  Every year, he came to the house on Christmas Eve.  Every year, he brought with him a bag of candy and a couple of toys, as well as every last cent he had managed to beg, borrow or steal since the previous December.  Every year, he stood there searching for the courage to knock on the door, to beg forgiveness, for permission to re-join the world.  Four times, he had failed.  

This year, he came close.  He watched the children hang their stockings.  He saw them scamper off to bed.  He watched their mother as she poured herself a glass of wine, then carefully filled the kids' stockings and arranged a small pile of gifts beneath the tree.  He waited about half an hour after the last light had gone out, then tiptoed up the steps and onto the front porch.  He placed his annual gift to his abandoned family gently on the doormat, along with the same note he always left, a  barely-comprehensible apology for taking off the way he had.

He hesitated.  He put his hand on the door and whispered, "I love you," then turned and started down the front steps.  From the darkness behind him, in the porch swing, he heard a throat clear.  His instinct to run was overwhelmed by his instinct to freeze in his tracks, so he froze in his tracks.

"You know, Franklin, those jingle bells are a lot louder than you think they are."

"I was afraid of that."

"Sure you were, sweetheart.  Sure you were.  You know what I think?  I think you wanted to be heard, jingling around out here like one of Santa's elves."

"I don't know what to say to you, Nancy.  I don't know where to start.  I should go."

"You can start with 'I'm sorry,' Frankie, and see where it leads.  Come inside.  It's freezing out here."

"I know nothing can redeem me, but I am truly sorry, Nan."

"Merry Christmas, you smelly old hobo.  Come inside."