Stymie Stonewrist and Ol' Stiffpants and The Bond

Dew, Leaf, Ballast - Point of Rocks, MD 1997 JMS

 

They didn't choose to be bonded, but bonds can have a way of imposing themselves on the unsuspecting. Sometimes the bond chooses you. Fifteen-year old Stephanie Steinquist was about a year from becoming Stymie Stonewrist when she began her seven-hour shift at the the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in Greenwich Village on Saturday, March 25th, 1911. A few blocks away, Albert Huffheinz, who would later be called Ol' Stiffpants, was struggling to obtain his father's death certificate from the coroner's office. His mother was working a sewing machine on the 8th floor at Triangle Shirtwaist, one row behind Stephanie.

There was a fire. The stairwell doors were locked. The lone fire escape was not up to the task of stewarding all of the factory workers - mostly women and girls - to safety. 146 of them died, including the recently-widowed Mrs. Huffheinz. Young Stephanie survived - rather miraculously - with a broken and subsequently improperly-set wrist, several lacerations, and an undiagnosed concussion. She also suffered profound survivor's remorse, and although she had barely known Mrs. Huffheinz, she went to sit Shiva with the woman's family for several days following her discharge from the hospital. That was where she met Albert.

There wasn't much said, sitting Shiva with the grieving family and friends, but after a couple of days, when the older Huffheinz women began to quietly converse, Albert sat next to Stephanie and gestured at her plaster-wrapped wrist. "You were there? You worked with Ma?"

She nodded sadly. "I didn't know her very well, but she seemed swell," she whispered. "She always had the older ladies in stitches."

"Ha!" Albert's laugh surprised him as much as it did his fellow mourners, some of whom regarded him with a mild, give-the-kid-a-break-he's-an-orphan-now disapproval. "'In stitches!' She was a seamstress! That's funny. You're funny."

She stared at the floor for a moment. "I'm... I didn't mean to be funny..."

"It's okay," he assured her. "Ma was a hoot, and I promise you, she woulda laughed and laughed at the stitches bit. "I'm Albert." He took her hand and shook it gently.

"Stephanie," she said softly. "I'm awful sorry about your mother - well, and your father, too. I'm just dreadfully sorry."

"My uncle says I'm getting all of my sad things out of the way early, so that the rest of my life can be peaceful and happy." 

"That would be nice. I'd say you've earned it," she offered tentatively.

"I don't know. My uncle drinks a lot. Say, how'd you get out of there - if you don't mind my asking? I know those bastards kept the doors locked - they all do."

She looked at the floor again, then looked up at him, then quickly looked away. "I don't think I'm ready to talk about it," she whispered. "I'm sorry."

"No need to apologize. I'm sorry to pry."

"When I'm ready to talk about it, you'll be the first to know."

Over the next six months, they became best friends. She found another job at a similar garment factory, doing her best to supplement the meager incomes her parents earned as line cook and bookkeeper at a Greene Street steak house. Albert, too old for the orphanage, went from one menial job to the next. When not working, they spent countless hours visiting and gossiping and commiserating and walking and people-watching. Their friendship even survived a brief ill-advised foray into romance, which they quickly and decisively declared was not to be. 

She was a sturdy girl, and had learned to fight in the sweatshops. He was short and slight, and not at all a fighter, and on more than one occasion she had helped him fend off bullies and would-be muggers. "Why'd you do that," he'd protest, "I coulda handled 'em." She always said, "I know, but it's the least I can do," which puzzled him. 

Then, Albert read a book about hoboes. He quickly became obsessed with their lifestyle, their culture, their oddly humanitarian code of conduct, and their freedom. With a promise to return and tell her all about it on the first anniversary of the Shirtwaist fire, he left New York City in a boxcar bound for Buffalo. "If you don't show up at that memorial, mister, I'm coming looking for you - and if anything happens to me, won't you be just the saddest!"

He did not show up at the ceremony commemorating the one-year anniversary of the fire. She scoured all of Washington Square Park. He was not there. She even saw his uncle, who could offer little more than to shrug a helpless "We haven't heard from him." Inside her, panic and resolve engaged in a rousing bout of fisticuffs, with resolve emerging victorious. "Swell. I suppose I'm a hobo now," she growled, stomping away.

"He goes by 'Ol' Stiffpants' now," the uncle shouted helpfully after her. "Something like that, anyway."

"Thanks. If you see him, tell him I'm heading to Buffalo, and I'm gonna call myself, um... Stymie. Yeah - Stymie Stonewrist."

She followed the New York Central back and forth across the state, and struggled terribly for the first few months. She was assaulted - mostly by non-hoboes like cops and railroad workers. She was bitten by police and other dogs, harassed in towns, robbed, and worse. She learned as she went. She developed calluses. A lot of calluses. And she asked every hobo she met if they knew Ol' Stiffpants. For months, the answer was no. Then, at a junction outside of Albany, the answer was yes. 

"I heard of that fella," an extra-dirty and profoundly stinky hobo named Jack Skunk told her. "New kid. Little guy. Jewish, from the city.

"That's him! Do you know where he might be - or where he might be headed?" she asked, with hope in her heart for the first time in ages.

Jack Skunk laughed hard. "He rides the Pennsy, not the New York Central. Sorry miss - you're on the wrong railroad."

"Well, shit."

It took several more months, but on November 1st, 1912, she found him. That is, he found her. She was sharing a camp just south of Buffalo with a few other hoboes, and had inadvertently looked at Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick in just the wrong way, and was a half-second from getting good and stabbed - quick. A little blur of a man leapt from the darkness and kicked Ol' Barb's knife from her hand and sent it spinning off into the woods. 

"Come with me," he ordered, as Stymie's assailant raced after her wayward blade.

"Albert??" she shrieked as he nearly dragged her away from the camp.

"It's Ol' Stiffpants, ma'am," he started. "Wait. Stephanie? Is it you??"

"I go by Stymie Stonewrist now," she said breathlessly as they ran. "I can't believe I found you - sort of - I've been looking for you since March!"

"I know. I'm sorry. If it helps, I've been looking for you since March, too. I got to the anniversary ceremony a couple hours too late."

"I wish you hadn't saved me from that crazy stabby lady, though. Now I owe you TWO life debts."

"What?" 

They ran a mile or so, then found a suitable bridge, under which they lit a small fire and huddled together and cried and hugged and tried kissing again and this time it kind of worked. And they shared their respective stories of rookie hobo trial and error and more trial, and eventually slept.

In the cold light of morning, with Lake Erie lapping at the nearby shore, a southbound train of empty coal hoppers thundered through the woods and over the trestle that sheltered them. Albert Ol' Stiffpants Huffheinz snapped awake and reached for his soul mate. She wasn't there, but she hadn't gone far. She sat on a fallen tree near the lake's edge, watching the little waves. He approached her cautiously, making sure to snap a couple of twigs as he walked. He stopped. He reached for her shoulder.

"Morning," she said. "Mind if I walk with you a while, Ol' Stiffpants?" 

"I'd like that," he said without hesitation. "Stymie... Stonewrist, is it?"

"Yeah - on account of my wonky wrist. I kind of made it up on the spot." she turned to face him and smiled. "I'm ready to tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"How I survived the fire."

"Oh. You don't have to," he said softly, taking her hands.

She inhaled deeply. "No, I think I should. It's okay. So, I was on the fire escape with the others when it collapsed. Your mother was there. She had pulled me and another girl out with her - practically dragging us by our hair - and almost as soon as we got on the fire escape, it broke free and we were falling, falling. Everyone screamed and fell. I held onto a piece of metal that swung down a few floors against the building, then hit a window ledge, and then, well..." She took another deep breath as Albert squeezed her hands. "I landed on your mother. She saved my life, and I think I killed her. I'm so sorry."

Albert stifled an odd sort of laugh, and wrapped his arms around her. "I have no doubt that she saved you, my dear, but you must believe me when I tell you that it was the pavement that killed her, not you."

She looked up at him. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely certain, and I will thank her every day for that, as long as I live."

"So will I," she whispered. They held each other for hours - or seconds, who could tell? Finally she said, "I assume the 'Ol'' is on account of your prematurely-greying temples, but what's the 'Stiffpants' part about?"

Ol' Stiffpants sighed, and shifted uncomfortably in her embrace. "I'm not ready to talk about that. But when I am, you'll be the first to know."

 

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) 

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."

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?"

 

 

Trainwhistle Abejundio Can't Sit Still

N&W Class J #611. We hear and we obey.

1936. It was five-thirty on a chilly late-September afternoon in Cumberland, and the yard was filled with idle trains. The autumn sun had been weak to begin with, but now, through the haze of a dozen steam locomotives and scores of wood-burning stoves, it was downright feeble, failing to draw a shadow from Mexico Tower, at the south end of the yard. A double blast from a throaty steam whistle echoed through the valley, announcing the impending forward movement of a stopped train.

Trainwhistle Abejundio leapt to his feet and grabbed the ratty burlap sack containing all five of his worldly possessions. "That's my train! Gotta go..."

"Oh, for Pete's sake, Abejundio, please be still," Dee Snider groaned. "That was just the yard hump engine - or maybe a helper, headed back from Sand Patch."

"No, Deandra. It's that westbound freight we saw sitting in the yard," Abejundio insisted, "We gotta hop it, or we'll be here all weekend."

"Well, we'll never hop it from a mile away. Besides, what's the matter with a weekend in beautiful downtown Cumberland, Maryland," Dee said, with a dash of sarcasm. "Why can't you ever just stay put for a couple days? Ol' Barb might be coming through here..."

Trainwhistle Abejundio did not care to see Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick, as he had met her once before, and it had not gone well. He also was less than fond of staying put - in Cumberland or anywhere else. "How long have you been a hobo?" he asked his grubby, spindly walking companion and frequent partner in petty larceny.

"Five years," she said flatly, "why?"

"Because 'can't stay put' kind of comes with the territory. It's right there in the name..."

"Abejundio? Oh - I get it. Can't sit still."

"No. In the name 'hobo,'" he said.

"Hobo is a title," she corrected, "Not a name."

"Whatever you say. I'm fixin' to hop that westbound and get to Grafton, tonight. By this time tomorrow, I'll be in Cincinnati, eating oysters and having a grand time..."

"Stop. Oysters? You think they have Oysters in Cincinnati?"

"Well, I don't know what they have in Cincy, Dee. Pierogi? Roast beef and cloudberries - whatever it is, I'll be enjoying it, while you're sitting here in overcooked squirrel town, or dirty waterville, or whatever they're calling it, this year..."

Dee Snider moved a half-pound of long, frizzy, blonde curls from her face, and stared at her friend. "What happened to you, Abejundio? You're so bitter."

He sighed heavily, shook his head at the caboose of the departing westbound freight, and dropped his stick and bindle. "I was born in El Paso, supposedly a half hour after my parents crossed the border. When I was twelve, my dad died while saving France in the Great War, and my Mom passed less than a year later, from fingernails..."

"From fingernails?" she repeated.

"Yes, fingernails. Anyway, I pretended not to understand English for a few years, and watched as the younger boys at the home all found gringo parents, and I heard the train whistles from the Union Pacific yard - as well as the nun's jokes about giving up and putting me on an eastbound train, because, they said, there were way more suckers on the east coast."

"Rude," Dee declared, supportively.

"Yes," Abejundio agreed, "very rude. So, I took matters into my own hands, and found an empty cattle car bound for who knew where, and I was gone."

Dee nodded thoughtfully. "Sounds like almost every hobo story I've heard. But it doesn't really explain your recent bitterness, does it?"

"It does not."

It did not.

"Well?"

He sighed the rattling, shallow sigh of a man who'd spent way too much time around coal and smoke. "It's really very simple. I'm losing the last good thing I have."

"What on earth are you talking about? You're a hobo. You have nothing."

"Not quite," he said. "I lost my folks, I lost my job, my home, my faith, my way - like we all have - but I still had my gift. I got my hobo moniker for it, and now I'm losing it."

"The 'Trainwhistle' part, or 'Abejundio?'" Dee asked.

He blinked several times at her. "Trainwhistle," he said. "Abejundio is my given name. I got to be known as Trainwhistle on account of my uncanny ability to emulate the specific whistle sound of any locomotive, from Maine to California - even the little short lines and logging railroads. Name a loco, and I could mimic its call, plain as day..."

Dee clasped her hands excitedly. "That's marvelous! How have I never heard you do this? Do one now. Let me hear a Pacific."

"I've actually done it around you plenty of times. I just made sure you weren't looking, and you always thought you heard a train."

Dee tilted her head at him. "Well, that's not very nice."

"I know. I'm sorry. Anyway, I haven't done it in six months. I can't, anymore. I've gone tone-deaf."

"Oh," she said, shaking her head at the ground. "That's sad. I'm sorry. Well - at least you had a gift, for a while. I got nothing."

"You have one," he said, "and it's the same one I have, now - so we're even. It's my last gift - and the first gift of every hobo. It's the reason I'm so hell-bent on living up to the meaning of Abejundio."

"Freedom," she said, not looking up.

"Freedom," he echoed. "Let's find a place to camp. Maybe I will stick around and say hello to Ol' Barb..."
 

Arther Moonlight On Better Worlds

Sunflowers - Somerset County, PA - Photo by [Maris], 2001

When hoboes eulogized their friends, there were usually precious few people around to hear them. Such was the case in August 1938, when Unshakably Morose Flo, Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick, Knee-Brace Kenny, and Laura Delite gathered between the railroad tracks and a field of sunflowers, just east of Gallitzin, Pennsylvania to remember Mad or Sad Judd (no one could tell), at the invitation of Arther Moonlight. Judd had died five weeks before, having jumped or fallen (no one could agree on that, either) from a bridge into the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg.

"No one else is coming?" Asked Arther Moonlight, so named for both his love of staring at the moon and his impossibly pale skin - and because hoboes didn't know how to spell Arthur.

"I don't think so," Laura said. "Pretty sure it's just us."

"Nuts."

"Hey - five is a pretty good crowd for one of these things," Kenny reasoned.

"Can we make this quick?" asked Unshakably Morose Flo. "I hate these things. So sad."

Arther smiled. "Don't worry - I don't have much to say."

"Were you and Mad or Sad Judd very close?" Laura asked.

"Nope."

"Oh for Pete's sake!" Ol' Barb spat. "None of us really knew him, either! What are we doing, here?"

"Every hobo deserves a respectful goodbye, Barb-- Don't stab me! You know it's true. Let's just bury his stick and bindle, say something nice, and be on our way, okay?"

"Fine."

"Friends," Arther began, "we gather here today to say something nice about our fellow 'bo, Mad or Sad Judd, who caught the westbound last month--"

"He jumped," Flo said. "I heard he was planning to swim down the Susquehanna, down the Chesapeake Bay, and all the way to Europe, to start a new life."

"No way," Knee-Brace Kenny said, "That's dumb."

"YOU'RE dumb!"

"Shush!" Arther shushed. "She's probably right about that, though. I only met Mad or Sad Judd once - he was sad, by the way, not mad. Our only meeting had a profound impact on my life. I was seventeen years old, less than a year into my life as a hobo, and as usual I was standing by the tracks in the middle of the night, staring at the moon. I was considering going back to Baltimore, to try to start over with a job at the port or something. My parents were long-since dead and buried, but I had an uncle with connections at Locust Point, so..."

Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick snorted. "Gee whiz, Moonlight - you sure know how to put the you in eulogy."

"I told you I didn't know him that well!" Arther snapped. "Let me finish. So, this older fella walks up and stops and stands there next to me for a minute, looking up at the moon with me. I said hello, and something about it being extra bright that night, and he laughs and says, 'There are better worlds, kid. That ain't one of 'em, but there are surely better worlds.' I didn't know what to say. I just stared at him for way too long, and in that extra-bright moonlight I could see a sadness in his sunken eyes that shook me something awful. He wasn't just sad. He wasn't just tired, or suffering, or any of those things we all know so well. He was broken - shattered, really. And he shook my hand, and all that stuff I just seen in his eyes came charging into my hand, like I grabbed an electric fence. I was flummoxed. This beat-down, crushed tin can of a man had just said the most hopeful thing I had ever heard. And he turned and walked away. I only found out who he was a few days later, when a yard cop came asking if I'd seen him."

"What's so great about that? 'Better worlds exist?' So what?" Unshakably Morose Flo said. "We're stuck on this world. If anything, I think knowing that there are better ones - well, that would just make it worse, wouldn't it?"

"Not for me," Arther said. "For me, it meant that I shouldn't ditch the path I was on. It meant, 'Keep looking, kid - don't give up.' That was a good fifteen years ago, and I still say it every day. Better worlds exist, and I'm gonna find me one - and if I can't find me one, I'm gonna make one..."

"You're going to make one?" Ol' Barb sneered. "How do you think you're going to do that?"

"I'm gonna do the best I can, that's how. Today, I'm gonna bury this here bindle sack in the earth, and say a prayer for Mad or Sad Judd, and wish you all well. And tomorrow, I'll look for work again, and take whatever this world gives me, and keep on walking."

"Sounds about right," Knee-Brace Kenny said, grabbing a piece of metal from a trackside scrap pile. "Let's do it. I'm happy to lead the prayer, if you'd like..."

"I appreciate that," Arther said, "but I'll handle the prayer."

"I'll drink to that," Barb declared, pulling a flask (really just an old cough syrup bottle) from her bag. "Here's to you, Mad or Sad Judd - better worlds exist, and I hope you find yours."

"Hear, hear!" the assembled hoboes chorused.

-- for Mary --

88 Lines About An Additional 44 Hoboes

Re-inspired by a band called The Nails (and by rereading 88 Lines About 44 Hoboes), here are...

• The only thing that Irontrousers The Strong couldn't lift was was himself - out of grinding poverty - because it was the Great Depression - and he was a hobo. That's how it worked, back then. 
• Thad The Bunter couldn't swing a bat to save his life, but he was crazy-fast. He hit cleanup for the Cleveland Indians for over fifteen years, to the tune of a .329 average, before retiring and going hobo.
• Gila Monster Jr. could kill a grown man with his venom. Unfortunately for him, he inherited his father's sluggishness, and was beheaded with a garden hoe for no reason.
• The high-flying acrobat career of Giancarlo, The Master Of The Metal Trapeze was short. Metal trapezes both attract and conduct electricity.
• Roadhouse Ogilvy And Sons joined Hobo Nation as a family on a rainy Saturday in 1930, the day after Mrs. Ogilvy ran away. She managed to evade them for the rest of her long, hard, happy life of freedom.
• Finnish Jim was one of the saddest tramps around. On the hobo road, there was no vodka to be found.
• Flemish Jim was hobo number 42. His unique dialect rendered his theory on the answer to "the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything" completely incomprehensible to his friends.
• Todd Four-Flush always swore that he was going to get a job and leave the hobo life. His friends had a running bet regarding his boasts, which no one ever won.
• Peter Ox-Hands could do pretty much anything except build watches. His only desire was to build watches.
• Thoughtless Harry Hsu couldn't remember any of his friends' birthdays. Fortunately for him, they couldn't, either.
• Everyone assumed that Sir Roundbelly DeDelight was simply a glutton, although he was rarely seen eating. Sadly, his massively-distended abdomen was caused by a rare deformity called "hunchstomach," and there was no cure.
• Flea Stick made straight candy canes, using whatever ingredients he could find on his person. No one would ever eat them.
• Senator Cletus Scoffpossum was forced to resign his seat in the Hobo Congress. Apparently, repeatedly betraying the public trust and being a homeless Hoover sympathizer was acceptable, but Hobo Nation drew the line at making fun of pint-sized marsupials.
• They told Twistback John, The Scoliosis Sufferer, "You'll never survive this great war with that curved spine." Most of them died, while his curved spine saved his life by bending out of reach of the bullet that passed non-fatally through him.
• "X," The Anonymous Man Or Woman wrote scathing op-ed pieces for the LA Times throughout the Great Depression. They were equal parts eloquent defenses of the New Deal and juvenile personal attacks on several hoboes who were mean to him or her, and on all the wrong politicians.
• The Fishin' Physician wasn't a hobo at all. It just happened that his favorite place to catch widemouth bass was from a low trestle that carried the Southern Railway over a slow-flowing creek in southern Georgia and well, word got around.
• Mariah Nix said no a lot. She could have married ten times or more.
• Von Skump sang drinking songs and tried to incite singalongs. The hobo world would have been into it, were it not for those Disney-esque lyrics.
• Clinical Psychiatrist Hugo Rivera could tell you exactly why you did those things you do. What he couldn't do, which spelled his demise, was tell mosquitoes from common flies.
• Slow Motion Jones was a 48 frames per second hobo in a 24 fps world. His life moved half as fast, but his film ran out in half the time.
• Prostate Davey peed a lot. It wasn't cancer, and it didn't kill him, but boy howdy did it ever hurt. 
• When a hobo needed someone found, they knew to call DiCapa The Hound. Something else that rhymes with hound.
• The most noteworthy thing about Ponytail Douglas Winthrop was his long, neatly-arranged forearms. He earned upwards of thirty cents a day, fetching out of reach products from grocery shelves for short people.
• Hoboes from coast to coast knew the story of Lil' Johnny Songbird, The Songbird-Eater. It was as bad as it sounds.
• No one picked Meep Meep, The Italian Tailor to survive the hobo wars. He showed them all by converting haute couture to burlap-and-lint, and headlining the runway show at the great hobo jamboree of 1939.
• Stun Gun Jones earned his hobo named accidentally. His 1922 Colt pistol misfired every time, resulting in a bright flash and loud bang, but no casualties, ever.
• Bathsheba Ditz bathed naked in the best Southern Pacific swimming holes. The leadership saw, and it was all downhill from there.
• The hobo life suited Parlor Peter, The Sneak Thief. He never wanted for pilfered windowsill pies or board games.
• Del Folksy-Beard was clean-shaven when I met him. Full disclosure: I met him in a progressive care facility in 1992, when he was eighty years old.
• Lonnie Choke always made the playoffs. He never made the second round, and we never forgave him for it.
• You would think that Drinky Drunky Thom, The Drunk, would have loved the hobo life, on account of his raging alcoholism. You'd be wrong, though, you pre-judgmental stereotyper. 
• If you were a hobo in the late 1930s and you found yourself in front of a magistrate, you wanted Alan Pockmark, Esq. to represent you. He knew next to nothing about law, but his face made judges reflexively bang their gavels and clear their courtrooms, so his acquittal rate was a solid fifty percent.
• Although he never faced a fourth down, Canadian Football Pete was always ten yards downfield before the quarterback released the ball. We should all be allowed to run toward the line of scrimmage prior to the snap.
• Freak Le Freak, The Freakster grew up in the sideshow, enduring endless monsoons of hurtful words and rotten vegetables. He was yanked from homelessness by a Hollywood tycoon, and later brought the house down when he sang "This Is Me" at the Oscars.
• Jethro The Pagan hated being asked about his faith. It's no fun being the hobo who ruined Christmas by predating it by so many hundreds of years.
• No one could sing "Code Monkey" quite like Jonathan William Coulton, The Colchester Kid. It was his song; he wrote it.
• Some Tennessee rockabilly redneck named Elvis something-or-other frequently stole pants, before becoming the King. Rex Spangler, The Bedazzler - a lowly hobo - tried a dozen times to assassinate him for it, before finally succeeding in 1977.
• Ovid was an epic hobo. His Metamorphoses have stood the tests of both time and high school Latin class.
• Chicken Nugget Will always ate beans. It was the '30s and chicken nuggets didn't exist, yet.
• Chainmail Giles Godfrey survived a torrid affair with Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick. He was hard to stab.
• Some hoboes were downright monstrous. Cthulhu Carl's tentacles were short and stubby, so he wasn't that scary.
• Sherlock-Holmes-Hat Carl III only wore it ironically, though he was quick to admit that those flaps could keep his ears warm like nobody's business. He lived a long, long hobo life, never having found just the right pipe.
• Mickey The Assistant Manager could authorize discounts and exchanges, but not refunds. He never held the keys to the lint store, and that haunted him the length of his days.
• Patrick Intergalactic was not, in fact, born in a distant galaxy. He was from the ice fields of Hyperion. 

Thanks for making it all the way to the end - again!  And yes, I'm aware that there are 45 hobo names here, but the extra one is Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick, so what are you gonna do?