Catching Up With Fonzie - Crime & Punishment

"That's it?"  The Union Pacific detective asked, looking not at his suspect, but at the two-way mirror on the back wall of the interrogation room.  He knew that behind the glass, the Oklahoma City cops were shaking their heads.

"That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it, copper."  Fonzie, a six-year veteran of the grinding, often brutal hobo life, had been in trouble before.  His smile spoke of relief, as if he'd confessed everything.

He had not.  Not nearly.

His confession had covered only the petty crime committed that morning - his attempted theft of a woman's purse at Union Station.

"Buddy, we got all night.  I already told you the purse snatching ain't your biggest problem.  So, before we go any further... Arturo Hebert Fonzarillo--"

"Call me Fonzie," the hobo said smugly.

The policeman cleared his throat.  "Arturo Hebert Fonzarillo, you are hereby charged with the murders of Estelle Jane and Frank Joseph Fonzarillo.  You have the right to remain silent--"

"What??"  Fonzie slammed his handcuffed fists on the ancient wooden desk, and began to lunge from his chair, before several officers rushed into the room and encouraged him to reconsider.  "My parents?  What's wrong with you, bub?  My parents died six years ago."

"Yes - the day you disappeared, Mr. Fonzarillo," the lead interrogator said flatly.  "The day you murdered them.  Now, you pays your money and you takes your choice, see..."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"What he's trying to say, Fonzie, is you did the crime, so now you're gonna do the time.  I'd say about twenty-five to life."

Six hours later...

"You know what, coppers?"  Fonzie sighed, exhausted.  "I know I didn't kill my folks.  God knows I didn't do it, and I'm pretty sure you fellas know I didn't do it.  But, you know what?  Write up a confession, and I'll sign it.  Whatever you say - I did it.  I drowned my dear old mama in the lobster tank in our restaurant.  I knocked my pop unconscious with the pizza paddle from the kitchen, then burned him in the oven.  Done and done.  Where do I sign?"

The detectives stared at each other for a moment, then at Fonzie.  "We'll get that typed up in just a minute, Fonz.  But we been here for hours - with you proclaiming your innocence up one side and down the other.  What gives?"

The weary hobo sighed heavily.  "Like I said, God and me - we know I didn't do it.  But there ain't a judge or jury that's gonna believe me.  So, the way I see it, I already been punished to hell and back, over the past six years.  You say I'll get twenty-five to life in the clink.  About now, that sounds like a step up.  A cot, a shower, food that don't have bugs in it, vaccinations, a roof over my head and no more running - I'll take it.  Where do I sign?"

  

This time, I combined the STUDIO 30-PLUS prompt "he'd confessed everything" from Kirsten A. Piccini's "Man on a Mission," with the LIGHT & SHADE CHALLENGE prompt "You pays your money and you takes your choice," and the name Fonzie, from John Hodgman's list of 700 hobo names.

So.  Did he do it?

The Recalibration of Billy Creak Knees

Train Robbery - Cumberland, MD. 
Photo by Joe Scott

Some of the tales I heard from old Buck Mope were a bit on the tall side.  Others were utterly ridiculous.  The story of Billy Creak Knees was neither of those things, but it is still one of my favorites.

Born in Philadelphia in 1899, Heiko William Bowie was the only child of Cassandra and Günter Bowie.  His father was a master tailor from Germany, and his English mother kept the books.  Early on, he had designs on a career in law.  He was the first in his family to finish high school, but his parents' pride turned quickly to heartbreak, when at age 17 he enlisted in the Army and was hastily deployed to the front lines of the Great War in France.

He did what most boys did, over there.  He witnessed hell.  Unlike nine of ten guys in his unit, he survived.  He was shot - twice - but spent only a few days in a field hospital before being hurled back in the direction of the enemy.  When he returned home in early 1918, it was immediately evident to his parents and friends that there would be no college, no law degree, no life of security and professional achievement.  His achievement was that he had survived the bullets and shrapnel of the war, but at an incalculable cost.

He drank, he whored, he fought, he even found his way into an opium den, once.  He got arrested.  Soon, he withdrew completely into his post-traumatic private hell.  They called it shell shock, and that was as good a name as any for what was going on in young H. William's brain.

One late-winter morning, a dissatisfied customer strangled his father to death with a tape measure, and bludgeoned his mother with an adding machine, when she tried to intervene.  She clung to life in a coma for a week before succumbing.  William had held it together for his father's funeral, but the thought of seeing his mother buried overwhelmed him, and he ran.

His first year as a hobo was much like his time in the trenches of France, in that he just barely managed to survive it.  He acquired the moniker Billy Creak Knees, although he was so immersed in his pain and hopelessness that he didn't learn it until years later.  In those early, lonely days on the rails, his despair kept potential hobo friends at bay.  On three separate occasions, he stood in the middle of the trackbed before an oncoming train, and three times he leaped to safety at the last conceivable instant.  He didn't much care to be alive, but he did not want to be hit by a train, either.

"Can't say for sure what pulled Billy Creak Knees from that black pit," Buck Mope told me, shaking his head.  "Some say it was the sight of those trains, coming for to pulverize his mortal body.  I heard it might have been breakin' up that Western Maryland robbery that turned his life around.  Silver Jacket Man said he found God.  Could be, could be.  But me - I think he just woke up one day.  Smelled the air, heard the birds, all that.  Did the math and saw alive greater than dead.  Who knows?  But turn he did."

Billy Creak Knees became what was known as an expert hobo.  He could start a fire in seconds, cook anything into an edible entreé, avoid cops and dogs, rather than engage them, and talk strangers into hiring him for a wide variety of day jobs.  He scrawled hieroglyphic poetry on bridges, sheds, and boxcars, inspiring his brethren to hold their heads high, live with honor, work hard, and survive. 

I asked Buck how Billy met his end.  I was used to hearing about the wretched fates of so many of his hobo acquaintances, but this time, I was simultaneously disappointed and relieved.

"Billy Creak Knees - far as I know, he still alive," Buck shrugged.  "Must be about a hundred-eight, now.  All I know for sure is he learned to love the road, and mentored every reckless young 'bo he could find.  Heard a rumor back in the seventies - they said he was working for Amtrak, tellin' stories for tourists.  Don't matter to me.  He survived.  He found hope where there was none.  That's what he did."

Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick's Search for Love

Dewy White Flower, by [Maris] - Louisa, KY 1997

"What about Knee-Brace Kenny," Laura Delite suggested.  "He seems positively smitten with you, Barb."

Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick scoffed.  "I don't even want to dignify that with a response.  You're lucky I don't--"

"Stab me?" Laura said.  "I mean, stab me again?"

"You know me so well.  Look - Kenny's very sweet, but he's just a boy.  I need a man.  A real man.  Plus, knee braces give me the willies something awful."

"Well, how about Magnetized James?  He's a man's man.  All the lady hoboes think he's a dream."

"Oh Laura, be serious," Barb groaned.  

"I am being serious," she insisted.  "You two made a swell couple.  Everyone said so."

"Oh, I know," Barb admitted, "but we had no future together.  The man is magnetized, you know.  Anything I had that was metal - my fork, my cans, my knives - they all stuck to him.  Once, I was about to stab this yard cop, and James got too close to me and ZAP!  There went my trusty stabbin' knife.  Cut him pretty bad.  Again."  She shook her head.  "No.  No future."

"Yes, I remember that story.  I felt bad.  If he weren't magnetic, it might have worked out."

"And don't even say Ironbelly Norton," Barb cautioned.

Laura Delite laughed.  "Oh, I wasn't going to bring him up, honey.  'Yes, Norton - you can eat gravel and newspapers and dead frogs, and not even throw up or anything.  We're all very impressed.  Isn't there anything else you can talk about?'"

"He was such a braggart," Barb nodded, looking down at the Louisville and Nashville trackbed as she walked.

"Say, how about Huge Crybaby McWeepy?" Laura proposed.  "He took a shine to you the minute he saw you."

Ol' Barb laughed loudly.

"What?  So he cried.  Most fellas cry when they get stabbed by a gorgeous blue-eyed dame from the road - or by anyone, for that matter."

"It's not just that he cried," Barb countered.  "But he's an ugly crier."

"An ugly crier?  Oh come now - who's not just a little bit ugly when they cry?"

"He looks like a circus clown when he cries.  So, no ma'am.  I think I'll pass on Mr. McWeepy."

"You're impossible," Laura said.  "You can't be so choosy, out here.  How about Stool-Sample Frank?  He's nice.  Tall, handsome, great smile, seems strong and kind."

"He's always trying to sell me a stool.  I'm a hobo.  What am I going to do with a stool, for goodness' sake?  And if I could afford a stool, would I be out here walking from town to town looking for work picking crops and cleaning stables?  No.  You're welcome to him."

Laura thought for a moment.  "No, you're right.  I forgot how hard he tried to sell those stools.  You'd be better off marrying No-Banjo Burnes."

"Ha!  The only man I ever failed to stab, and dare I say, he scared me, just a little.  I had nightmares of being beaten in my sleep with that rusty old banjo."

"If only you hadn't--"

"Don't."  Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick stopped in her tracks.  More accurately, she stopped in the L&N's tracks.  Either way, she stopped.  "Don't say his name."

His name was Shane Stoopback, and Barb had loved him, once.  He didn't love her back, and it made her as irrational as a schoolgirl with her first crush.  He ran from her, he hid from her, he begged her to leave him alone.  One night, she saw him sitting by his fire, singing a soft, pretty song to some woman she didn't know.  In a blind, jealous rage, she stabbed him to death.  The other woman ran off and hadn't been seen since.

"Have you ever considered trying not stabbing people?  It might help..."

"Never mind, Laura.  Some gals just ain't meant to find love.  I'm coming around to it.  I'm learning that it's not in the cards, for me.  I'll never find love, and that's just how it's going to be.  Thank God I have you, though."  She took her best friend's hand, and they continued west toward Memphis, into a hazy orange setting sun.

You silly woman, Laura thought.  Love has already found you.  You just don't see it, yet.  But so help me, you will.

Once again, I wrote in response to a wonderful prompt, "He's an ugly crier," excerpted from fellow STUDIO 30-PLUS blogger LM Leffew's elegant post THE KING IS DEAD.  Check it out.  She's really good!



 

Pineneedle-Jacket Jericho Fop and The Tournament of Roses

"Grandpa, is Jericho Fop your real name?"  The child had been warned repeatedly not to ask her grandfather about his name or his past, but with her mother out for the evening and Grandpa babysitting, she decided it was time to know.

"Of course Fop isn't my real name!  What kind of a name is Fop?  No, I was born Jericho Sanford.  Well, technically, I was born with no name, but my parents - your great-grandparents - bestowed upon me the name Jericho Sanford, the day after I was born, back in 1909."

"Wow - you sure are old," she marveled, quickly trying to subtract 1909 from 1978, and wishing she had pencil and paper because it was too hard to do in her nine-year old head.

"Yes," he admitted, "I am.  Feel even older than that, sometimes."

"So, why are we the Sanfords, but you're a Fop?"

"When I was a hobo, they called me Pineneedle-Jacket Jericho Fop.  Hoboes liked to give each other funny names."

"Mama says I'm not supposed to ask about when you were a hobo..."  She was too young to know it, but she was giving her grandfather an out.  To her delight, he failed to take it.

"I'll give you the short version of the story, for now.  Don't tell your mother," he winked.

"I won't," she assured him.  "Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye."  She pantomimed stabbing herself in the face with what seemed to be a large, invisible knitting needle.  

"Don't hurt yourself, kid!  Now, let's see... I had a normal childhood in the very normal town of Kansas City, Missouri.  When my parents moved us to California, we took the train, and even though I was only twelve at the time, I fell head-over-heels in love with the railroad.  I knew that whatever I did in life, it was gonna have to involve trains."

The girl looked around her grandfather's study.  "That explains all the train stuff in here, huh?"

"That it does, that it does."  He took a moment to join her in a brief admiration of his collection of Santa Fe and Union Pacific memorabilia.  "So, when my folks were killed-- I mean, when they passed away..."

"Wait - 'killed?'  What do you mean, they were killed?"

Jericho Fop hesitated.  "I'm going to be in so much trouble with your mother, if she finds out I told you about this..."

"I won't tell.  I promise."

"Okay, then.  I was fifteen years old, and I was in the junior rodeo.  I wasn't the best rider, but I was real good at roping, so I got to compete.  Ma and Pa came to see me, of course.  At the junior rodeos, they didn't let us kids anywhere near the big steers, but they had one full-grown longhorn tied up out front, just for people to look at.  I didn't actually see what happened, but I guess that old bull got lose and went on a rampage.  My event was a few minutes off, so my parents were behind the grandstand, looking for some shade."

"Oh, no!  Did the bull get them?"

"No, the bull just ran off into a nearby field.  My parents were trampled to death by a bunch of rodeo clowns in hot pursuit of it."

"That's terrible!"

"It wasn't pretty.  Anyway, there was no way I was gonna stand for living in some orphanage, so I packed what I could carry and set out - following the rails, hopping trains, finding work where I could, and never looking back.  Listen, it's getting late - I better save some of the story for another time."

"No!  I wanna hear all about it.  What was it like being a hobo?  Were you always dirty?  Were people mean to you?  Did you have a dog?" the girl was determined to get more out of her grandpa, because who knew when she'd get another shot at one-on-one time with him?

"Okay, real quick.  I promise to tell you more, one day, but for now, I can tell you that being a hobo was very, very hard, but it was also the best twenty-two years of my life.  It was freedom, above all else.  And yes, I was dirty most of the time, but I didn't mind.  Yes, some folks were very mean to me and my friends, but most people were surprisingly kind.  What else?  Oh - dogs.  We didn't exactly have dogs, but it seemed they were always just sort of around.  There.  How's that?  There's your introduction to the story of my hobo life."

"One more thing - why did they call you Pine... Was it Pinecone-Jacket Jericho Fop?"

"Oh, that.  It was Pineneedle-Jacket, because the flower petal jacket I made for the Tournament of Roses parade fell apart in the rain, and I had to make a new one out of pine needles.  Don't make a face.  It was really warm, completely waterproof, and it smelled wonderful.  I thought I looked very dapper in it, and I guess I talked it up too much, 'cause the boys put Fop at the end of my name.  They said I was a dandy when I wore my coat.  I didn't care.  I love that coat.  I still have it, in a trunk in the basement.  I'll get it out and show it to you tomorrow.  But it's almost ten o'clock.  You were supposed to be in bed by nine.  Your mother is going to have my head..."

"Okay, okay.  Two minutes - I promise.  First, I have to know..."

"About the flower petal jacket?" he smiled.

"Yes!"

"I was the victim of a prank.  My buddies and I got jobs gluing flowers to parade floats.  The guys who had worked on parade before told me that the only way I'd be allowed to walk in the parade was to make sure I was covered in flowers, just like the floats were.  So, I made this ridiculous coat of white rose petals, and darned if I didn't show up wearing it, only to find my friends in normal clothes, and just howling with laughter at my expense.  It was warm that morning, so I didn't have a shirt on underneath, so I had to wear the stupid thing.  That is - until it started raining, and my jacket began to dissolve.  They said all the fallen petals looked like wet confetti at a New Year's Day parade.  I'm sure that's exactly how it looked, and I was embarrassed, for sure."

"Wow - they were mean to you, Grandpa."

"Oh, they were just being boys.  You know, when you're making a group of boys, you subtract ten I.Q. points for every additional boy, until you reach zero.  It's okay, though.  I applied what I learned making that coat to the construction of my pine needle jacket, and I headed north toward Seattle, made some new friends, and lived happily ever after.  The end."

"Not 'the end,'" she corrected him, "just the end for now, right?"

"You bet.  Now, run upstairs and get ready for bed, kiddo.  I'll be up in a minute to tuck you in."  The child scampered off, and the old hobo pulled himself from his easy chair and stood, admiring the mementos of his glory years.  "Huh," he chortled quietly.  "Pineneedle-Jacket Jericho Fop.  What a life..."


Today's post was prompted by fellow studio30plus.com blogger KG Waite.  I had to use "like wet confetti at a New Year's Day parade," from her post Hung In Tatters.  I also picked another one of the BRILLIANT John Hodgman's 700 hobo names, and boom.  Hope you enjoyed it!

Cecelia Graveside and The Dead Hope

"It all turned on a dime," she said, shaking her head as if still trying to come to grips with it, fourteen years later.  "One minute, we were living high on the hog.  I had more dresses than I could count at age five, and it seemed my hair was never without a ribbon.  Mother and Father belonged to the country club, and they had martinis every night with Mr. and Mrs. Loy from across the street.  The next minute, Father was gone, having jumped to his death from the roof of the Stock Exchange, and Mother had transformed into a monster.  I was too young to understand much of it, of course, but I was told that something called a depression was on, and that it was the cause of Father's suicide, and that it was the reason for our moving from Manhattan to a tiny, smelly apartment in Queens."

"That's all well and good, ma'am, but like I said, you're gonna have to clear out of here," the policeman repeated, his patience straining.  "There's still a war on, and we've got a troop train due to stop here in the next half-hour, and there's a trainload of brand-new tanks coming out of the yard ahead of that."

"I understand," Cecelia Graveside said, careful not to meet the officer's eyes.

"So listen," he continued, "I got a heart, lady.  Really, I do.  You can come back here tonight, if this campsite is so important to you--"

"It is important," she insisted.

"But the Army don't want a bunch of hoboes hangin' around the tracks, you know?  And when the MPs show up, trust me, they ain't gonna be as nice about this as I am.  So I'm asking you one last time..."

"I'm going, I'm going," she said, slinging her stick and bindle over a shoulder, and patting the makeshift grave marker of her late hobo husband.  "I'll be back dear," she whispered to it.  She stepped past the officer and toward the town square, across the tracks.  Between her and the square, a couple of dozen newly-enlisted men gathered, worried wives and flag-waving children in tow.  Cecelia plotted a route that she hoped would help her avoid the whole scene.  She sighed heavily.

"Ma'am?" the cop called after her.  She stopped, but did not turn back.  "I know it's none of my business and all, but, well..."

"Yes?"

"I was just wondering if you've tried signing up for one of those jobs at the factory - you know, like Rosie the Riveter."

"I have not," she said flatly.  "That is to say, not at that particular factory."

"Well, I heard they're still at least two dozen hands short - even on the first shift.  I heard they're taking everybody.  They got free training.  They might even have some spots left in the workers' dormitory.  I know it's not my place - I'm just tryin' to help..."

Cecelia turned to face the earnest young peace officer, and a tear made a surprise exit from her eye and onto her cheek, where it was made to feel so profoundly unwelcome that it leapt off, fell to the ground and exploded.  "Mister, I know better than to get in line outside that factory.  Don't get me wrong - it's a swell idea, and I'm not sore at you for the suggestion.  But you see, since I lost my dear husband, I've tried twenty other factories, just like that one - from New York City to Chicago and back again.  Every time, I've gone in with a smile on my face, hope in my heart, and a firm handshake.  I still have my handshake, but that's about it.  I can't take another rejection.  Mother used to say that hope springs eternal, but I can tell you, it doesn't."

"I understand," the policeman said.  "I don't blame you."  A loud, throaty steam whistle echoed through the town.  "That'll be the tank train.  Time to move along.  Take care of yourself, okay?"

"I will."  Cecelia Graveside made her way around the gathering military conscripts and their loved ones, up Main Street to the town square.  

She stopped.  Hope hung in tatters above her.  

Her dreams, she had often said, were the stray dogs that ran around the rail yard, and sometimes followed her.  She looked to her right, at the road that led to the next town.  She turned to her left, where the smokestacks of the factory peeked above the low skyline.  She sighed, looked up at the sun, shook her head slowly, and started walking.

...eternal.  Photo by [Maris].

This one springs forth from yet another STUDIO 30 PLUS writing prompt.  This time, the goal was to use "hung in tatters above her," a phrase lifted from fellow blogger Tara at THIN SPIRAL NOTEBOOK.

The Gathering Before Christmas

For thirteen years, December, for at least one homeless wanderer, had been the same.  As 1940 drew to a close, Cranberry Sauce Oppenheimer stopped walking, stopped seeking work, stopped trying to recall his given name.  He knew that he was about twenty-seven years old, having left home at fourteen, and he was pretty sure he had been called Eugene, in the hazy past.  He vaguely remembered a childhood divided between Louisville and Cincinnati, but could no longer recall which had come last, and he wouldn't have been able to find his parents' home on a bet.

His annual Christmas letter to his mother was usually burnt in the hobo jungle fire with the hope that its smoke might somehow reach her, but on occasion, when December found him near the Ohio River, he would fold it into a tiny paper boat and send it floating downstream toward his two hometowns.  Such was the case with this year's note.


Dearest Ma,

     It's me - your son (Eugene, I think).  I hope you and Pa and the twins are well.  This year has been the hardest yet.  I lost my hat in a card game, but I remember how you used to say 'always look on the bright side.'  Do you still say that?  I do.  I try to, anyway.  So the bright side of losing my hat was that I learned never to play poker with a deck of only 45 cards - especially if your opponents know which cards are missing.

I worked the bean fields for most of the summer, and in the autumn I picked pumpkins, if you can believe that.  Otherwise, however, I could find no work, so I must confess that I stole more food than usual, and even took a pair of pants from somebody's clothesline.  I'm not proud of that, Ma.  I tried to go to confession a couple weeks later, but they kicked me out, on account of my stinkiness. 

My fortune went from bad to worse, when all my clothes were stolen while I was in the creek, trying to boil up and get clean for a job interview.  It would have been good work, too - helping to build roads in Indiana.  I got arrested for public indecency, of course, and although it was a relief to have a shower and a bed and a roof for 30 days, it was a jail shower, a jail bed, and a jail roof.  An old-timer in the big house told me it was Karma or some such thing, getting me back for taking that stranger's pants.  I can't say I disagree. 

I also got into a bit of trouble with my sauce-making, this year. I could only find cranberries that had been irradiated, and my sweet side dish made some of my hobo friends ill. When they saw that I never eat the stuff, they accused me of deliberately poisoning them. I tried to explain that I'm allergic, and just wanted to make a nice treat for my brethren, but it was no use. They beat me pretty bad - even knocked out a tooth - and I was on the run for weeks, before I lost them, somewhere in Pennsylvania.

On Thanksgiving, my only friend on the rails, a fellow called Bippity Hankerson, found out that his parents, who owned a little restaurant in Milwaukee, had died.  His Pa dropped a can of lard on the floor, slipped and fell, kicking the legs out from under their deep-fryer.  It spilled boiling oil all over him, and burned him right to death.  Bippity's Ma came running, slipped on all that lard and oil, and fell onto the butcher's knife she was carrying.  Bippity was so distraught when he heard the news, he got crazy-drunk on hobo wine, stumbled into the path of a fast freight, and was obliterated.  I burned what I could find of him.

So I suppose it makes sense that this December, the fog that annually envelopes me is gathering once more - as thick as ever, and twice as fast.  I'm not sure I can go on like this, Ma.  Oh, don't worry - you know I will go on - but, when this fog comes for me, I honestly can't see to the other side.  It's dark.  Christmas bells toll in my ears like a death knell.  I don't want to die, but I don't much care to be alive, either.  I want nothing.  I have nothing.  I am nothing.  Everything is nothing.  There is naught but this fog of unremitting sadness and despair.

The only thing that gets me through these Decembers is knowing that you and Pa are out there somewhere, praying for me, and knowing that no matter how numb I may be to it, Christmas happens, and is beautiful.  It also helps knowing that it won't be long before our beloved Cincinnati Reds get back onto the field. 

Until then, sure it's bleak.  I hate the fog.  It always ALMOST kills me, but I'm like a bear.  I hibernate as best I can.

Please wake me, Dear Ma, when it's over.

Your loving son,
Cranberry Sauce Oppenheimer, aka Eugene (I think)

Another post in response to a community prompt from my friends at

Toodles Strunk Says So Long

For three years and eight months in the mid-1930s, Toddles Strunk roamed the American Southwest from one day-labor job to the next.  He stole rides on Union Pacific trains, walked hundreds of miles a month, slept in flop houses, or under the stars, subsisted on little more than the kindness of strangers, and made strategic friends when he could.

He was born Nathan Hoth, to immigrant parents from Greenland, in 1905.  His father was a watchmaker and his mother was a primary school teacher.  They died in 1934, minutes apart and on opposite sides of town.  Mr. Hoth was working on a commissioned pocket watch for the mayor of Allentown, Pennsylvania, when he lost control of a hairspring, sending a compensating balance wheel rocketing into his forehead with the force of a gunshot.  He died on the way to the hospital.  Mrs. Hoth asphyxiated on chalkboard eraser dust, just as the principal was receiving the news of Mr. Hoth's demise. 

Nathan, who had never held onto a job for more than a few months, couldn't bear to stay in Allentown, and with stick-and-bindle in hand, he hit the road west.  He was slow to learn the hobo way, but after about a year of arrests, forcible removals from train yards, and beat-downs at the hands of cop and criminal alike, he began to get the hang of it.  He remembered the only good advice his parents ever uttered - "kill 'em with kindness" - and made it his mantra.

After another year on the road, he was widely known as Toodles Strunk, one of the nicest hoboes anywhere.  He made sure he worked hard when he was lucky enough to land day jobs.  He constantly smiled, no matter what was happening inside him or out.  He remained chipper through the most desperate poverty, through illness, robbery, assault, and battery.  He gave more than he took.  He said please and thank you and when in town, he always tipped his ratty cap to women he passed on the street.  

And to his friends and hobo brethren, he always said "so long," instead of "goodbye."  He said that "goodbye" was too permanent, and that because he never met anyone he didn't want to see again, "so long" felt better, because to him it meant "until we meet again."  He also sometimes said "Toodles!" in a sing-song falsetto, for the same reason.

So long!

This hobo's story has no ending.  

Yet.

I guess what I'm trying to say, gentle reader(s), is that after three years and eight months of Mostly Harmless Drivel, I'm going to be taking a bit of a hiatus from my beloved blog.  As some of you know, I cranked out 62,000 words of mostly harmless novel during July's Camp NaNoWriMo.  Novels are needy things, and this one is not finished.  Apparently, I can't adequately divide my attention between this place and that. 

So, for as long as it takes, which hopefully won't be more than a couple of months, off I go.  It's not goodbye, but simply so long for now.  

Toodles!

This post partially prompted by my friends, whom I will dearly miss, at  STUDIO THIRTY PLUS.  So long for now, bloggy web-friends!




 

Sung, The Land Pirate - A Love Story

Some of the most famous hoboes were not actually hoboes at all.  Many others were hoboes in addition to being something else - singers, carpenters, bankers, haberdashers and so forth.  Two were pirates.  One of those was Robert Louis Stevenson, The Pirate.  Nothing is known of him.  The other was Sung, The Land Pirate.  His short life was the stuff of legend.

Tricky thing, legend.  At best, it is a collection of facts warped to varying degrees.  Often, facts are utterly bent, extending in a line perpendicular to the truth.  How close to reality was the legend of Sung, The Land Pirate?

Legend has it, Sung's mother left him in a basket behind the livestock pens in Topeka, Kansas when he was three hours old, and that he climbed out and began riding the rails that very night.   

This is not true.  In reality, he was born on a dank, leaky boat en route from China to San Francisco.  His parents were part of the last wave of Chinese near-slaves to come to the western U.S. to build railroads.  So, technically he had been around the rails since his infancy, but he didn't start riding and wandering until he was ten years old.

It is rumored that the reason he left the labor camp at age ten was that he had murdered the daughter of his father's foreman, and his parents had sent him away for his own (relative) safety.  

This is not at all what happened.  Sung had been desperately jealous of his younger sister, who had come along when he was seven years old.  On his tenth birthday, he was informed that his mother was again pregnant.  He became enraged and cut her stomach open in an attempt to kill the baby.  While she bled to death, his father came at him with a meat cleaver, but Sung snatched it from him, swung once and struck the man's leg near the groin, severing his femoral artery.  With his parents quickly dying, Sung stuffed his meager belongings, all the money from the mattress, the cleaver and a hunting knife into a pillowcase, muttered something hateful to his traumatized sister and started running.

It is said that over the next two years, he assembled a small band of skilled young burglars, pickpockets and murderers, forming his crew of land pirates.  

Again, not so.  He spent his first few hobo/pirate years on the run.  He made no friends and killed hardly anyone until his late teens.  During those years, he taught himself to hunt, to steal, to evade the authorities, to ride trains without detection - to survive.

Legend has it that during his peak land pirate years - from age nineteen until his death at twenty-four - he only killed with his bare hands.

Wrong.  In the midst of one of his first train robberies in California, he found a beautiful fourteen-year old girl with long, golden curls, cowering in a Pullman sleeper and clutching her long-dead grandfather's Union Army sword.  He had no trouble taking it from her, and when he finished brutally beating and raping her, he used it to cut off her hands, then pushed it into her eye and through her head.  From that night on, that sword was his murder weapon of choice, although he did occasionally shoot people, when the need arose.

There were little details of his land piracy that got twisted over time, as well.  He did not carry his possessions in a rickshaw.  He pulled a child's wagon, taken from one of the paltry few he robbed and left alive.  He did not have gold teeth.  He had homemade implants, fashioned from balsa wood and the teeth of several of his victims.  He did not lop off the head of one of his band of pirates for asking for a day off, but he did in fact quietly kill all of them, one by one, as they drunkenly slept one New Year's night.

Finally, he did not die all Bonnie-and-Clyde-style in a hail of police bullets.  He got scratched by a raccoon and died a week later from the ensuing infection.

But the part about him drinking rum was true.  It was hard to come by, but he loved it so much that, on occasion, he actually paid for it.        

Teary-Eyed Fingal

Another on a long list of misunderstood hoboes was a hard-hearted vagabond named Teary-Eyed Fingal.  He claimed that nothing made him cry.  As a teenager, he had worked alongside his father at a Bethlehem Steel mill in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  His father suffered a massive heart attack on the job, and died in his arms.  He was fired for staying with his lifeless old man and refusing to immediately return to his post.  He had not cried, that day. 

He had not cried when his daughter was born, nor when his wife took the child and disappeared, leaving a note that read simply, "Goodbye - don't look for us."  He hit the road and lived day-to-day with no regrets.

Hobo names were like herpes, so Teary-Eyed Fingal was stuck with his, despite his stony demeanor.  The reason was simple.  There wasn't much that happened on any given day that didn't make his eyes water.  

He could walk around during a spring rainstorm, and the pollen would find his eyes.  He could stomp through a dead, snow-covered field and the dry air would sting his eyes, and the tears would fall.  He had even seen the mill doctor, years ago, who had come up empty.  

Here are some other things that would make Teary-Eyed Fingal go all teary-eyed:

Pickles.
Baseball scores.
Getting boils lanced.
Sending telegrams to his mother in the nursing home.
Staring at the sun.
Coal dust.
The headlamps of the Norfolk & Western J-Class locomotives.
Sleeping too long.
Not sleeping long enough.
Wool coats.
Cats.
Beans.
Reading hobo hieroglyphs on telegraph poles.
Hearing the news that President Harding had died.
Walking.
Removing his shoes.
Bending over.
Stretching.
Mornings.
The sight of a flock of starlings in flight.
Mud.
Hats.
Radishes.
Sandwiches.
The end of the Great War.
Newsprint.
Meat.
Sunsets.
Gloves, especially gloves with the fingers cut out.
Gravel.

No wonder his eyes were teary.