El Top-Hat Swindlefingers And PomPom The Texas Dancing Dog

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ambidextrous Stang: Is This Your Lint?

The stories one can hear at the nursing home, if one is willing...

Herbert Stangle, either 98 or 100 years old, told me a little bit about his life.  I was wearing a t-shirt bearing the sleeping cat logo of the Chessie System Railroad, and he brightened considerably when he saw me.  At first, I assumed that that was because he was mistaking me for a loved one, perhaps one of his grandsons, but after five solid minutes of TRAINS, TRAINS, TRAINS, I knew better.

"You know what a hobo is?" he asked me, his voice strong, but full of either 98 or 100 years of grit and gravel.

HA!  Do I know what a hobo is.

"I dropped out of high school and left home in 1931, and I became a hobo..."

"Uh oh," I interrupted. "Your parents?"

"What about 'em?" he coughed.

"Were they, you know, alive when you left?"

He looked at me as if I might have been one of those therapy dogs that frequently visited him.  "Alive?  Of course they were alive - well, my ma was.  What's wrong with you, son?"

"Nothing.  I just... I've heard some stories about hoboes, and their parents often meet the most awful fates."

"Mine didn't. My pop died of a heart attack when I was a baby, and my ma raised me.  She worked hard, and gave me and my sister a fine childhood. She was my hero."

"Sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have assumed. So, why did you leave, then?"

"The smell."

"The smell?"

"Yes. Pop was in the ice box in the garage, and when it broke down and Ma couldn't afford to get it fixed, I tell you, he stunk like hell on earth. I couldn't stand to live there for another minute."

I nodded sympathetically. "Of course."

He continued. "Out on the road, some fellas survived by their wits, some by their brawn, others by sheer luck."

"How did you survive?"

"By sleight of hand, mostly," he sighed. "I did magic tricks - cards and shell game stuff - and a lot of pickpocket work.  They called me Ambidextrous Stang, I was so good."

"Are  you ambidextrous?"

"Nope. Just really, really good at misdirection. I tried to only steal what I needed, but it was a kind of addiction. After a while, I couldn't stop.  I stole watches and lint and wallets, pocket change, cigarettes - you name it. One time, I lifted a hundred-ounce can of kidney beans from a hobo's bindle. Got away clean, too."

"That's impressive. How'd you do it?"

The old man got quiet and stared at the arm of his wheelchair for so long, I was sure he had passed away, right there in front of me. Then, he drew a long, rattly, 98- or 100-year old breath. "The trick is to make your mark's brain focus somewhere else - away from the item you're trying to lift from him. I put my hand on his shoulder and left it there - too long to be polite - and squeezed it too much. He never knew what hit him."

"Wow. Did you ever get caught?"

"Oh, young man - I got busted all the time. It was just part of the game. In the 30s and 40s, it was easy. A night in the clink, a shower, a hot meal, and off you went. It started to change in the 50s. The hoboes were dying off, or going back to the world, and people got less... tolerant." His voice trailed off.

I sensed that he was tired, but maybe too polite or too lonely to stop, but I was searching for some sort of conclusion to his tale. "So, did you stop with the pickpocket stuff? Go back to the real world, or what?"

"I did not. I tried to. Got a job building the Class J's for the Norfolk and Western - most elegant locomotives this country ever produced - but I couldn't break the habit.  In Roanoke one night, I stole a man's jeweled wristwatch, got busted, and spent the next twenty-five years in and out of prison. The hobo life was a breeze, compared to those years. I got out for good in 1975, and got a job doing card tricks on the boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland. Then the 80s and those video game arcades came along - and that damnable Ripley's Believe It Or Not, and I sort of just... gave up.  Been in this dump ever since - going on thirty years, now. I think they're mad at me for living this long."

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing for a few minutes. After a while, I thanked him for sharing his story. I stood up and shook his frail 98- or 100-year old hand. He smiled kindly and chuckled to himself as I turned to leave.

"Young man?" he said. "Is this your lint?"

I turned back and found him grinning happily, holding my iPhone in a trembling hand.

"Thanks," I said, fighting the urge to be annoyed, and patting my wallet in its pocket, just to be sure.

"No, no, son. Thank you!" he said.

N&W Class J #611 - Photo by Joe Scott, 1992

Another prompted story, thanks to John Hodgman and his marvelous hobo names, and STUDIO 30-PLUS, and their "sleight of hand" prompt.