Siderodromophobic Billy - The Worst Hobo Ever

I never met Siderodromophobic Billy, and to be honest, I had never heard of siderodromophobia, and for three weeks, I assumed that the friend who told me about it was just having a laugh.  So, ever the skeptic, I did some research.

Well, whaddaya know - he was real, and so is the condition for which he was given his hobo moniker.

Now, I know that you, gentle reader or readers, have access to something called (or a lot like) "Google," so I won't bore you and waste your valuable Insta-Crush time with a lengthy and tedious description of siderodromophobia.  

So, let's focus on Billy.

My first question was, quite naturally, how can you possibly have been a hobo at all, and follow-up question - how does one even begin to think about considering developing such a disorder?

The first answer:  It's hard enough to be a hobo, but being a hobo who is deathly afraid of trains is nearly impossible.  "You still walk the rails from town to town," he supposedly once said, "but you can't abide the sound of a whistle, nor the sight of steam."  This resulted in a lot of running perpendicular lines from train tracks, hiding in the woods, and sweating through panicked heart palpitations.  The average hobo spent more time walking than riding, so in reality, having siderodromophobia didn't make that big a difference, so never mind what I said earlier about it making it nearly impossible to be a hobo.

The second answer was harder to find.  I mean, what could make someone so afraid of trains?  Of course, they are massive, fast-moving, and thunderously-loud - especially close-up, but lots of things are that way.  Horse races are that way, strictly speaking.  A large city can be that way.  The ocean.  A hurricane.  War.  I was a bit lost, but perseverance pays, and the internet is sometimes a wonderful tool.

It might not sound like much.  A train killed little Billy's parents.  It might not add much, the fact that a train killed them before his six-year old eyes.  And it still could fail to impress, the fact that a train killed his parents - pulverized them, really - in the warm, safe comfort of their kitchen, as the complementary aromas of kielbasa and sauerkraut filled the air.  These facts, these indelible sights and sounds of horror and instantaneous, permanent loss, excruciating as they are, do not fully explain a true case of siderodromophobia.  There had to be a missing element.

I had to resort to microfiche - material that has, to date, not made it to the digital domain.  I found it in a Pittsburgh library, slated for demolition in 2006.  The extra piece - the bit that made it all make sense - was not the fact that an eastbound train of 98 hoppers filled with a hundred tons of anthracite coal, powered by a total of four heavy locomotives (two up front, one mid-train, one on the rear) jumped the tracks and plowed into little Billy's house.  Fear of ordinary objects stems from a perception of reach.  Obviously, if you live 25 feet from railroad tracks, an accident can land a train in your living room.  

But Billy lived over five blocks from the tracks.  The lead locomotives, coal tenders, and a half-dozen loaded hoppers rolled a half-mile down Sycamore Street, from the Pennsylvania main line, past two stoplights, past the school and the fire house, over a small hill and around a 10-degree curve in the road, before slamming into the house and annihilating Billy's parents, two minutes before supper.

So, yeah.  I guess I kind of get it.

Siderodromophobia.  Look it up.  

Pantless, Sockless, Shoeless Buster Bareass - On Loss

In my quest to tell the stories of John Hodgman's 700 HOBOES, I have often struggled to find any useful information at all, beyond a name.  Many of these people are nothing more than ghosts.  Interviews of actual hoboes have been helpful, but short of that rare face-to-face meeting, I have found that the best window into the forgotten lives of America's legions of train-riding wanderers is found in the letters a few of them left behind.  

The following letter was found in 1949 in the woods near the Louisville and Nashville tracks, twenty-two miles southwest of Mobile, Alabama.  It was in a glass bottle, clutched in the skeletal remains of a long-dead man - presumably its author - next to a shallow grave marked only with a number of small rocks arranged on the ground in the shape of a cross.  Local authorities had the remains exhumed, and they were able to determine that it was a woman, estimated to have died at least fifteen years prior, probably in her mid-twenties and eight-to-ten weeks pregnant when she perished.  Nearly all of her bones had been broken.

My Dearest Eleanor,

I will try to be brief. I know you hate when I ramble.  I hope I needn't remind you that I view our time together as nothing short of a miracle, but in case you forgot, there it is.  I never believed in soul mates before you stumbled so drunk and pretty into my campfire.  Enough said, I'm sure.

It has been five years, but the only difference between how I feel now and how I felt when it happened is that now, I'm older and more tired.  They said time would heal me.  It hasn't.  They said I could take comfort in knowing that you and the baby are at peace.  I cannot.  And Lord knows I have tried.  They even said I would love again, the fools.  I have not.  I will not.  I cannot.  I love you, and that is all.

I tried to convince myself that it wasn't my fault, that if you couldn't hear the train over the storm, there was no way you could have heard my voice.  I don't know.  I said nothing.  I just stood there, paralyzed and stupid in my disbelief of my own eyes, and it was over.  You were gone.  Our life, ended in a horrible blink.  No, I will not forgive myself this loss.  We knew plenty of losses before this one - my pants and shoes, my watch, your scarves and the photograph of the two of us with the sideshow madam in Cincinnati.  Even the fingers I lost to frostbite were nothing.  I am empty, I am dead, I am lost.

I still wake at night and speak to you, as if you are beside me.  I dream of our baby, always a girl, and she looks just like you.  Every day, I tell you I'm sorry, over and over.  I have returned here twice a year - on your birthday, and on our anniversary, to bring you flowers that I paid for myself. 

And now I think I've cried enough, trying to reach you, and to be where you are.  There was frost all the way down near Pascagoula last night, and it feels just as cold, tonight.  I'll sit with you, sweet Eleanor, and drink all this hobo wine, and I'll pass out, and freeze right to death, right to you.  And we will be happy - you, me and the baby.  I hope you haven't met someone new, where you are.  That would be awkward.  Anyway, if that's the case, I'll have only myself to blame, for not doing this sooner.

I'm sure when they find me, they'll say, "Oh, this poor bum - he had nothing of his own," but I know better.  I'm not a bum.  I am a hobo, and I had everything.  I had you.

With all of me,
Buster

P.S. I didn't freeze to death, and I have a splitting headache.  I'll try again tonight.

This post was written in response to another Studio Thirty Plus writing prompt.  This time, the phrase (He had nothing of his own) comes from one of my own posts, last week's little ditty about Packrat Red And His Cart o' Sad Crap.

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!