The Seven Robert Silks And Their Six Dogs (And One Bobcat)

The closest thing Hobo Nation had to an organized gang - and one of only a few family units - was the Silk brothers of the Western Maryland Railway.  Most of the seven boys were born in Elkins, West Virginia.  Only two were born elsewhere - one in Cumberland and one on the "National Road," just outside Wheeling.

Their parents, Bob and Minnie Silk, were performers with an earnest but struggling vaudeville troupe in the early part of the twentieth century.  Bob was a juggler and Minnie was a trapeze artist, but neither was particularly skilled. They met their untimely deaths, seconds apart, during a performance at the 1930 Maryland State Fair in Timonium.

Bob's big finale was the lead-in to Minnie's act, and they intentionally overlapped by about a half-minute.  He would still be juggling a full bottle of wine, a machete, two meat cleavers, a live (but flightless) duck, two flaming torches, a maraca and a sizable rock - and Minnie would come swinging through the flying objects from her perch, horrifying the audience.  The effect was simple enough to achieve.  The trapeze was set up about ten feet upstage from Bob's line of fire, so it appeared to the audience that she was flying through the mayhem, when in actuality she was perfectly safe.

Somewhat needless to say, on this night, the stagehands failed to erect the trapeze and its stands a safe distance from the danger zone above Bob.  The flying machete sliced halfway through his dear wife's neck, severing her jugular vein.  One of the torches set her hair ablaze.  The duck bit her nose.  She screamed, but managed to keep her grip on the trapeze - until one of the cleavers took her hand clean off at the wrist and the other split her skull.  She was dead before she landed - on top of her stunned husband, who died instantly of a broken neck.  They got a ten-minute standing ovation.

Their sons had not witnessed the tragedy, which would come to be known by members of the troupe as "the act that will never be bested."  They had been on a side stage at the time, working on their tumbling and acrobatics before an audience of disinterested families waiting in line for the Ferris wheel.  After a dizzying week of being shoved from place to place by various aunts and uncles and grownups unknown to them, the boys watched their parents' coffins disappear into gaping holes in the earth near Elkins.  The next day, they were gone - disappeared into the hills of northern West Virginia to find their way as only brothers can. 

Their first concern, after the intense battle over who would sleep in which of their three two-man tents (the next-to-youngest were twins, and would squeeze in with their four-year old little brother), was their dog, who was to deliver puppies - and soon.  She was almost five years old, a mutt made from German shepherds, some kind of retriever, collies and terriers - lots and lots of terriers.  Her name was Molly, and her first litter of five came only two weeks after her masters, the Silk brothers, had run away and joined the world of the hoboes.

The seven brothers, all named Robert, had grown to both love and hate their father's carney-like sense of humor regarding their names, and had become downright bitter about their diminutive stature.  These issues were moved to the part of their campfire that passed as the back burner, for now they had a mother dog and her brood to look after, in addition to each other.  Such matters were further complicated when, a week after the puppies' birth, the boys awoke one morning to find a female bobcat kitten nursing alongside the dogs.

They tried to leave the orphaned cat behind when they broke camp, assuming that her potentially-lethal mother would come looking for her, but Molly would not have it.  She had already bonded with the kitten, and as far as she was concerned her brood was now six strong.  

For a while, the Roberts shared custody and care of all the dogs and the little bobcat, as they moved from place to place along the Western Maryland rails, but within about a year, each of them had paired up with a furry companion.

Robert The Tot, as the oldest and strongest, was a natural to take on the management of the bobcat, who they named Bobbi Boop.  He kept assuming the cat would attack him or one of the family when her predator instincts took over - or maybe just leave - but she never did.  She outlived all of the dogs by three and a half years, and was as docile and affectionate as a golden retriever.

Robert The Child-Size became Molly's primary human, and the two of them were excellent thieves.

Robert The Miniscule took the pup that looked like a husky but acted like a Westie.  They were never apart, and they hunted small game like nobody's business.

Robert The Wee and Hanz, the most German shepherd-y of the dogs were disciplined and quietly fearsome fighters, and usually took night watch duty.

The twins, Robert Fits-In-A-Case and Robert Eats-For-Free, took an instant liking to the two runts of the litter, a pair of collie-retriever-rat-terrier-like mutts they named Heckle and Jeckle.  They could chase down the fastest hoboes (or yard cops, or grocers, or milkmen) and take their food, money, milk or booze so quickly and quietly, they collectively came to be called Team Seek-and-Obtain.

Robert Is-He-An-Elf? fostered the grey and white dog that looked more husky than anything else.  He was the only Robert Silk who harbored any goodwill toward the vaudeville life.  He and his dog Minnie developed a synchronized diving act, practicing for years in the Potomac river and Wills Creek, and eventually left the Silk brothers to join a traveling show out of Charleston, West Virginia.  Unfortunately, vaudeville by then had been killed by the motion picture and the radio, so they failed miserably and rejoined the family a year later.

One by one, the dogs passed away.  The Roberts trudged on, becoming notorious in the Appalachian highlands as a crew to be reckoned with, although no one could ever say exactly why.  They didn't hurt anyone, never used a weapon and stole only what they needed, relying mostly on what the woods and the river provided.  They rode the rails between Hagerstown and Elkins and had most everything they needed.  

They survived longer than most hoboes did.

 

A Slacker* Looks At 40 (From 45) - Restart. Again.

Time for another look (back) at TURNING FORTY.  We've covered the fact that my "Big 4-0" was HIJACKED by a rather serious onslaught of medical mysteries.  Weird illnesses and surgery notwithstanding, I did spend some time around my 40th birthday doing what millions of men before me have done - something I myself have done more times than I can count.  I tried to get back into shape.

Let's be clear.  I have never been in noteworthy shape.  Even in my best, most in-shape years (basically the Reagan years, plus some bits of the 90s), I looked like a runner, at best.  This is mainly because I was a runner.  So for me, trying to get back into shape wasn't like trying to reclaim some sort of football shape; just better shape would be fine.  

I had already experienced a dozen or more get-back-in-shape restarts between my 30th and 40th birthdays, and all of them had stopped before any real progress had been made.

This is boring, right?  Everybody does this, like, All The Time.  True enough, but this time, I had help.

First, I had (drug-induced) time in the early mornings to exercise.  This was utterly new to me, as I have not ever (EVER) been a morning person.  Ever.  I have to train coworkers at each new place of employment not to attempt to engage me before at least 10:30AM (11:00, just to be safe).  But when I got sick and was in pain and whatnot, I was introduced to my new BFF, hydrocodone.  I know - a narcotic painkiller is NOT supposed to get you out of bed at 5:30 in the morning; it's pretty much designed to keep you in bed, isn't it?

Well, I'm weird.  Vicodin did knock me right the fuck out at night, but I invariably awoke with [Maris]'s first alarm at 5:30 each morning.  I would still feel good and floaty, and would try to go back to sleep, but to no avail.  So every morning I went downstairs and did all manner of situps and pushups, and engaged our "poor man's stairmaster" for at least an hour before work.  I was sick, but I was exercising, and that made me feel just a little less helpless.  

When the lung thing showed up and I started to cough, my routine got even better, for a while.  The lung doc gave me a big-boy cough syrup with... hydrocodone.  The same narcotic ingredient from vicodin in a delicious reminiscent-of-the-stuff-I-had-as-a-kid syrup!  The pass-out-at-night-but-wake-up-totally-ready-to-work-out effect was, if anything, intensified.

Then came the surgery, and I stopped.

Then came steroids and too much energy and the almost-overnight defeat of the lung stuff and the joint pains, and I started again.  Then came the indescribably huge appetite and massive weight gain that accompany steroids, and I stopped again.

About a year later, I found out I'd be going to my company's London office with my coworkers, and that I'd be dragged to Leicester Square's clubs, where I'd have to drink and dance and keep up with people far younger and fitter then I.  I tried getting up and doing the "poor man's stairmaster" again - even tried popping the last few vicodin I had, to see if it would spring me from bed at 5:30AM.  It didn't.  I stopped.  I decided I'd just have to act my age in London, or hurt myself trying to keep up.  The latter happened.  It was not pretty.

Five months after that debacle, the ol' Vortex of Doom was acquired (see any of the "Double-barrel Unemployment" posts) and I was laid off, with what amounted to a few months' worth of severance, bonus and accrued vacation pay.  Time to get into shape again, whilst perusing the interwebs for a new paycheck provider.  

I did okay for a while.  Felt pretty good, too.  Even treated myself to a spanky new pair of running shoes.  I hadn't run in over eight years, but now I had time, and the itch to run again.  I stopped.  My knees would no longer allow my to run, even on grass.  Those awesome new shoes, still languishing in my closet wondering if maybe it was something they said, have about 14 miles on them.  I'd sell them to you - cheap - but selling used shoes is gross.

Almost TWO YEARS passed before I found a new permanent job.  In that time, despite the pinched budget, I grew and grew and grew.  So, this New Year's, I again resolved to get back into shape.  Again.  Wanna hear how it's been going? Sure you do!  Here's my exercise journal, to date:

1/1/13 - It's New Year's Day.  No workout.  Too full and tired and hungover, and we're going to Mom's to get more full, later.

1/2/13 - Back to work.  Tired.  No workout.

1/3 - Too tired to put the /13 anymore.  Behind at work.  No workout.

1/4 - It's Friday.  Who works out on Fridays?

1/5 - Playoffs and the putting away of Christmas gifts.  No workout.  This made me feel dark and mean, so I wrote about a DARK, MEAN HOBO PIRATE.

1/6 - Got to go to the Skins-Seahawks playoff game.  Does tailgating and then standing and yelling for 3 hours count as a workout?  Probably.

1/7 - Exhausted from the game.  Work still really busy.  National Championship is on.  No workout.  Roll Tide.

1/8 - Sick.  Legitimately no workout.
  
1/9 - Sunspots.  Very dangerous to work out during sunspots.  Stayed very still.

1/10 - Got dressed for a good workout.  This tired me out completely.  Went to bed instead.  Had a rum & Coke.  Wrote about a MUCH NICER HOBO.  Watched "Adult Swim."

1/11 - Fridays are NOT for exercising.  It's the law.  I think it's a Federal law, actually.  Or Catholic.  I've heard it said that I was baptized Catholic.  So, no workout.  Obviously.

1/12 - More playoffs??  Wowee!!  Too bad I slept until game time.  It's nice enough outside to grill, too?  Well, there's no way I'm    passing that up!  No workout.

1/13 - Overtime at work.  Extra money - yay!  But, by the time I get this rotting Christmas tree out of the house, and put the cover on the grill - it's gonna rain - it'll be playoffs time again, plus we have new episodes of Bob's Burgers, Family Guy and American Dad to watch.  How can anyone be expected to work out during THAT?

1/14 - Ooh - Lance Armstrong is going to tell Oprah what we all already know!  No workout.

1/15 - The Nationals signed a pitcher.  A good one.  Potential closer, actually.  But wait.  They already have not one, but TWO closers.  And this guy comes from the yankees.  He's tainted.  Must pray to baseball gods, that I may know how to feel about this acquisition.  No workout.

11/16 - You know, it's been a while since I wrote a blog post.  No workout.

So you see, like a 1980s child trying to get the hang of Atari Missile command, I am continually hitting the reset button, in the hopes that this time, I'll get it.

I think I'm off to a great start in 2013.  Think I'll go for the high score...


*Remember, I'm not really a slacker.  I'm just not real ambitious.

Zaxxon Galaxian's Extra Life - A 700 Hoboes Story

Zaxxon Galaxian was made of magic.  And water.  And carbon.  Mostly water, actually.  And some nitrogen and other stuff.  Okay, to be clear, he was composed of water, carbon, nitrogen and some elemental odds and ends, but he was made of magic.

In school in 1927, when the other boys were drawing stick-figures doing The Charleston, Zaxxon was doodling 3/4-view industrial landscapes in 256-colors.  And none of that simplistic vertical scrolling for young Zax, either.  It may have been good enough for his father, back in the stone age, but these days it was all about scrolling right-to-left, rendered to appear 3-dimensional.

Mr. Galaxian

Zaxxon, age 8

By the time he turned fourteen, Zaxxon had already known loss.  His mother died of pneumonia when he was ten, and at thirteen his father, then a blurry after-image of his once-vibrant self, was blown up three times by marauding space wasps.  But by then, Zax had also begun to realize that he had a gift.  In 1934, he ran away from the East St. Louis Industrial Arts School For Boys, carrying nothing but his beloved colored pencils and crayons, a pad of cheap sketch paper and a hat.  His mother had always made him wear a hat from the first week in September through mid-June, so he was sure he'd need it.

Like many hoboes, he kept mostly to himself.  He was tall, but thin and not very strong, and he knew nothing of fighting.  His self-defense was centered primarily around the avoidance of others.  He wandered east and found a stretch of woods and rails along the snaking Potomac River border between western Maryland and northeastern West Virginia, a few miles east of Paw Paw.  

He hunted small game, fished what little could be fished from that part of the river, and hid in the hills above a nearly-nonexistent place called Magnolia.  There, he worked on his craft.  When he ran out of paper or drawing implements, he'd venture into Paw Paw or hop a train to Cumberland and conjure up some more.

"Conjuring" was Zaxxon's term for his unique brand of panhandling and supply-replenishment.  He would go into town and find a park or a school - someplace with children - and he would trade his artwork for fresh paper, pencils, crayons, occasionally pennies or a new hat.  He was comfortable around children.  He trusted them, and they trusted him.  His hard life had spared his naive and loving heart, and in many ways he remained utterly childlike.  Kids could sense that.  Sometimes, the older children pitied him, but most found him fascinating, and absolutely adored him.  They came to look forward to his visits as though he were Santa Claus himself.

Their parents, many of whom were railroad men, were less trusting.  To them, he was just a creepy man who was too old - and far too filthy - to be skulking about the playgrounds giving weird drawings to their kids.  Once, a group of men set upon him with furious fists and one set of brass knuckles, and fractured his skull, leaving him for dead in an alley.  A few months later, he tried a little conjuring in Hancock, Maryland.  He was stabbed by two men who took exception to his fraternizing with their children, and left face-down and unconscious in a creek.  The following winter, he was pretty sure he froze to death in his makeshift tent near Magnolia.

He was well-aware of the three-life limit that afflicted his family on his father's side, so he knew that he must have somehow earned that elusive "free guy," the bonus life.  He was not about to squander it.

It took him a year to find a job in a department store in Cumberland, another year to earn the trust and support of a benefactor and two more years to find his way to the front of a classroom, teaching art to sixth-to-ninth-graders.  The magic in his drawings inspired the kids of that mountain railroad town for the next thirty-two years.  His students were never quite able to explain the magic of their teacher's works of art, except to say that to look at one was to fall into another universe, complete, moving and real.  

Orion Nebula

The grownups never quite warmed to him, nor he to them, but he was at least accepted.  The kids, until the day he died for the last time, loved him.

Zaxxon Galaxian and his gift had found a home.         

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.        

A Slacker* Looks At 40 (From 45) -- The Warranty Expires

It's hard for me to look back at turning forty without seeing a dead, muddy Bart Simpson, crumpled face-down next to the railroad tracks.  Oh wait - that was me, only I wasn't quite dead, and I was on the floor of our foyer.  My 40th birthday was still several months away, but I was quickly learning that my warranty had expired at 39 1/2.


Leaving out the medical details because they are tedious and boring (except to my doctors - they think I'm NEAT!), I was very sick, and the long process of trying to figure out what was wrong with me had just begun.  I was home, loaded with radioactive iodine and awaiting part two of some scan thingy.  I stood for a minute, then sat on the floor, then sprawled out on my back, breathing laboriously and scaring the hell out of poor [Maris].  Feigning confidence as best I could, I assured her that we would find out what was amiss, treat it, and get on with our awesome life together until we were so old as to be considered cute.  Inside, however, I felt as though I might not see age forty, a mere six months away.

What do you do when you think you might be facing death, and for real, this time?  I don't know about you, but I watch a mandatory internal slide show of bits of my life.  It was much shorter than I'd expected, but whatever.  It was out of my control, so with [Maris] holding my hand and worrying herself almost to the point of injury, I watched as the images scrolled past like a bad PowerPoint presentation.


Dangling happily from the rusty old ladder on the American Shoal Lighthouse, a few miles off Sugarloaf Key on our honeymoon.  (Photo by [Maris])  It seemed like only yesterday.



Back, back, back we go - to 1977.  One of those images I can see perfectly without the aid of the photograph.  Yes, that's a Fonzie t-shirt I'm wearing.  And yes, I look a little less than thrilled.  Photographers who read this will understand.  A stranger had my camera.  Rest assured, though - that was a great day.  When I got sick in 2006, my father had been gone for just over a year.  I remember thinking that my dad would have liked my boss.  On one of my really bad days, this guy came over to my cubical, looking very concerned, and quietly and very sincerely told me not to die at work because he didn't want to have to "deal with" me.

 
BOOM.  It's 2004, and [Maris] and I are adventuring in Maine, shooting every lighthouse and weird sign that moves, and many of the ones that don't - including the Old Cape Elizabeth Light.  That was only two years ago, I thought.  I took a few deep breaths.  I determined that I would live to again scamper along the coast with my beloved, searching for the perfect photograph.


I got worse, then better, then much worse.  One morning - and I know I make a lot of stuff up, but I'm not making this up - I had an extremely vivid dream of dying.  One of my weird symptoms was extreme joint pain, and my hands would sometimes clench up so badly that just washing them was difficult.  In my dream, I was in my parents' bathroom, struggling to wash my hands.  A voice from within told me to give up and turn off the water, and that it was okay.  I had a feeling that turning off the water would be THE END, but as quickly as I filled with dread, I was emptied of it.  It was okay - profoundly sad, but okay.  I was going to miss [Maris], but as the water stopped and my life went silent and black, I thought Well, at least my hands won't hurt anymore.

 

They don't.  I lived.  I turned forty.  I live.  I complain a lot, but I live.

 

* I'm not really a slacker.  Mostly, I just like the title.

I Resolve Nothing (But What About JR Lintstockings?)

This document was found in 1934, rolled-up and stuffed into an old whiskey bottle floating in the Wabash River near Terre Haute, Indiana.  It was written in charcoal on the back of a faded photograph of a woman in early-twenties attire, posing with a happy smile next to a Singer sewing machine.  Scratched into the photo is simply "Mother."  The writing on the back is sloppy, but it is noteworthy in that it was not riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, as most of the limited written material the hoboes left behind usually was.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

of

JR LINTSTOCKINGS

1930

I resolve to make a second pair of trousers, and to wash the ones I have.

I will make an effort to start conversations with something other than "I want to die."

I will only steal what I need, starting with the ring on No-Shoulders Smalltooth Jones' finger, should he freeze to death tonight.  I need that.

I will stand up straight, as Mother taught me.

I will go to church on Sundays, and I will do so to worship.  No more breaking in on Monday mornings to steal the offering, or on Saturday nights, to steal the wine.  At least, no more than necessary.

No more hookers.  They know I never have any money, and I always just get beaten up.

I will find gloves with more than two fingers intact.

I will appreciate the little things, like fine wine and walks in the park and evenings at the theatre, the soft hands of my many happy children and my beauty-queen wife, our warm feather bed, a quality filet mignon, a good Dodgers game on the wireless, and the writing in the New Yorker.  Ha ha ha - that's dumb.  I resolve to appreciate all that stuff, if ever I encounter it.

I resolve to learn how to juggle while riding a unicycle.  I can do either one separately; this is the year I need to put them together.

I will take down my pants before relieving myself, even in the winter.

This will be the year that I finally finish my novel.

I will learn to control my violent urges when I hear singing.

I will not get locked in any more box cars.

I will visit Mother's grave and leave some nice flowers, this year.

I will set fires only for warmth and to cook my squirrels and beans, not simply to watch things that I can't have go up in flames.

I resolve to spend less time out of doors.

I will get a job, and a home, and a new life.

Failing that, I will walk on, keep myself alive, and be grateful for the dawning of each new day.

I will walk on.