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.

If Your House Is Afire -or- I Loved "The Money Pit"

Mr. Goren nearly tore the door from its frame as he exploded into the office.  "Assistant Headmistress!  Assistant Headmistress!"

"Albert, how many times do I have to remind you," Mrs. Tyson sighed, "my title is Vice-Principal, and you should just go ahead and call me Anne, like everyone else does."

"Sorry, Ma'am - I mean, Anne.  Old habits from home, I suppose.  And I apologize for bursting in like this, but the school is on fire!"

"On fire?  Where?  Why isn't the alarm going off?"

"Not sure about the alarm, Ma'am, but I smelled smoke in my room, and when I went into the hall, several teachers told me they could see smoke coming from the old wing."

Anne Tyson sprang from her faux leather Vice-Principal's chair. "Pull the alarm manually, and evacuate the school!  Do it now!"

"Hold on a second, Anne," Mr. Walker said, striding into the office with his gut sucked in as far as it would go. "If we evacuate the kids in the middle of final exams, every test will be voided, and they'll have to start over - and that means a day will have to be added to the academic calendar."

Mrs. Tyson blinked at Walker impatiently.  "And?"

"And, and that will be expensive - and mess with everyone's summer holiday plans."

Miss Saguin, Mr. Williams, and Mrs. Nigh burst through the office door.  "The school's on fire!" they chorused.

"It's not on fire," Walker insisted. "Mr. Williams just wants to buy an extra day of exam prep for his slow kids. Besides, if there was a fire, it would have set off the alarm."

Ms. Maher entered the room. "I think the school's on fire," she declared calmly. "I saw smoke - a lot of it - coming from the old wing. We need to evacuate the children."

"The old wing," Mrs. O'Really scoffed as she joined the group, "that figures. I guarantee you - this fire was set by that wretched Jimmy Humanus. That kid's a damn pyromaniac."

"It's definitely a fire," confirmed Mr. Cooper, following O'Really into the office, "I saw the smoke, and I'm pretty sure I saw flames coming from the art rooms - but there's no way that the Humanus boy started it.  My money's on the crumbling ancient wiring in this old tinderbox."

"That's stupid," sneered Miss Saguin. "The afternoon sun heats those old wing rooms so dramatically in the spring.  I'll bet it was enough to ignite all that paint and turpentine, on its own.  Natural causes, all the way."

"No way - it was Jimmy Humanus, hands-down."

"It's not even a fire, guys.  I didn't see a bit of smoke," Mr. Walker said, rolling his eyes. "You guys need to stop babbling like it's the end of the world."

More teachers entered, and several called in on their room-to-room intercoms.  All of them reported smoke, or fire, or both.

Mrs. Tyson smacked her desk with both hands.  "Hush! If the school is on fire--"

"It's not," Mr. Walker sniffed.

"If it is - if there's a chance that there's even the smallest fire - then we get everyone out, period.  We can argue about whose fault it is, or how much it cost us, or whether there ever was a danger - after the kids are out.  Go! Now!"

That argument never happened. 

White Chapel, VA - Photo by Joseph Scott

This week, I combined two writing prompts. My friends at Studio30Plus wanted some BABBLE, while the Light & Shade Challenge gang wanted an EXTENDED METAPHOR.  The babbling was easy, but I'm not sure how this stacks up as an extended metaphor.  Hopefully, it works.  Thanks for reading!

Pride Goeth: The Song Of Jeremiah Tip Top

Jeremiah Tip Top never had much.  As a child in the 1920s, he wore ratty clothes, had about two halfway decent meals a week, and was constantly on the move.  When his traveling salesman father, a single parent, met his untimely demise in the form of an escaped roadside-zoo ocelot, fourteen-year old Jeremiah became a hobo.  He wore ratty clothes, had about two halfway decent meals a week, and was constantly on the move.

He learned quickly the ways of the road, and embraced the life of the transient in search of employment.  After seven years of wandering and working and having nothing, he obtained a single unopened stick of Wrigley's spearmint gum.  That day was the happiest he had ever known.  A hobo with gum and temporarily minty-fresh breath was a rarity in the early 1930s, and Jeremiah's heart swelled with pride, and he chewed his gum with great gusto.

Five years later...

"Jeremiah, for the love of all that's holy,"  Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick snapped, "if you don't stop cracking that damnable gum, I swear I'm gonna--"

"Stab me?" Jeremiah suggested. "Stab me quick?"

"I'll do it, smarty.  You've already had more warning than most.  Just stop."

"I can't help it."

"Yes you can."  Ol' Barb stopped, quickly dragged a tattered sleeve across her sweaty brow, and shook her head at Jeremiah.  "Yes, you have gum.  We're all very impressed.  Chew it quietly, please, or I'll murder you in your sleep, take your stupid old gum, and use it to patch one of the holes in my shoe."

"I believe that you'd kill me without a second thought," Jeremiah said, "but don't you dare take my gum.  Do you have any idea how long I've had this gum?"

"Oh, for Pete's sake - yes!  Everyone you've met in the past five years knows exactly how long you've been chomping on that stuff."

"Five years, two months, sixteen and a half days.  I've never once taken it out of my mouth, since the day I traded all my lint for it," he declared proudly.  He reached down and pulled at his left trouser leg until a gnarly scar on his shin was visible.  "See this?  I got shot for my Wrigley's spearmint!  Every hobo dreams of having a stick of gum.  I didn't give it up, though.  I got away, and just kept chewing..."

Ol' Barb produced a large, dirty hunting knife from somewhere on her person, and brandished it at Jeremiah.

"Okay, okay. I'll chew quietly," he said, backing up a few steps.  "You're just jealous.  Everyone's always been jealous of my gum.  I can't say I blame you.  Chewing gum is what separates us from the animals, you know."

"Do you know what hubris is, Mr. Tip Top?" Barb asked.

"Nope.  Don't need to.  I have gum."

They camped that night in the woods.  Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick did not stab Jeremiah Tip Top, but he did die in his sleep.

He choked on his gum.


Ta-DAH! Two weeks in a row! STUDIO 30-PLUS prompt "Hubris and/or conceit."  Thanks for reading!

Conclave: The Indictment of Waldorf and Statler

Chairman:  The Council will come to order.  We are here convened this 22nd day of February, in the year of our lord 2015 to indict the accused here before us--

Joe:  Objection!

Chair:  You may not object, sir.  This is not a trial.

Joe:  Then what's this business about indicting us?  Don't you mean something more like, "to consider the indictment of?"  Plus - 2015, I can assure you, is NOT a lord's year.

Chair:  Oh, Mister Scott.  So cute.  Rest assured that by the end of these proceedings, even you would have no choice but to indict you.  And don't mess with "in the year of our lord."  The lord is bigger than the both of us.  Now, sit down.

Joe:  Whoa - what happened to the separation of church and state?

Chair (shaking head, laughing):  Oh, Mister Scott, Mister Scott, Mister Scott.  They were right; you are funny.  

Joe:  Whatever.  I have to admit that it will be nice to finally get to hear the crime of which we are accused.

Chair:  Indicted.

Joe:  Not yet!

Chair:  It's a foregone conclusion.

Joe:  Seriously?

Chair:  Yes.

Joe:  Okay.  To reiterate, and with all due respect to the Council - which is no respect at all - whatever.

Clerk:  You are hearby formally charged with doing it wrong.

Joe:  You spelled hereby wrong.

Clerk:  What?

Joe:  It's spelled h-e-r-e-b-y, not--

Clerk:  Sir, I am speaking.  There is no spelling - right or wrong.

Joe:  It sounded misspelled, to me.

Clerk:  Shut up.

Chair:  Okay, okay.  Order, please.  Let's get this over with.  I have a 1:30 tee time.

Joe:  And I have to meet [Maris] at Dogfish Head while it's still happy hour.

Chair:  Count One.  It has been reported that you and [Maris] - if that is her real name...

Joe:  It's not.

Chair:  Anyway... Count One - you finish each other's sentences.

Joe:  Millions of people do that.

Chair:  You finish each other's weird sentences.  When you first started dating, it was cute.  Almost two decades later, it's annoying.  No one else gets it.

Joe:  Weird?  Weird how?

Vice-Chair:  On December 19th, 2014, speaking about the disastrous roll-out of your employer's new lockbox vendor, you said, "It's not like I was expecting  this process to be all..." and [Maris] immediately said, "rainbow sparkle purple bunny pancakes."

Joe:  Yes.  I remember that.  Friday night.  Shots, chips, salsa, and venting.

Chair:  And you knew what she meant?

Joe:  Of course.  She was finishing my sentence.

Chair:  You were going to say "rainbow sparkle purple bunny pancakes?"

Joe:  How else would I finish that sentence?  I'd say Count One is kind of bogus, sir.

Chair:  Moving on.  Count Two:  Hand-holding, especially in public venues.

Joe:  Seriously?  Hand-holding?  We don't do that.

Vice Chair places a twenty-by-thirty inch mounted print on an exhibit easel:

Busted.  Photo by Mary Wiecek, Joe's favorite sister.

Joe:  You can't prove that's us. 

Chair:  And you do it all the time.  You're both way too old for such displays.  Count Three:  We have obtained the following testimony from a Mr. Godfrey O. Ozzenbarq III - if that is is real name:

"Truth Be Told... you and Curvy Scott do dig each other, do still duck in and talk low and witty and flirty and mocking (who wouldn't mock my hat, wrist-sandals or homemade Raisinets?), and are not in the least sick of each other's clammy lighthouse stink... even after your coastal historical structure search and kinky spike-booted dominatrix submission sessions (by J.Mac) in seedy, "independently operated" Texas and Florida bed bug farms.  We, the other 2 peeps who like each other, We Salute You.  (Cue cannon fire etc.)"

Joe:  It is not real name, and that's not testimony - that's an email!  You hacked my email!  Can you produce a warrant for that invasion of my privacy?

Chair:

Joe:  I didn't think so.  Maybe you're the one who deserves an indictment.

Vice-Chair:  YOU'RE an indictment!

Chair:  Order!  Order!  One more.  Count Four:  It has been said that you and [Maris] do not work at your marriage.  Marriage is hard work.  There's fighting.  You complain about each other. You argue.  You compromise.  You two, it seems, do none of that.  It's lazy.  It's offensive to the rest of us, out here putting in the work to keep it together, and it's just plain wrong. 

Joe:  I refuse to accept that that is a crime, and I will not apologize for it.  We can't help it.  Life's too short, and we really just don't have the time or patience for all of that.  I am on her side, and she's on mine.

Chair:  Council?  All in favor of indictment?

Council (in unanimous unison):  Aye.

Joe:  Aw, nuts.



It's been a while.  This comes in belated response to the writing prompt Conclave and/or Council, from my writer friends at STUDIO 30 PLUS.
 

Saving Punxsutawney Pete

This is neither Phil, nor Pete.

On this Groundhog Day, 2015, we are all quite fed-up with Punxsutawney Phil, the prognosticating groundhog of seasonal change, who makes his home in Gobbler's Knob and who - let's be honest - wouldn't know his shadow if it reached up and bit him.  He supposedly saw his shadow, this morning, which, according to legend, means six more weeks of winter - as opposed to an early spring.  I won't bother you with the boring fact that winter officially ends seven weeks from now anyway, because the whole exercise is supposed to be fun.  I do have a problem, just on principle, with the fact that it could be pouring rain during a total eclipse of the sun, and that furry little f**ker would still "see" his shadow.  Whatever, Phil. There are 17 more days until the REAL turning point.

This is not a story about Punxsutawney Phil.  This is about his predecessor.  For decades before Phil took over in 1952, the prognosticating job belonged to Punxsutawney Pete.  Obviously, since captive groundhogs typically don't live much longer than ten years or so, there were many Petes.  

Only one, as far as we know, was stolen by a hobo.

It happened on February 2nd, 1936.  The Inner Circle had proclaimed that Pete, having seen his shadow, was predicting six more weeks of what had already been an especially cold, icy winter.  But there was a problem.

Late that morning, Nicknameless Norris Shine, the local hobo, was passing through.  He regularly wandered the rails between Youngstown and Scranton, so to the citizens of Punxsutawney, he was "local."  He helped at the freight depot when he could, and made a point of looking after the youngsters in town, and was treated with much more respect than the average feckless rail-rider of his day.  Norris happened upon the gentlemen of the Inner Circle on the bank of Mahoning Creek Lake, near the east end of the train yard.  They were arguing over the best way to kill their famous groundhog, given the fact that the frozen state of the creek had rendered drowning impossible.

After a heated debate, it was decided that Mayor Aldous D'Zmjcka, since his house was closest, would fetch his rifle.  The rest of the Inner Circle accompanied him, leaving only one man, young Heiko "Bud" Niederlenten, to mind the wood-and-wicker clothes hamper that contained poor Pete.

Nicknameless Norris Shine shambled out of the woods.  "Say, Bud," he called, "what's going on?"

Bud knew Norris.  Everyone did.  They liked him, too.  They just never bothered to give him a nickname.  "Huh?  Oh, hey there, Norris. Don't sweat it, fella. Let's just say it's time for a new Pete. This one's... this one's, uh, maybe a little bit rabid, or something. Gotta put him down. You probably ought to move along."

Norris hated being lied to.  "I heard what the Circle was saying, and the one word I didn't hear was 'rabies.'"

"This don't concern you, man," Bud said. "Suppose you just keep walking, okay?"

Norris shook his head. "You know, if I thought that critter had rabies, or was lame or suffering in the slightest, I'd dispatch him for you and feel fine about it.  But if I heard you fellas right - and I know I did - ol' Pete ain't rabid at all. So if you don't mind, I'll just be relieving you of custody of the little guy." He strode purposefully up to Bud and reached for the hamper.

Bud Niederlenten grabbed Norris' arm. "I can't let you do that, friend. This guy saw a shadow, today..."

"So?  That's his job, ain't it?"

"So... It wasn't his shadow. It was the shadow of some kind of bird."

"Say what?"

"This animal cast some other animal's shadow, and it's got the old-timers in the Circle spooked something awful, so this accursed varmint has to be put down."

Norris snorted. "That has to be the dumbest thing I've ever--" he snatched the hamper from Bud, used it to shove the young man halfway across the frozen creek on his ass, and sprinted off into the woods.  He headed east, but kept to the wooded creekside, knowing the men of the Inner Circle would be all over the train tracks.  He didn't stop until after noon, as he approached the village of Big Run.  

The barking - of men as well as hounds - had faded into the distance. He sat on a dead tree by the creek, opened the hamper, and looked inside.  Punxsutawney Pete glared up at him.

"I don't care what kind of shadow you threw this morning, pal. You don't deserve to die, and you shouldn't have to live in a cage and get hauled by the scruff of your neck out of a sound sleep and held up in front of a bunch of hooting drunks, once a year. You are a smart and handsome fellow, and--"

The groundhog sprang up and bit Nicknameless Norris Shine on the thumb, instantly drawing blood.  "Ow!  Goddammit!" the hobo shrieked.

Pete scampered across the frozen surface of the creek, stopped and stood on his hind feet, and glanced over his shoulder at the human who had freed him. He sniffed twice, then turned and raced to the far bank, and disappeared into a thicket of holly and pine.

Despite the cold, burning pain in his thumb and the knowledge that he would now have to find a new stomping ground, Norris felt good about himself, and about what he had done for Pete.

Almost five weeks later, as central Pennsylvania enjoyed an extremely early, warm spring, the kindly hobo with no nickname died of rabies, in a barn on the outskirts of Wilkes-Barre.
  

This bit of drivel was prompted by - guess who - my friends at STUDIO 30-PLUS, who this week gave us FECKLESS.  Hoboes... Groundhogs... feckless...  It practically wrote itself!



 

Plausible Zane Scarrey vs. Starbucks

Most of the so-called "deliberate hoboes" - those who left the regular world behind and hit the rails by choice - did not set forth without a head full of dreams.  Some dreamed of lives unfettered, walking and riding free from one interesting place to another and sleeping under a blanket of Arizona stars along the Union Pacific.  Others envisaged wandering for a while, seeing America, getting it all out of their system, and eventually finding a place to settle down and restart their lives.  A few dreamed of being discovered by a big-time Hollywood talent scout in search of a scruffy, disheveled man to play the heavy in the next Bogart flick.  [Note:  This only happened four times.]

One deliberate hobo, however, took a more modest approach to his dreaming.  They called him Plausible Zane Scarrey, because he kept his dreams plausible, and his name was Zane Scarrey.

He had fled the violence and futility of the Wisconsin Milk Strike in November 1933, and his only expectation for the future was to find a version of the Great Depression in which people were not shooting strangers over busted headlights and picket signs.  He made his way to the Illinois Central, then to the Santa Fe, and finally to the fabled rails of the Union Pacific in California.  He picked oranges and strawberries for pennies a week, and raisins for slightly less, and rarely stopped moving and/or working.

When he allowed himself the indulgence, he imagined that one day, he might get hired on full-time by one of the farmers he served.  That never happened.

He pictured a world in which his black hobo friends could illegally ride in the same unlocked rail car with his white hobo friends.  That happened, but not until the mid-fifties, a half-decade after Zane's death at the hands of mindless Indianapolis cops who had mistaken him for the Beech Grove Groper at the 1951 Indiana State Fair.

Once, when he was three sheets to the wind on hobo wine and grilled baked lint fritters, he imagined that he could land a job with the railroad.  He always got along with the train crews, and the yards cops (and their dogs) seemed to adore him.  Unfortunately, he was a cow-teat-puller by trade, so this never happened.

As his hobo years rolled on, he developed a skill with pot-brewed hobo coffee.  He dared, from time to time, to see a future world in which he started a humble coffee shop on a corner in downtown Fresno, and worked hard and made really good coffee and expanded to two locations, then three, then a hundred, then a thousand, until eventually his coffee shops sold indy music and sub-par sandwiches on every street corner in the USA (in some cases, on more than one corner of a given intersection, and in a few special spots, more than one in a given coffee shop).  

This happened, but Plausible Zane Scarrey didn't live to see it, and received no credit for the idea, because he hadn't deemed it plausible, and never told anyone he had thought of it.

He kept it plausible.  Imagine that.

This post prompted by the words ENVISAGE and IMAGINE, from the good folks at Studio 30 Plus.



 
 

Drinky Drunky Thom, the Drunk: The Hangover

It was still raining when a sharp poke in the ribs woke Drinky Drunky Thom, the Drunk from his weird New Year's Day sleep-off.  "Wake up, Tommy," a too-loud voice said with an exasperated, no-nonsense authority. "I done told you - you can't sleep here."

Thom wasn't sure if he was hungover, or still drunk. He strained to lift his head, and to force his eyes open against the raindrops. "Ugh.  Morris? Leave me be."

It was Morris - Morris the Personal Trainer, more specifically, and it appeared that he was in no mood to let Drinky Drunky Thom be. "Get up," he said. "You best be movin' on, now."

"Aw, come on, Morris. Can't you take it easy, just for one day? I don't feel like doing jumping jacks, if you know what I mean..."

"I ain't about to try to get you to do a jumping jack, Tommy," Morris said humorlessly. "I mean, you can't stay here. You're lucky to still be in one piece, after what you pulled last night..."

"What I pulled... I don't even remember what town I'm in, Morris," Thom groaned.

"...so I'm tellin' you - you best just move on. You get me?"

Thom was a drunk, and truth be told, he was still more than a little bit inebriated, but he wasn't stupid. He moved on, as quickly and quietly as he could, avoiding any contact with the ten angry eyes that watched him go. After four minutes' walk down the Southern Pacific tracks leading west out of North Palm Springs, he ran into his oldest friend.

"Hey - Drinky Drunky Thom!" the geezer sang, off-key, "should old acquaintance be forgot, and never thought upon..."

"Ow," Thom moaned, "my head. Just stop, Sy. I'm begging you to stop."

"Aw, what do you know about anything?" Crooner Sy scoffed. "After last night, I shouldn't bless you with the merest sound from my gilded pipes..."

"Yeah, yeah... Wait. What about last night?" Thom asked. "I can honestly say I don't remember it. What happened?"

Crooner Sy stopped, and regarded his friend skeptically "You really don't remember - or you sort of don't remember?"

"I'm serious, Sy. I remember toasting to a happy 1934, and that's about it."

Sy thought for a moment. "Ha! Serves you right! And now I don't have to bother taking back all those nice things I said about you. See you in another two years, you drunk - if you live that long."

"Aw, come on, Sy. You gotta meet me halfway, here..." Sy didn't have to meet him halfway, or a quarter-way, or any way. He took off in the opposite direction, singing the Stanford fight song, and didn't look back.

After a few minutes, walking the mainline in the chilly rain, Thom the Drunk spotted Yum-Yum Sinclair Snowballeater, about a quarter-mile ahead of him and also heading west. It took considerable effort - especially for a drunk such as Thom - but eventually he caught up to his fellow hobo.

"Hey, Yum-Yum - wait up," he spat, panting and coughing.  Yum-Yum paused, glared at Thom over his shoulder, and resumed trudging westward.  "Say," Thom offered, "whaddaya say we find us a saloon, and listen to the Rose Bowl on the wireless? Come on - I got a buck and a half - I'll buy you a few beers. It'll be fun..."

Sinclair stopped, sighed heavily, and turned to face Thom the Drunk. "First of all," he said, "the game is already over. Stanford lost, if you can believe it - seven nothing, Columbia - on some kind of trick play. That Montgomery fella is an all-out east coast sneak, I tell ya. Anyway - I wouldn't drink a beer with you on a bet, mister. Not after what I seen, last night."

"The Indians lost? Are you pulling my leg?"

"Yeah, they lost," Sinclair said. "Now what say you get lost, too? I gotta get to the next junction and find me a northbound, so I can get some of that new year's snow, up in the mountains..."

"I won't hold you up, Yum-Yum," Thom said, "but I gotta know - what the hell did I do, last night?  I got a headache the size of Texas, and I swear I can't remember a thing."

"You can't remember? Oh, what a surprise. Drinky-Drunky Thom can't remember. Well, don't look at me. I can't remember, either."

"Really?"

"No, not really, you big ape. I saw it all - well, I saw enough, anyway - and I ain't about to tell you any of it."

"I'm begging, Sinclair. Help a fellow 'bo out, here. Look - I got a dollar, fifty-five. Tell me what I did last night that's got everyone so sore at me, and it's yours - plus all the lint in my pockets. Honest to God. Please? I gotta know."

It had been at least three years since Yum-Yum Sinclair had seen paper money. He stared at the dollar bill for a minute, then snatched it and the coins from Thom's hand. "Let me see that lint, too, or no deal."

Thom dug deep in his pants pockets, and produced a walnut-size clump of lint, which Sinclair immediately took from him. "Okay, friend - you got my life's savings, now. Spill it."

He spilled it. It took well over half an hour, but he spilled it all - every toast, every joke, every punch and confession and controversy and offense and slap...

"Slap?" Thom said, holding up a whoa sign. "Who slapped me?"

"Wow. You really don't remember, do you?"

Thom shook his head, helplessly.

"Shanty Queen Elizabeth Regina slapped you," he said. "None of us ever saw her cry before, either..."

"What? But I love her! Did I make her cry, or was it someone else? Oh hell - what did I do?"

"Oh, it was you - believe me. And it wasn't what you did - it's what you said."

"Stop," Thom said. "I remember. Oh my God..."

"See? You proud of yourself?"

"Which way did she go, Sinclair? I gotta catch up with her."

"You sure that's a good idea?"

"No, but you let me worry about that."

Sinclair sighed. "She went east, toward Phoenix, and I don't suppose it'd make any difference if I told you that she specifically said she didn't want to see you again for as long as she lives?"

"Nope. Thanks, Yum-Yum. Happy New Year, friend. Sorry about the things I did, and that other stuff..." Thom did an about-face, and ran in the opposite direction down the tracks.

"Wait - Thom!" Sinclair called after him. "There's one more thing..." It was too late. Drinky Drunky Thom was already out of earshot.