We find so many examples in blues and bluegrass and folk songs of poor boys (or girls) a long way from home. Sometimes by choice, sometimes because of injustice or poverty. Sometimes traveling with the wild geese in the west, or riding the rails, as if called to be with them, sometimes wandering from town to town in search of work or shelter. There’s a saying that a hobo wanders and works, a tramp wanders and dreams, and a bum neither wanders nor works.
I love a warm bed, so I would make a terrible rambler, hobo, or tramp, but I love songs about hobos and ramblers, and films about them, too. Like Preston Sturges’ beautiful Sullivan’s Travels, or John Davis’ moving documentary Hobo. I saw this one in a theater in Edinburgh, alone and far from home, and it made me weepy, it’s so very honest, very powerful, and with a wonderful soundtrack.
Traditionally, hobos have a shared language, and it reminds me of Slim Gaillard’s Vout. I imagine that it changes constantly and varies from place to place. Hobos also may or may not have a shared sign language or code — it might be a myth invented by a 19th-century hobo named Leon Ray Livingston, better known as “A-No. 1,” but I love it anyway. He claims that they left marks for each other in coal or charcoal, to share information about mean cops, barking dogs, kind ladies. I love language and I love drawings, so I think this is a beautiful idea. It’s a network of connection between people I think of as fundamentally lonely. It’s a way to look out for one another and to say “I was here,” to mark your route and write your history. It seems fitting that there’s no real proof left of its existence. It lacks the permanence of most graffiti, just as the life of a hobo lacks constancy. The fact that the language is shared gives it a history and a future, but the mark itself is transient and vulnerable to all the shocks of time and weather.
And “An ethical code was created by Tourist Union #63 during its 1889 National Hobo Convention in St. Louis Missouri. This code was voted upon as a concrete set of laws to govern the nation-wide Hobo Body; it reads this way:
Decide your own life, don’t let another person run or rule you.
When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times.
Don’t take advantage of someone who is in a vulnerable situation, locals or other hobos.
Always try to find work, even if temporary, and always seek out jobs nobody wants. By doing so you not only help a business along, but ensure employment should you return to that town again.
When no employment is available, make your own work by using your added talents at crafts.
Do not allow yourself to become a stupid drunk and set a bad example for locals’ treatment of other hobos.
When jungling in town, respect handouts, do not wear them out, another hobo will be coming along who will need them as bad, if not worse than you.
Always respect nature, do not leave garbage where you are jungling.
If in a community jungle, always pitch in and help.
Try to stay clean, and boil up wherever possible.
When traveling, ride your train respectfully, take no personal chances, cause no problems with the operating crew or host railroad, act like an extra crew member.
Do not cause problems in a train yard, another hobo will be coming along who will need passage through that yard.
Do not allow other hobos to molest children, expose all molesters to authorities, they are the worst garbage to infest any society.
Help all runaway children, and try to induce them to return home.
Help your fellow hobos whenever and wherever needed, you may need their help someday.
If present at a hobo court and you have testimony, give it. Whether for or against the accused, your voice counts!”
Good advice for all of us! For any man, woman, or saint among us. Now if you need me, I’ll be on a freight train headed west. In the meantime, here is your Magpies Mix Tape of rambling songs.
(photo by Dorothea Lange)
Categories: featured, Magpie Mix Tape, music
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Great post!
I’m quite interested in hobos myself. A #1 is a character in the film Emperor of the North, which I was an extra in! It’s based on the Jack London book The Road, which influenced Jack Kerouac. This is an interesting film about hobos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSqMAADNKA8.
Slim Gaillard is one of my heroes. Have you seen the four part documentary about him? It’s wonderful.
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wow wow wow. Emperor of the North looks like a must-see, Who is Bozo Texino looks gorgeous, and I think you’ve told me before about the Slim Gaillard doc but I never got around to watching. I have some watching to be catching up on!! Thank you so much for the comment and the recommendations.
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