50 Years Gone The Father We
Almost Knew One Jack Kerouac Out Of Merrimack River Nights-Searching For
The Father We Never Knew-Scenes In Search Of The Blue-Pink Great American West
Night- High Street
Hank’s Ode To Railroad Bill, The Hobo King
By Seth Garth, known as Charles River Blackie for no other reason that he can
remember at least than he slept along those banks, the Cambridge side and some
raggedy ass wino who tried to cut him under the Anderson Bridge one night
called him that and it stuck. Those wino-zapped bums, piss leaky tramps and
poet-king hoboes all gone to some graven spot long ago from drink, drug, or
their own hubris which they never understood gone and the moniker
too.
Here is
the way High Street Hank told the story one night, one 1979 November night, as best I remember it, the story of the famous
hobo king (real title, no kidding, they have their social gradations, hobo,
tramp, bum royalty just like the rest of us), Railroad Bill, who even I had
heard of previously in some mist of time
way, told the story one campfire cold sludge coffee stew broth boiling in the
kettle night, one miserable hell foggy raw under the bridge Frisco town night, make
that Golden Gate Bridge with friendly tress not concrete foreboding Bay where
even rummies and long gone winos fear to trend, maybe a half dozen guys
(Spokane Spike, Portland Phil, Graybeard Gary, and I forgot who else, me, then
moving around under the moniker Charles River Blackie long gone now but then
got me some cache around the Western hobo jungle camps courtesy of a guy named
Echo Eddy who they all knew) gathered close around to keep warm against the
Pacific squalls, and to share the bottle night (Thunderbird, what’s the price,
forty twice, so somebody had dough, had been successful panhandling that
afternoon down the Embarcadero, or had cadged it, otherwise Tokay was the
cheapjack beverage of choice among winos of all social gradations), yah, Hank told the Railroad Bill story, the
story of a prince of the American road, of the long vanished race of
master-less men.
[That
master-less men now a long-gone tradition in immigrant hungry America from
early on when half of England was exiled to these shores and not always for
religious reasons. Many a man who had worn out his welcome in some dank county
headed across the ocean either just before the law was ready to pounce or as a
result of some grievous crime against the monarchy and faced with the hangman’s
noose and exile chose the latter. But those were strange sorts of men (and some
women) who unlike the religious brethren who had plans and dreams only wanted
to keep on the move, keep heading westward in this country until there was no
more west except water. The master-less men deserve their acknowledged places
in the American creation and explosion but for now know that such men not all
that long ago roamed freely by their terms and such types no longer do so
replaced by stone-cold rummies and winos, maybe a few junkies but that is a
tough road for them.]
Railroad
Bill, real name Theodore Greene, from one of the branches of the Greene family
that used to run, or thought they used to run, Albany, although like Hank kept saying
don’t hold him to the truth of that real name of that late knight,
first- class, of the road since these guys were clumsy with names, aliases,
addresses, mail-drops and stuff like that, nine to five stuff that keep the
rest of us going, and connected, when he
did some begging around looking for Bill’s roots after he passed on, not to
inform any kin of his passing but just so
he would know that Bill wouldn’t wind up in some potter’s field
nameless, numbered, simple county-paid
pine box, unadorned and un-remembered,
like a million other hoboes, tramps, bums, winos, con men, grifters,
sifters, and midnight drifters he had
run into in his time, and with the idea that maybe too when old High Street
Hank, (his road moniker, although he
used others like every guy on the road but that one stuck more often than not
and after a while gained a certain privilege, a certain “sure, come on in and
have some stew or a swig , brother,”
when uttered after some serious time in the jungles), passed on some
roadie would wonder, wonder, curious
wonder, big time and think big thoughts
about his roots and about what he did, or did not, bullshit about, and maybe
beg around a little to find out where he came from, or where he had been, but
maybe too Railroad Bill the name Hank knew him by was just good enough and the
rest was what Hank called his mind, the nine-to-five mind part of it, working
overtime), now the late Railroad Bill,
always laughed that he had never
worked, and he never will (and now won’t), never had a steady job for more than
a few days at a time and not many of them either (mainly washing dishes,
pearl-diving he called it, some bracero hot sun work out in the California
fields when he was high on some hot tamale dark-eyed mex dame, some senorita
all dark and with Spanish dancing eyes and ready to take him around the world [
you figure it out] for a dollar and a quarter and couple of shots of tequila,
and mex dope), never worked for a check (cash only, no deductions brother, or
else, and Bill was big, and tough, tough enough to enforce that against almost
any guy, sometimes guys), hell, never cashed a check ( a real check, although
for a while he kited a few, and did some time for that little effort, a few
months, maybe a year, guys were always a little shaky on their time after they
got out and sometimes built it up a little to impress the new guys, up in
Shawshank in Maine) and never, never had a master over him, the kiss of death
for any self-respecting ‘bo (and he was a ‘bo, hobo in the “class” structure of the railroad jungle,
ahead of tramps, bums, con men,
grifters, and bottom-feeding midnight sifters).
So Hank
said this was to be Railroad’s story,
nah, sketch, or something like that, he said, a story would make you think it
was just for entertainment, and this one was about times when honest men (sorry
there wasn’t much room for women except whorehouses, slave tents, houses, and
getting knocked around by “what the hell” angry men, sorry too) hit the road
just to hit the road, and not to write talk-talk immense books about it,
literature, or get a feel for the great
American night before heading back to academia and attend delicious cozy little
conferences for the next fifty years about the plight of the master-less men,
20th century variety [or to write down told homey little sketches told by
campfires about hobo kings after coming off the minute road either-SG]. A time
when if you didn’t have what it takes, if you weren’t strong enough to shimmy
yourself on some box car to ride the rails, if you weren’t fast enough to outrun
some bull railroad cop with a billy club with your name on it, if you didn’t
have enough sense god gave geese to “clip” the necessities for the day at some
Woolworth’s (more recently replaced by
Wal-Mart and, frankly, easier to do now since nobody cares whether anybody
“stole” some gabacho three for a dollar stuff, not the people who work there
anyway unlike the child-like fawns who worked for fifty years and a good gold
watch for Ma Woolworth), if your talk wasn’t smooth enough to make a few bucks
to tide you over pan-handling (and cadge at least a couple of packs of cigarettes so you didn’t
have to constantly roll your own Bull Durham coffin nails), if you couldn’t dream enough about some
phantom white dress Phoebe Snow to get
you through those hard first women-less days, if you didn’t have enough sense to latch on to
some queen of the rails mutt to keep you company (and make “cute dog” hitchhike
rides easier on the days when there were no rails in sight), then you would
wind up with old Denver Slim (Railroad Bill’s first road brother), or a
thousand other guys, buried early under some railroad trestle, down some
deserted ravine, or beside some hollows hillside and nameless, nameless forever.
And so he talked:
Hank woke with a start that dreary late October 1976 night when he first
ran into Bill, early morning really from the look of the lightened sky, last
cold night, or so he thought to himself , before drifting south then heading
west to warmer climes for “winter camp.” Yes, he had the routine down pretty
pat back then after a few years of scuttling around just short of getting it
right, getting away from the damn winter colds that shortened more than one
frozen stiff’s life. Summering in the Cambridges away from the congestion of the
big towns (downtown Boston and fetid Pine Street Inns or sanctimonious Sallies
[Salvation Army] flops , ditto Frisco, ditto L.A., ditto Chi town), and then wintering in the Keys
(maybe Key Largo for the air but Key West if he needed hurry money, or in some
Pancho Villa bandito arroyo near the border in desert California, or maybe
higher up near Joshua Tree (where he had earlier, before his vagabond wandering
days, holed up with a couple of mex senoritas with those sparkling eyes
himself, some herb, and a couple of Phoebe Snows too, and with dough to go with
the herb, when he rode the merry prankster yellow brick road bus back in the
early 1970s). But just that minute that cold dreary morning minute his summer
was interrupted by a loud sound of snoring and short breath coughing from some
fellow resident who had parked himself about twenty feet from his exclusive
turf.
Hell, Hank laughed, explaining to everyone around that campfire [like we
were school boys and couldn’t figure it out by ourselves that he was trying to
be funny about it] he didn’t mean to tease us about his itinerary he said
(although the gist of schedule was real enough, damn real), or about his “mayfair
swell” digs. The fact was that back then he had been in kind of a bad streak
and so sweet home Eliot Bridge right next to the Charles River, but not too
next to Harvard Square had been his “home” of late then while he prepared for
those sunnier climes just mentioned. Those last few previous months have been
tough for him though after trying to make a go of it off the road [like a lot of road guys
always try to do whether to beat up some bogus parole trap, beat some promise
some family to do better trap, or just beat some road tired trap, except for the
serious winos who would not know where to begin, wouldn’t want to begin, or
even give it a thought] first losing that swell paying job “diving for pearls”
at Elsie’s, the deli where all the Harvard Johns hung out for some real food
after they got tired of the frat house/Lowell house fare, then losing his
apartment when the landlord decided, legally decided, that six months arrears
was all that he could take, and then losing Janie over some spat, and getting
so mad he “took” a couple of hundred dollars from her pocketbook as he went out
the not-coming-back door that last time. So there he was at “home” waiting it
out. But that was his story not Bill’s and so he moved on.
He had a pretty good set-up under the bridge, he thought. Far enough away
from the Square so that the druggies and drunks wouldn’t dream of seeking
shelter so far from their base. But close enough for him to try to panhandle a
stake to head west with in rich folks Harvard Square (although apparently the
rich those days preferred to tithe in other ways than to part with their spare
change to, uh, itinerants since he was having a rough time getting the bread
together). And, moreover, the bridge provided some protection against the
chilly elements, and a stray nosey cop or two ready to run a stray itinerant in
order to fill his or her quota on the run-in sheet.
All that precious planning had gone for naught though because some
snoring be-draggled newspaper- strewn hobo had enough courage to head a few
hundred yards upriver and disturb his home.
There and then he decided he had better see what the guy looked like,
see if he was dangerous, and see if he could get the hobo the hell out of there
so he could get back to sleep for a couple more hours before the damn
work-a-day world traffic made that spot too noisy to sleep in. Besides, as is
the nature of such things on the down and out American road (and in other less
exotic locales as well), the hobo might have other companions just ready to put
down stakes there before he was ready to head west.
He unfolded his own newspaper covering, folded up his extra shirt pillow
and put it in his make-shift ruck-sack, and rolled (rolled for the umpteenth
time) his ground covering and placed it next to his ruck-sack. No morning ablutions to brighten breath and
face were necessary that early, not in that zip code, he was thus ready for
guests. He ambled over to the newspaper pile where the snoring had come from
and tapped the papers with a stick that he had picked up along the way (never,
never use your hand or you might lose your life if the rustling newspaper
causes an unseen knife-hand to cut you six ways to Sunday. Don’t laugh it
almost happened to him once, and only once.).
The hobo stirred, stirred again, and then opened his eyes saying “Howdy,
my name is Boulder Shorty, what’s yours?” (A rule of the road in strange
country was never to give your real moniker straight out but maybe some old
time one and for Bill Boulder Shorty was just such a thing from when he first
headed out with Denver Slim his first road companion. Bill later told Hank that he had never been
to Boulder, nor Denver Slim to Denver, could not have picked it out on a map if
he was given ten chances, and was six feet two inches tall and about two-eighty
so go figure on monikers. The way they got hanged on a guy was always good for
a story in some desolate railroad fireside camp before Hank got wise enough to
stay away from those sites, far away.) He told Bill his, his road moniker, his
real road moniker at the time not having been out on the road long enough to
get wise to the protective switch-up then, “Be-Bop Benny.” Bill laughed,
muttering about beatniks and faux kid hobos in thrall of some Jack London call
of wild down and out story or some on the road Jack Kerouac or something vision
between short, violent coughs. Funny Bill’s bringing up that last name because
Hank, having had a couple of years of junior college on the G.I Bill after ‘Nam,
1968-70, had gone to the library when he
first headed out on the road back in the early 1970s after things first fell
apart to read Kerouac’s On The Road and
a couple of other books whose names he had forgotten to see if he could pick up
any hobo tips, no sale, not for real hoboing, just book hoboing.
Funny too about different tramps, hobos, and bums (and there are
differences, recognized differences just like in regular society). Hank and he,
Boulder Shorty, turned real moniker Railroad Bill once he knew Hank was no
danger to him after sizing up Hank as a raw kid, and after showing that raw kid
a little later when they visited a railroad jungle set up near the abandoned
Revere railroad tracks what happens when a six-two wiry guy who had been
through it all chain-whipped a guy who was trying to steal his bottle of
Muscatel, or whom he thought was trying to steal it, same thing, one campfire
night, were hobos, the kings of the river, ravine, and railroad trestle. Some start out gruff, tough and mean, street
hard mean. Others like Bill, kings, just go with the flow. And that go with the
flow for a little while anyway (a little while being very long in hobo company)
kept Bill and Hank together for a while, several weeks while before that short
violent cough caught up with old Railroad (you didn’t have to know medicine, or
much else, to know that was the small echo of the death-rattle coming up).
In those few weeks Railroad Bill taught Hank more about ‘bo-ing, more
about natural things, more about how to take life one day at a time than
anybody else, his long- gone father included. About staying away from bums and
tramps, the guys who talked all day about this and that scan they pulled off in
about 1958 and hadn’t gotten over it yet. About how they slipped a couple of
shirts under their sweaters or something and walked right out of Goodwill and
nobody stopped them. Or about how some padre bought their story about being far
from home and a little tough on the luck side and gave them a fiver. Or about
how they ponzi’d some scheme and netted about sixteen dollars and change one
time. All about 1958, like he said, and a river of dreams, sorrows and booze ago.
[And as if to show the “class” distinction more clearly Hank went into an
aside about how Railroad showed him how to hustle for serious dough from the
padres (private social service agencies like the Sallys, U-Us,
Universalist-Unitarians joined together under one god, and the Catholic
Worker-type outfits), fifty buck dough, just by being not too dressed up but
clean, and maybe having showered recently, and having a line of patter. Not too
strong, not like you overplay you are scamming them (winos need not apply for
this high-wire act just keep that empty donation coffee cup out in front of themselves),
and they know it too, but with a plausible plan to present to get you “back on
your feet” with their little help. Hank said he would tell us about the details
sometime, he never did, but he got fifty easy dollars, cash money, thanks to
Railroad’s advice. A couple of times, no, maybe a dozen although more than fifty
or you would cause a panic in the organization’s treasury.]
Bill told him about guys who took your money, your clothes, hell, and
your newspaper covering in the dead of night just to do it, especially to young
hobo kings. And about staying alone, staying away from the railroad, river,
ravine camps that everybody talked about being the last refuge for the wayward
but were just full of disease, drunks and dips. (He let Railroad talk on about that although that was one
thing he was already hip to, a river camp was where he almost got his throat
handed back to him by some quick- knife tramp that he had mentioned before when
he talked about disturbing guys while they were newspaper roll sleeping ).
Yes, Railroad Bill had some street smart wisdom for a guy who couldn’t
have been past forty, at least that’s what Hank figured from the times he gave
in his stories. (Don’t try to judge a guy on the road’s age because between the
drugs or booze, the bad food, the weather-beaten road, and about six other
miseries most guys looked, and acted, like they were about twenty years older.
Even Hank, before a shower to take a few days dirt off and maybe hadn’t eaten
for a while, looked older than his thirty-something years then.) But most of
all it was the little tricks of the road that Railroad taught and showed him
that held him to the man.
Like right off how Hank’s approach, his poor boy hat in hand approach,
was all wrong in working the Harvard Square panhandle. You had to get in their
faces, shout stuff at them, and block their passage so that the couple of bucks
they practically threw at you were far easier to give than have you in their
faces. Christ, Railroad, complete with unfeigned cough, collected about twenty
bucks in an hour one day, one day when he was coughing pretty badly. And a ton
of cigarettes, good cigarettes too, that he asked for when some guys (and a few
gals) pled no dough. It was art, true art that day. Railroad said one girl
wanted to take him home, said she wanted to feed him and help him out, implying
some big sex wet dream thing out of some mex senorita sparkling eyes past. But Hank just let it go as so much hobo hot
air and bravado. Still next time out
pan-handling Hank made about twelve bucks, a ton of smokes, a joint and some
girl went into Cardillo’s and brought him out a sandwich and coffee.
Beautiful.
Or Railroad told him about how a hobo king need never go hungry in any
city once he had the Sallies, U/U good and kindly neighbor feeding schedule
down. No so much those places, any bum or tramp could figure that out, and wait
in line, but to “volunteer” and get to know the people running the thing and
get invited to their houses as sturdy yeoman “reclamation” projects. A
vacation, see. Best of all as Hank had said before was him showing how to work
the social service agencies for ten here, and twenty there, as long as you
could hold the line of patter straight and not oversell your misery when the
struggle for fifty bucks was too much in your time of sorrows. Hank laughed his
good-natured laugh and repeated that -Tramps and bums need not apply for this
kind of hustle, go back and jiggle your coffee cup in front of some subway
station, and good luck. (When a guy was on his tall tale, maybe a little drunk,
worse if he thinking about some Phoebe Snow he would repeat himself but nobody,
if the guy had a grasp for his audience took umbrage and interrupt-they would either
drift off or fall asleep.)
[Railroad also taught him the ins and outs of jack-rolling, what you
would call mugging, if things got really bad. Jack-rolling guys, bigger and
smaller than you but Hank said he‘d rather keep that knowledge to himself
especially when the guys around the campfire started looking mean-eyed at him.]
Funny they never talked about women, although he tried once to talk to
Railroad about Janie. Railroad cut him short, not out of disrespect he didn’t
think, but he said they were all Janie in the end. He said talking about women
was too tough for guys on the road with nothing but drifter, grifter, midnight
sifter guys to stare at. Or looking too close at women when on the bum was bad
for those longings for home things when you couldn’t do anything about it
anyway. Although he did let on once that he was partial to truck stop road-side
diner waitresses serving them off the arm when he was in the clover (had dough)
and was washed up enough to present himself at some stop along the road.
Especially the ones who piled the potatoes extra high or double scooped the
bread pudding as acts of kindred kindness. One night near the end, maybe a week
before, time is hard to remember on the meshed together bum, Railroad started
muttering about some Phoebe Snow, some gal all dressed in white, and he kind of
smiled, and then the coughing started again.
[Phoebe Snow according to the late hobo king and folksinger Utah Phillips
who wrote a song about the situation was “real,” real as anything gets on the
winding road. In the very old days when railroads were a hazard to life and limb-and
dirty from the freaking coal dust the lure in advertising was to have some
beautiful virginal young woman in clean clothes dying to get on the trains.
Those ads on the sides of boxcars are what later sustained many a travelling
man’s dreams of some earlier Phoebe in his life. No one put any man down for such
sentiments, no one.]
Hank tried to get Railroad moving south with him (and had delayed his own
departure to stick with him for as long as he figured he could get south before
the snows hit) but Bill knew, knew deep in his bones, that his time was short,
that he wanted to finish up in Boston (not for any special reason, he was from
Albany, but just because he was tired of moving) and was glad of young hobo
company.
It was funny about how he found out about Railroad’s Albany roots. One
night, a couple of nights before the end, coughing like crazy, he seemingly had
to prove to Hank that he was from Albany. Bill had mentioned that he was mad
for William Kennedy’s novels, Ironweed
and the like, that had just come out a couple of years before. He went on and
on about the Phelans this and that. Jesus he knew the books better than Hank
did. He said that is what made hobos the intelligentsia of the road. Some old
Wobblie folksinger told him that once when they were heading west riding the rails
on the Denver & Rio Grande. [The same Utah Phillips of the Phoebe Snow
story. When holed up in some godforsaken library to get out of the weather
hobos read rather than just get curled up on some stuffed chair. Yes, Railroad
was a piece of work. He was always saying stuff like that.
Then one morning, one too cold Eliot Bridge morning, he tried to shake Bill’s
his newspaper kingdom and got no response. Old Bill had taken his last ride,
his last train smoke and dreams ride he called it. Most guys would say somebody
had “flagged the westbound train” but Bill had his own expressions, and Hank
too. He left him there like Bill wanted him to do and like was necessary on the
hobo road. He made a forlorn anonymous call to the Cambridge cops on his way
out of town. But after that on those few occasions when High Street Hank passed
some potter’s field he tipped his fingers to his head in Railroad Bill’s
memory, his one less hobo king memory.
A
Hobo’s Lament
Only A Hobo by Bob Dylan
Lyrics
As I was out walking on a corner one day
I spied an old hobo, in a doorway he lay
His face was all grounded in the cold sidewalk floor
And I guess he’d been there for the whole night or more
Only a hobo, but one more is gone
Leavin’ nobody to sing his sad song
Leavin’ nobody to carry him home
Only a hobo, but one more is gone
A blanket of newspaper covered his head
As the curb was his pillow, the street was his bed
One look at his face showed the hard road he’d come
And a fistful of coins showed the money he bummed
Only a hobo, but one more is gone
Leavin’ nobody to sing his sad song
Leavin’ nobody to carry him home
Only a hobo, but one more is gone
Does it take much of a man to see his whole life go down
To look up on the world from a hole in the ground
To wait for your future like a horse that’s gone lame
To lie in the gutter and die with no name?
Only a hobo, but one more is gone
Leavin’ nobody to sing his sad song
Leavin’ nobody to carry him home
Only a hobo, but one more is gone
Copyright © 1963, 1968 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1996 by
Special Rider Music
c
