Knights of the Road: A Hobo History"In the glory days of hoboing, hundreds of thousands of Americans were lured by the wail of soot-belching locomotives pulling long lines of freight cars. They hit the tracks and beat their way across an America laced with railroad lines. Some road in boxcars, or crouched in cowcatchers, some in empty battery boxes beneath passenger cars, others clung precariously to the brake rods inches from stinging cinders. The ingenuity of the hobo was only exceeded by his courage and, in many cases, his desperation. Few hobo jungles remain. The men and women who sat around campfires, swapping yarns, sharing stew, drinking "red-eye"--the working stiffs gay cats, yeggs, gandy dancers, and prushins--are a vanishing species. But here, this fascinating, flamboyant chapter of American history lives on. Interviews, letters, songs, poetry, articles from hobo newspapers, IWW literature and autobiographical accounts evoke a colorful, often savage portrait of hobo life from the late 1800's to the Great Depression... of lonely days rolling across silent prairies... all the sights from the stem of West Madison Street in Chicago to the berry fields of California... the spectacle of mangled comrades fallen from trains... countless jobs, some good, many bad... times in jail and on chain gangs... shivering nights on flophouse floors... bloody brawls and hostile towns... of excitement, adventure and freedom. Scoopshovel Scotty, Chicken Red Donovan, Mountain Dew, Boxcar Bertha, Steam Train Maury Graham and many others sing their songs and tell their tales. Iconoclasts all, they defied traditional values, bent on staking their own claim to the American ideal of rugged individualism. Hardships and humiliations were commonplace, but the overwhelming desire to wander freely, to be hard travellin' drifters kept them always on the move. Drawing on personal interviews with veteran hoboes and previously untapped sources, including the John J. McCook collection and a recently unearthed cache of material in the National Archives, Roger Bruns captures the vagabond spirit of these knights of the road and of "them days gone forever." -- Jacket flaps |
Contents
An Endangered Species | 3 |
On the Road | 26 |
John McCook and the Peripatetic Aristocracy | 61 |
Copyright | |
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American hobo Aspinwall became began begging Ben Reitman boes boxcar boy tonight Britt bulls bums California called camps cars century Charlie Chaplin Chicago convention criminals dicks drifters Eddie Emma Goldman employment flophouses fraternity gang going Harry Kemp harvest Hobo College hobo labor Hoboes of America Hobohemia homeless IBWA Industrial Jack London Jacob Coxey jail James Eads Jeff Davis Jim Tully jocker John McCook jumped a freight jungles live lodging houses looking main stem McCook migrant miles missions never newspaper night officials organization police rail railroad Reitman ride scissorbill shacks skid road sleep slept social sociologist song Speek Steam Train Maury stiffs stories Street T-Bone Slim talk tion told town tracks train jumpers tramp and hobo traveled union vagabond vagrancy veteran wages wanderers West Madison winter Wobbly Wobs writers wrote yegg York