THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 17, 1995 TAG: 9507150039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddrey
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
HOBOES. YOU DON'T see them nearly so often now.
They once rode the rails into town regularly, swatting the coal dust off the knees of their pants, stopping to mooch a meal some-where.
Knights of the open road. Men who crossed the country and saw more of the country than playboy millionaires. Rolling over the moonlit rails in boxcars. Standing by the open door watching the brilliance of a star-strewn sky above a bone-white desert glide away . . . saguaro cactuses raising their arms above the dry and barren landscape in a prayer for rain.
A shovel was a handy thing for a hobo to carry. ``It's the perfect tool for the trade,'' a hobo named Sam once told me.
Sam had a jaunty gait, a gold tooth and a gleam in his eye. He could play tunes with his shovel, tapping it on the sidewalk. But the shovel had other uses, as a stick for carrying a bundle over the shoulder, as a long-handled pan for cooking over an open fire, handy for jamming a boxcar door before it slammed shut. And a useful weapon in a fight.
Sam was an exception. Newspaper men always interviewed the exception. The typical hobo was a derelict with a sour disposition: the government was rotten, railways were run for the rich, cops were always on the take. If there seem to be fewer hoboes today maybe it's because so many have joined the militias.
But the ones like Sam stirred your imagination and nibbled at your lifestyle like a rat. You rarely left such men without wanting to quit your job and tag along on a cross-country odyssey. It was the mystery and excitement of the unknown that beckoned those of us drawing regular paychecks, going to PTA meetings, and making payments on cars and refrigerators.
``You've sold your soul for a color television and a Hoover vacuum cleaner,'' Sam once said, looking me hard in the eyes over his coffee cup. I paid for the coffee, natch. But he had his own cigarettes: a packet of cigarette paper and tobacco pulled from his faded shirt pocket - in a pouch with a drawstring.
He had crossed the country a dozen times and never tired of the scenery. He didn't read. He just studied things and carried them in his head.
``I can tell you where I am between Gallup and Albuquerque by the clicks in the rails on the Sante Fe track,'' he said. ``I don't have to count the clicks, my brain just does it for me. I won't miss the location by more than a half mile.''
These must be hard times for hoboes. The odd jobs they used to find aren't there anymore. The typical cartoon of years past featured a hobo eying a pie cooling on a window sill. I haven't seen a pie cooling on a window sill in 30 years. The woman of the house is now working somewhere and getting her frozen pies from a supermarket.
Sam had some skills other than chopping wood for widow ladies for free meals. He was a handy friend to have at a hobo camp cleared in a patch of woods near the track. He carried a Barlow knife with a wooden handle in his jeans pocket. He knew how to make a rabbit trap and skin the rabbit with the knife.
He stole packets of salt and pepper from diners and carried them in a Band-Aid box with a few turns of twine, a bottle of iodine, and matches for cigarettes and campfires.
And he had the hobo vocabulary. A boxcar was a ``side-door Pullman.'' An employment agency was a ``slave market.'' A locomotive was a ``hog.'' And a railroad detective was a ``bull.'' A farmer was either a ``s..t kicker or ``a clover kicker,'' depending on company.
I don't know what happened to Sam. Or what happens to any of the hoboes when they get old and seized up with arthritis and too stiff to steal onto trains and sleep on boxcar floors as hard as bricks.
Guess they get too old to climb trees too. Sam said he loved to climb trees during storms, particularly when drunk on cheap wine. ``Pine trees are best,'' he said. ``Ride one of those suckers like a ship mast in a hurricane, back and forth, lightning flashin' all 'round.''
Sam seems more outdated every year. Clicking rails and telegraph keys have given way to clicking computer keys on the information highway. I wonder what Sam thinks of that . . . if he's still alive.
Well, if he's gone, I hope he got a nice burial site. Maybe beneath a saguaro on a bank of an arroyo in the Southwest.
Or under one of those tall Carolina pines that sway in the wind like a ship's mast in a hurricane.
He'd have liked that. by CNB