I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: GRINGO STAR-“Shadow’ (2011).

This song was forecast as a great Fall song on NPR.  The band’s name is perhaps too cutesy, but the music is interesting.  The verses are jangly and in no way prepare you for the Beatlesesque (ie., soaring harmonies) chorus that follows. 

There’s not a lot to the song, and on my first listen I wasn’t all that impressed in the beginning.  But by the end of the song I was won over. 

The song feels very familiar, but I can’t say that it sounds like anything in particular.  The ooo-ooohs in the chorus are really pretty, the intro guitar is more intricate than I realized.  And after just a few listens I was totally hooked.  It just seems like more of a summer record to me.

I’m curious to see what else is on this record. 

[READ: September 15, 2011] “A Hobo Memoir, 1936”

My company provided some links to interesting articles that are available on JSTOR, an electronic archiving resource.  If you have access to a university database, chances are you have access to these articles.  I was particularly struck by the fascinating subjects of a few of these pieces and for the next few posts I’m going to mention them.

I had to start with this article because for some reason my kids are obsessed with hobos.  I don’t really know how it came about–reading older kids’ stories, I suspect.  On our first train ride, we saw a freight car with a door open and there was much talk about hoboes sleeping in the cars and, hoo boy, it just escalated from there.  And, despite the fact that hobos haven’t really existed in eighty some years, once you keep an ear open for the word, you hear it quite a lot (Craig Ferguson was calling his audience hobos for a while–it’s a good comedy word).

This article contains an introduction by Elizabeth Rambeau, assistant editor of the magazine, who gives us a brief history of John Fawcett and of hobos in general.  Including this very informative distinction: a hobo is a transient person who looks for work while he travels, a tramp is a drifter who does not look for work and a bum is a stationary person who does not look for work.  So, be mindful of the epithets you use!  Fawcett, Rambeau tells us, was unlike most hoboes at the time.  Indeed, he wasn’t really a hobo at all.  He was the son of a wealthy doctor.  But he grew tired of his life at boarding school and decided to take a trip on the rails from West Virginia to Texas.  But he lived the hobo lifestyle, hopping trains, getting busted by the police, and not carrying any (or much, anyhow) money.  He even hung out with a hobo named Shorty.

The reason that this article is noteworthy (in terms of hobo literature) is that unlike other hobo memoirs from the time, Fawcett was an educated man and a decent writer in his own right (most hobo memoirs were recollections from the hobos themselves, written by ghostwriters).  This Memoir comes from meticulous diary entries that he kept during his entire trip.  And, of course, the article includes hobo signs, everyone’s favorite piece of folk art.  What’s interesting is that there are no extant records of original hobo signs.  They were made with chalk and all were ephemeral.  All of the signs we have are from people’s recollections and the signs included here were done by an art dept.

Fawcett’s original work comes from an unpublished 1991 book called Awakening of Conscience.  What we have is a twelve page excerpt.  In the author’s introduction, he explains his life situation, his family situation and his pressing need to have some freedom in his life.  In hindsight, he can’t imagine what kind of grief he put his parents through (he left a note saying he was going to a friend’s house but then took a month-long hobo journey) and he regrets that.   But he’s also pretty proud of what he did.

The memoir describes riding the rails, sitting in hobo camps and getting chased by railroad dicks.  It also talks about ways to get free meals out of people and about how on many occasions he worked for a meal (washing dishes or something).  All of the hobos learned tricks and passed them along.  He even gets to ride the Wabash Cannon Ball (which was named after the hit song).  There’s even a fairly amusing section in which Shorty introduces John (who was using a pseudonym) to Hobo’s Tobacco :

He pulled his hand up the branches and in doing so, got a handful of small dried leaves and blossoms.  He looked at us with a mischievous grin saying, “You guys ever see Hobo’s Tobacco?  Just as good as the real thing.”  He took two cigarette papers from his pocket and with the leaves, rolled a cigarette for himself and one for us.  He lit up telling us to take a couple of easy puffs to see how we liked it.  When we both said it tasted strange he laughed, “Well, don’t smoke too much of it, kids, ’cause that’s Mary Jane.  It’ll make you feel good and forget your hunger.”  Within a minute I felt as though I were walking about ten feet above the railroad tracks, but instead of feeling good I felt quite ill and rather scared.

That paragraph is why I didn’t read this journal to my hobo-loving kids.

Who says history is dry and dull?