Blog
The Blue Wound
“Boys caught in freight yards were summarily beaten by notorious railroad bulls like Texas Slim, who ruled the yards at Longview, Texas. Denver B...
Tiger Weeds
In almost all of the hobo lore I’ve read, plants are a prominent theme. Plants that are edible. Plants that are poisonous. Plants that get yo...
Coal City Cockfighter
In the 1974 Monte Hellman film, Cockfighter, the late, great Warren Oates plays a miserable sonofabitch named Frank Mansfield who, in the film’s...
Hudson King
There was no shortage of hobos in New York City during The Depression. Along the Hudson River, there were were hobo jungles almost the full len...
The Orange Beast
"A train is not a man, and a man is not a train. . .”
George Milburn, The Hobo’s Hornbook
Hey–
To live outdoors during The Depression was to h...
Sister of the Road
Nobody knows if there was such a person as “Boxcar Bertha.” Dr. Ben Reitman wrote her “as told to” memoir in 1937 and the feeling is that she w...
The Last Ride
Hey–
In George Milburn’s, The Hobo’s Hornbook, a 1930 collection of hobo balladry and poems and songs, he draws a distinction between hobos and ...
The Road Hawk
Hey–
In Timothy Egan’s, The Worst Hard Time, a riveting account of the horrors of the dustbowl and The Great Depression, dust storms are rendere...
The Red Road
Hey–
I elected not to go to the art fairs in New York this week. I actually haven’t been going to them for a while now and I don’t miss them. ...
The Hobo King
Hey–
I had an odd experience the other day. I had accepted an invitation to be a speaker at the SEA (Self-Employment in the Arts) conference out...
Poem for a Redhead
Hey–
In a lot of hobo literature, there is not much mention of women or romance–one suspects that hobos didn’t get much pussy, being smelly and b...
The Quiet Dust
“They scraped and planted and prayed and saved. . .then the black blizzards would come and take it all away. . .and the banks moved in like vultur...