CHAPTER XIV
HOBO SONGS AND BALLADS

Much so-called hobo verse which has found its way into print was not written by tramps, but by men who knew enough of the life of the road to enable them to interpret its spirit. The best hobo poems have been written behind prison bars. Many of the songs of the I.W.W. have been written in jail.

The poetry most popular among the men on the road are ballads describing some picturesque and tragic incident of the hobo’s adventurous life. The following by an unknown author illustrates the type. Here is an incident told in the language of the road in a manner that every “bo” can understand and appreciate.

The Gila Monster Route

The lingering sunset across the plain
Kissed the rear end of an east-bound train,
And shone on the passing track close by
Where a dingbat sat on a rotten tie.
He was ditched by the “shack,” and cruel fate,
The “con” highballed, and the manifest freight,
Pulled out on the stem behind the mail,
And beat it east on a sanded rail.
As she pulled away in the fading night
He could see the gleam of her red tail lights.
Then the moon arose, and the stars came out;
He was ditched on the Gila Monster Route.
There was nothing in sight but sand and space;
No chance for a bo to feed his face;
Not even a shack to beg for a lump.
Nor a hen house there to frisk for a gump.
As he gazed far out on the solitude
He dropped his head and began to brood.
He thought of the time he lost his pal
In the hostile berg of Stockton, Cal.
They had mooched the stem and threw their feet,
And speared four bits on which to eat;
But deprived themselves of their daily bread,
And sluffed the coin for dago-red.
Then, down by the tracks, in the jungle’s glade,
On the cool, green grass in the tule’s shade,
They shed their coats, and ditched their shoes,
And tanked up full of that colored booze.
Then, they took a flop with their hides plumb full,
And did not hear the harness bull,
Till he shook them out of their boozy nap,
With a husky voice and a loaded sap.
They were charged with vag, for they had no kale,
And the judge said sixty days in jail;
But the john had a bundle, the worker’s plea,
So he gave him a floater and set him free.
They had turned him out, but ditched his mate,
So he grabbed the guts of an east-bound freight;
He had held his form to the rusty rods
Till the brakeman hollered, “Hit the sod.”
So the bo rolled off and in the ditch,
With two switch lights and a rusty switch,
A poor, old, seedy, half-starved bo
On a hostile pike without a show.
Then all at once from out of the dark
Came the short, sharp notes of a coyote’s bark;
The bo looked up and quickly rose,
And shook the dust from his threadbare clothes.
Far off in the west through the moonlight night
He saw the gleam of a big head light;
An east-bound stock run hummed the rail,
It was due at the switch to clear the mail.
As she pulled up close the head-end “shack”
Threw the switch to the passing track,
The stock rolled in and off the main,
The line was clear for the west-bound train.
As she hove in sight far up the track,
She was working steam with the brake shoes slack;
Whistling once at the whistling post,
She flittered by like a frightened ghost.
You could hear the roar of the big six wheel,
As the drivers pounded the polished steel,
And the screech of the flanges on the rail,
As she beat it west o’er the desert trail.
The john got busy and took a risk,
He climbed aboard and began to frisk,
He reached up high and began to feel
For an end-door pin, then he cracked a seal.
’Twas a double-deck stock loaded with sheep;
The john got in and went to sleep;
The “con” highballed, and she whistled out,
They were off—down the Gila Monster Route.

The following ballad by Harry Kemp, the “tramp poet,” describes a situation that is familiar to those who know Hobohemia. Many men in the tramp class, to escape cold and hunger, have yielded to a similar temptation.

The Tramp Confession

We huddled in the mission
Fer it was cold outside
And listened to the preacher
Tell of the Crucified;
Without a sleety drizzle
Cut deep each ragged form,
An’ so we stood the talkin’
Fer shelter from the storm.
They sang of Gods and Angels
An’ Heaven’s eternal joy
An’ things I stopped believin’
When I was still a boy;
They spoke of good an’ evil
An’ offered savin’ grace
An’ some showed love for mankind
Ashinin’ in their face.
An’ some their graft was workin’
The same as me and you;
But some was urgin’ on us
What they believed was true.
We sang an’ dozed an’ listened,
But only feared, us men
The time when, service over,
We’d have to mooch again.
An’ walk the icy pavements,
An’ breast the snow storm gray,
Till the saloons was opened,
An’ there was hints of day.
So, when they called out, “Sinners,
Won’t you come?” I came....
But in my face was pallor
An’ in my heart was shame....
An’ so fergive me, Jesus,
Fer mockin’ of thy name.
Fer I was cold an’ hungry;
They gave me food and bed
After I kneeled there with them,
An’ many prayers was said.
An’ so fergive me, Jesus,
I didn’t mean no harm....
Fer outside it was zero
An’ inside it was warm.
Yes, I was cold an’ hungry
An’ Oh, Thou Crucified,
Thou Friend of all the Lowly,
Fergive the lie I lied.[58]

WANDERLUST

Many men have seen charms in the life on the road; Walt Whitman and Vachel Lindsay are or were tramp poets. For men who cannot endure the security and the tyranny of convention, this care-free existence has an irresistible appeal. The following swinging poem by H. H. Knibbs vibrates with the call of the road.

Nothing to Do but Go

I’m the wandering son with the nervous feet,
That never were meant for a steady beat;
I’ve had many a job for a little while,
I’ve been on the bum and I’ve lived in style;
And there was the road, stretchin’ mile after mile,
And nothing to do but go.
So, beat it, Bo, while your feet are mates;
Take a look at the whole United States;
There’s the little fire and the pipe at night;
And up again when the morning’s bright;
With nothin’ but road and sky in sight,
And nothin’ to do but go.
So, beat it, Bo, while the goin’s good,
While the birds in the trees are sawin’ wood;
If today ain’t the finest for you and me,
Then there’s tomorrow that’s going to be,
And the day after that, that’s comin’, see,
And nothin’ to do but go.
Then beat it, Bo, while you’re young and strong;
See all you can, for it won’t last long;
You can tarry for only a little spell,
On the long, gray road to Fare-Ye-Well,
That leads to Heaven or maybe Hell,
And nothin’ to do but go.[59]

“Away from Town,” by Harry Kemp, is a vivid picture of the springtime yearning that the hobo feels to be off to the country after spending the winter in the city’s slums. Not all tramps who feel, with the passing of winter, the urge to move, are enticed from the “gaunt, gray city” in search of “country cheer,” but a goodly number love the grass and shade and a season in the “jungles.” It is the same call that makes truants of school boys and fishermen of staid business men.

High perched upon a box-car, I speed, I speed today;
I leave the gaunt, gray city some good, green miles away,
A terrible dream in granite, a riot of streets and brick
A frantic nightmare of people until the soul turns sick—
Such is the high, gray city with the live green waters ’round
Oozing up from the Ocean, slipping in from the Sound.
I’d put up in the Bowery for nights in a ten-cent bed
Where the dinky “L” trains thunder and rattle overhead;
I’d traipsed the barren pavements with pain of frost in my feet;
I’d sidled to hotel kitchens and asked for something to eat.
But when the snow went dripping, and the young spring came as one
Who weeps because of the winter, laughs because of the sun
I thought of a limpid brooklet that bickers through weeds all day,
And I made a streak for the ferry, and rode across in a dray,
And dodged into the Erie where they bunt the box cars round.
I peeled my eye for detectives, and boarded an outward bound.
For you know when a man’s been cabined in walls for part of a year,
He longs for a place to stretch in, he hankers for country cheer.[60]

POEMS OF PROTEST

In spite of its transient charms, the life of the tramp is a hard one. It is fine to be free, but it is good to have a home. The hobo likes freedom, but is not satisfied to be an Ishmaelite. His speeches and his poetry are filled with protests against the social order which refuses to make a place for him; against the system that makes him an outcast.

The following poem entitled “The Dishwasher” was written by Jim Seymour, the “Hobo poet.” The second half, omitted here, is a prophecy of the overthrow of the “system.”

Alone in the kitchen, in grease laden steam,
I pause for a moment—a moment to dream:
For even a dishwasher thinks of a day,
Wherein there’ll be leisure for rest and for play.
And now that I pause, o’er the transom there floats,
A strain of the Traumerei’s soul stirring notes.
Engulfed in a blending of sorrow and glee,
I wonder that music can reach even me.
But now I am thinking; my brain has been stirred.
The voice of a master, the lowly has heard.
The heart breaking sobs of the sad violin,
Arouse the thoughts of the sweet might have been.
Had men been born equal, the use of their brain,
Would shield them from poverty: free them from pain,
Nor would I have sunk into the black social mire,
Because of poor judgment in choosing a sire.
But now I am only a slave of the mill,
That plies and remodels me just as it will;
That makes me a dullard in brain burning heat;
That looks at rich viands not daring to eat;
That works with his red, blistered hands ever stuck,
Down deep in the foul indescribable muck;
Where dishes are plunged seventeen at a time;
And washed in a tubful of sickening slime.
But on with your clatter; no more must I shirk.
The world is to me but a nightmare of work.
For me not the music, the laughter and song;
For no toiler is welcome amid the gay throng.
For me not the smiles of the ladies who dine;
Nor the sweet, clinging kisses, begotten of wine.
For me but the venting of low, sweated groans,
That twelve hours a night have instilled in my bones.

Arturo Giovannitti won his reputation as a poet by a poem in blank verse which pictures the monotony of prison life. “The Walker” was written in jail, as was “The Bum,” the poem by which Giovannitti is best known among the hobos. As an I.W.W. and a radical, his writings breathe the spirit of protest. “The Bum,” the first three verses of which follow, is an eloquent tirade against religion:

The dust of a thousand roads, the grease
And grime of slums, were on his face;
The fangs of hunger and disease
Upon his throat had left their trace;
The smell of death was in his breath,
But in his eye no resting place.
Along the gutters, shapeless, fagged,
With drooping head and bleeding feet,
Throughout the Christmas night he dragged,
His care, his woe, and his defeat;
Till, gasping hard, with face downward
He fell upon the trafficked street.
The midnight revelry aloud
Cried out its glut of wine and lust
The happy, clean, indifferent crowd
Passed him in anger and disgust:
For—fit or rum—he was a bum,
And if he died ’twas nothing lost.[61]

In the following poem, by an unknown writer, “The Bum on the Rods and the Bum on the Plush” states the case of labor against capital in the language and accents of the hobo:

The bum on the rods is hunted down
As the enemy of mankind,
The other is driven around to his club
Is feted, wined, and dined.
And they who curse the bum on the rods
As the essence of all that is bad,
Will greet the other with a winning smile,
And extend the hand so glad.
The bum on the rods is a social flea
Who gets an occasional bite,
The bum on the plush is a social leech,
Blood-sucking day and night.
The bum on the rod is a load so light
That his weight we scarcely feel,
But it takes the labor of dozens of men
To furnish the other a meal.
As long as you sanction the bum on the plush
The other will always be there,
But rid yourself of the bum on the plush
And the other will disappear.
Then make an intelligent, organized kick,
Get rid of the weights that crush.
Don’t worry about the bum on the rods,
Get rid of the bum on the plush.

The following verses are taken from a selection written by Henry A. White, who is a veteran of the road and for many years connected with the publication of the Hobo News. It is entitled “The Hobo Knows.” In it one can detect an unfamiliar note of resignation, the resignation of an old man who has hoped and struggled, and learned.

He knows the whirr of the rolling wheels,
And their click on the time-worn joints;
His ear is attuned to the snap and snarl
Of the train, at the rickety points.
He knows the camp by the side of the road,
And the “java” and “mulligan” too;
The siding long, and the water tank
Are as home to me and you.
He knows the fright of hunger and thirst,
And of cold and of rain as well;
Of raggedy clothes and out-worn shoes,
An awful tale he can tell.
He knows what it means to slave all day,
And at night eat the vilest of fare;
What a tale he can tell of loathsome bunks,
Cramped quarters, and noisome air.
He knows what the end of it all will be
When he crosses the line at the goal;
A rough, pine box, and a pauper’s grave
And he has paid his toll.

THE HOBO’S OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS ON LIFE

The poets who have written best about the tramp are those who have recorded their reflections on their own life and his. Robert W. Service sees in “The Men That Don’t Fit In” a great group of wanderers who move here and there in response to an imperious wanderlust.

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain crest,
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.
If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are
And they want the strange and new.
They say, “Could I find my proper groove
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.
And each forgets as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.[62]

There are men in the tramp class who are always chasing rainbows, always expecting to “strike it rich” sometime and somewhere. Bill Quirke, for many years contributor to the Hobo News, gives expression to this sentiment in the poem, “One Day; Some Way, I’ll Make a Stake.” This poem was written a few months before Bill was killed by an automobile in California. From the heart of it we quote:

For years I’ve drilled the rough pathway,
And weathered many a wintry blast,
I’ll make another stake some day
For luck must turn my way at last.
I’m far too old for working, too
They say my work is almost through;
My ore assesses never a flake
But still I hope to make a stake.

In the Hobo News of August, 1921, Charles Thornburn records his reflections while he contemplates the empty, beaten faces of the men of the “stem”:

With ever restless tread, they come and go,
Or lean intent against the grimy wall,
These men whom fate has battered to and fro,
In the grim game of life, from which they all
Have found so much of that which is unkind,
Still hoping on, that fortune yet may mend,
With sullen stare, and features hard and lined,
They wander off to nowhere, and the end.
Their thoughts we may not fathom, in their eyes
One seems to sense a vision, as though fate
Had let one little glimpse of fairer skies
Brighten their souls before she closed the gate.
Yet have they hopes and dreams which bring them peace,
Adding to life’s flat liquor just the blend
Called courage, that their efforts may not cease
To seek the gold, hid at the rainbow’s end.

“The Wanderer” is from the pen of Charles Ashleigh. It is said to have been written in jail. It is a justification, not complete, of the hobo principle of living for the day and by the day, of enjoying the sweets of life, if they can be secured, and of avoiding its problems.

Is there no voice to speak for these, our kin;
The strange, wild sorrows for the wanderer’s soul;
The shining comradeship we sometimes win
When on our wilful way to visioned goals?
We are the ones to whom the forests speak,
For whom the little by-streets run awry;
Ships are our mistresses, and vaulted peaks
Draw us unconquered to the tyrant sky.
And what if we in sordid corners sink,
Or perish in the crash of lawless fight;
Our souls have had the wine of life to drink,
We’ve had our blazing day. Let come the night.

The hobo characterizes the district where the employment agencies are located as the “slave market.” Louis Melis, prominent in Hobohemia as a soap-boxer, has written a poem entitled “The Slave Market” from which the following verses have been taken:

The Slave Market

This is the city of lost dreams and defeated hopes;
Always you are the mecca of the Jobless,
The seekers after life and the sweet illusions of happiness.
Within your walls there are the consuming
Fires of pain, sorrow and eternal regrets.
Roses never bloom here; silken petals
Cannot be defiled.
Streets in ragged attire, sang-froid in their violence;
Years come and go; still your hideousness goes on
And mute outcasts garnish
Your every rendezvous.
Blind pigs, reeking with a nauseous smell everywhere;
The so-called “flops,” the lousy beds
Where slaves of mill and mine and rail and shop
Curl up and drop away unconscious,
In fair pretense of sleep.
Employment sharks entrapping men,
Human vultures in benign disguise,
Auctioning labor at a pittance per day.
And it’s always “What will you give?”
“What will you take?”
The pocketing of fat commissions;
Old men, young men, tramps, bums, hobos,
Laborers seeking jobs or charity
Each visioning happiness from afar.
They swarm the city streets, these slaves,
For all must live and strive,
And always the elusive job sign
Greets their contemplative glance.
A job—food, clothing, shelter;
Wage slaves selling their power;
Oh, you Slave Market, I know you!
From timbered lands, North, East, South and West
From distant golden grain belts,
From endless miles of rail,
These workers float to the city.
Timber beasts, harvesters, gandy dancers—
Adventurers all. From every clime and zone,
Each comes with hope of work or
Else to blow his pile.

BATTLE SONGS OF THE HOBOS

There are many types of tramp songs but most conspicuous are the songs of protest. The I.W.W. have done much to stimulate song writing, mostly songs of the struggle between the masses and the classes.

Most hobo songs are parodies on certain popular airs or on hymns. One can easily determine when certain songs were written if he knows when certain popular airs, to which they are fitted, were the rage. The tunes most used by the tramp song writers are those that are so well known that the song may be sung by any group of transients. When the songs are parodies on hymns there is usually a note of irony running through them. The following is called the hobo’s “Harvest War Song.” It was written by Pat Brennan and is sung to the tune of “Tipperary.”

We are coming home, John Farmer; We are coming back to stay.
For nigh on fifty years or more, we’ve gathered up your hay.
We have slept out in your hayfields; we have heard your morning shout;
We’ve heard you wondering where in hell’s them pesky go-abouts?
Chorus
It’s a long way, now understand me; it’s a long way to town;
It’s a long way across the prairies, and to hell with Farmer Brown.
Here goes for better wages, and the hours must come down,
For we’re out for a winter’s stake this summer, and we want no scabs around.
You’ve paid the going wages, that’s what kept us on the bum,
You say you’ve done your duty, you chin-whiskered son-of-a-gun.
We have sent your kids to college, but still you rave and shout
And call us tramps and hobos, and pesky go-abouts.
But now the long wintry breezes are a-shaking our poor frames,
And the long drawn days of hunger try to drive us bos insane,
It is driving us to action; we are organized today;
Us pesky tramps and hobos are coming back to stay.

Joe Hill, whose real name was Joseph Hilstrom, holds the place of honor among the I.W.W.’s as a song writer. Before his death he was one of the most enthusiastic of the I.W.W. organizers. His execution in Utah in 1915 has not lessened his popularity among the “Wobblies.” Most of his songs are parodies. “The Tramp” is a parody on the old tune: “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp; the Boys Are Marching.”

If you will shut your trap,
I will tell you ’bout a chap,
That was broke and up aginst it too for fair;
He was not the kind to shirk,
He was looking hard for work,
But he heard the same old story everywhere.
Chorus
Tramp, tramp, tramp, keep on a-tramping,
Nothing doing here for you;
If I catch you ’round again;
You will wear the ball and chain,
Keep on tramping, that’s the best thing you can do.
He walked up and down the street,
’Till the shoes fell off his feet;
In a house he spied a lady cooking stew,
And he said, “How do you do,
May I chop some wood for you?”
What the lady told him made him feel so blue.
’Cross the street a sign he read,
“Work for Jesus,” so it said,
And he said, “Here is my chance, I’ll surely try,”
And he kneeled upon the floor,
Till his knees got rather sore,
But at eating time he heard the preacher say:
Down the street he met a cop,
And the copper made him stop,
And he asked him, “When did you blow into town?”
“Come with me to the judge.”
But the judge he said, “Oh fudge!
Bums that have no money needn’t come around.”

“The Preacher and the Slave,” also written by Joe Hill and sung to the tune of “Sweet Bye and Bye,” is especially popular among the malcontents because of its attack upon religion:

Long haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right;
But when asked how ’bout something to eat
They will answer in voices so sweet:
Chorus
You will eat bye and bye
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
And the starvation army, they play,
And they sing and they clap and they pray,
Till they get all your coin on the drum,
Then they’ll tell you when you’re on the bum:
Workingmen of all countries, unite,
Side by side we for freedom will fight;
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain:
Last Chorus
You will eat bye and bye
When you’ve learned how to cook and to fry;
Chop some wood, ’twill do you good,
And you will eat in the sweet bye and bye.

The “Portland County Jail” is one of the few songs of the road that does not wear out.

I’m a stranger in your city,
My name is Paddy Flynn;
I got drunk the other evening,
And the coppers run me in.
I had no money to pay my fine,
No friends to go my bail,
So I got soaked for ninety days
In the Portland County Jail.
Chorus
Oh, such a lot of devils,
The like I never saw;
Robbers, thieves, and highwaymen,
And breakers of the law.
They sang a song the whole night long,
And the curses fell like hail,
I’ll bless the day they take me away
From the Portland County Jail.
The only friend that I had left,
Was Happy Sailor Jack;
He told me all the lies he knew,
And all the safes he’s cracked.
He cracked them in Seattle;
He’d robbed the Western Mail;
It would freeze the blood of an honest man,
In the Portland County Jail.

HOBO VERSE IN A LIGHTER VEIN

The characteristic hobo is an optimist who sees the humorous side of many an unpleasant or dangerous situation. The average seasoned “bo” with full stomach and money in his pocket can enjoy to the full the never-ending series of happenings on West Madison Street. If there is nothing else, he can be amused at the other man’s predicament. Many of these humorous experiences have found their way into poetry.

The hobo is ironic even in the face of death. The following poem, by an unknown writer, caricatures the contrast between the sentiment and the reality of the hobo’s existence.

The Hobo’s Last Lament

Beside a Western water-tank
One cold November day,
Inside an empty box-car,
A dying hobo lay;
His old pal stood beside him,
With low and drooping head,
Listening to the last words,
As the dying hobo said:
“I am going to a better land,
Where everything is bright,
Where beef-stews grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night;
And you do not have to work at all,
And never change your socks,
And streams of goodly whiskey
Come trickling down the rocks.
“Tell the bunch around Market street,
That my face, no more, they’ll view;
Tell them I’ve caught a fast freight,
And that I’m going straight on through.
Tell them not to weep for me,
No tears in their eyes must lurk;
For I’m going to a better land,
Where they hate the word called work.
“Hark! I hear her whistling,
I must catch her on the fly;
I would like one scoop of beer
Once more before I die.”
The hobo stopped, his head fell back,
He’d sung his last refrain;
His old pal stole his coat and hat
And caught an East-bound train.[63]

A. W. Dragstedt, a prominent personality in Chicago’s Hobohemia, is a man who goes and comes when he pleases. According to hobo custom, he goes to the country each summer, but he usually spends his leisure in town. He is an optimist. The following two verses were written at a time when he was down but not downhearted.

It takes a very little for me to be happy;
The world has a smile for each day that goes by;
My diet of coffee and doughnuts so snappy,
Makes me very clever and mentally spry.
My shoes are but uppers, pants full of patches;
My stomach feels pleased when I fill it with soup;
When sleepy and tired my slumber I snatches,
In haystacks and hallways; sometimes in the coop.

“No Matter Where You Go” is a humorous presentation of the futility of wandering. Where to go next when the hobo wants to move is always a problem. Usually the “bo” gives an unfavorable report of the district he has just left.