Hobo Bill's Last Ride
John, Feather River
must be swirled around the tongue to be fully savored. Having both ears helps too. Odd, you say, that Wodebouse and Runyon should be paired as an entry in one's esteem? Not at all. Wodehouse...
...This reviewer expresses joyful appreciation to the girl he married...
...One theory has it that it is a contraction of an ancient greeting "halloo, beau," a salutatio n alleged!y once common among everyone from highwaymen to Siamese twins...
...As with the sinking of the Lusitania and the identity of thousands of voters in Chicago, no one seems to know the exact story of where the name "hobo" came from...
...In any case, a hobo has been defined as one who dreams and wanders...
...Nowadays, more likely, they engage in the extralegal pharmaceutical business, practice arson, become middlemen in the discount auto equil~ment industry, or provide the essential final link in any of a number of misguided Federal income redistribution schemes...
...Sharing your wife or life with Wodehouse is a good way to laugh happily ever after...
...Wodehouse and the American public formed a mutual admiration society from the time he wrote his fast piece for the old Saturday Evening Post...
...Now what had once been an inspiring future is becoming a chilling presence...
...Plunkitt: I have information that a Paris newspaper is about to publish an expos~ that could destroy my political career here in France...
...Wodehouse was equally as familiar as Runyon with the world of Harry the Horse and Sky Masterson and Big Julie and Nathan Detroit and Miss Adelaide...
...He preferred, if accepting charity at all, to reciprocate by inducing a refulgent glow in the breasts of various pious housewives and Salvation Army missionaries in return for a bowl of stew and a place out of the rain...
...One always owes a debt to the individual who introduces him to an indispensable part of life thereafter...
...Wodehouse wrote lovingly every day of his life until the day of his death, completing his 96th book before bowing out graciously on St...
...For two years we battled manfully with the Internal Revenue Service over the difficult question of whether creating a retirement camp for a handful of toothless, homeless, poverty-stricken old men was in fact a charitable endeavor...
...The arrest and calumny of the Gang of Four is cause for alarm...
...Wodehouse was the lyricist...
...Who, hearing "Bill" from Show Boat, would suspect that P.G...
...The English, more than a trifle stuffy over his misadventures in World War II, when he was foolishly mistaken to be a Nazi sympathizer, got around to making amends just six weeks before his death when Queen Elizabeth II named him a Knight Commander of the British Empire...
...As a virtue to offset this minor vice, the old-time hobo rarely if ever descended to accepting the charity coerced from the taxpayer...
...This paper will soon reveal a list of French politicians who have taken bribes from Lockheed, and, as luck would have it, my name is not on this list...
...GWP 30 The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977...
...Perspicacious readers of this journal may have noticed, in the December edition, sandwiched between a report of an attempt to mate a man with an ape, and another of the assassination of a Budweiser Clydesdale, a small item by this publication's Fauna Editor describing my efforts to inspire compassion for the American hobo as an endangered species...
...When the wanderer was subjected to an interminable evening of tumultuous Christianity as the further price for this meagre fare, it can be argued that he came out somewhere on the short end of the deal...
...He now issues instructions to world leaders from /sis home in Concord, Vermont, all of which have to date been ignored...
...In fact under Chairman Mac China became a country of lush grass, and everyone either had a pleasant smile on his face or he was shot, even though this was clone at considerable expense...
...Dear Dr...
...Wife With Wodehouse has been a familiar sight in our bed for nigh unto 35 yearsma cause for envy at times, but never jealousy...
...Wodehouse was as much at home on Broadway as Lord Emsworth was at Blandings...
...They did not engage in vandalism or burglary, nor did they appear drunk and disorderly in public places...
...THE BOOTBLACK STAND Dr...
...Reassure them of your moral character by reiterating your openness to bribery and by relating the vulgarity of Lockheed's briber...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977 29 There remains, however, a diminishing number of the hoary knights of yesteryear, living out their golden years in lonely shacks, under viaducts, and in repulsive rest homes, mostly in the West...
...We aimed to perpetuate what can yet be found of the lore of these freedom-loving men, and to try to raise a modest sum for an even more modest retirement camp, where the dwindling host can spend their final days jungled up with congenial souls, laughing once again at How Watermelon Red Went Wild at Reno, thrilling to the tale of Springfield Mike who saved the New Haven Express at Dutchman's Curve in '08, and reminiscing about Omaha Bill, who emerged hung over from a boxcar one free morning in 1867 to learn that he was the first 'bo to roll West over the Golden Spike...
...That he was...
...China, after years of Western exploitation, is not a wealthy country...
...Nonetheless Chairman Mac knew that a country that smiles together is a country free of capitalist roaders, and so there were always lots of smiles and no flies...
...Cordially, Name Withheld Paris, France Dear M. Name Withheld: Not if you follow my unwavering maxim and always tell the voters the truth--or as much of it as is necessary...
...But of course, I have no scruples against taking bribes...
...A tramp is one who walks from town to town, dreaming, begging, or stealing, depending on his degree of adherence to noble ideals...
...At the high water marks, early in this century and again during the Great Depression, there were more than a million men, and some women, trying to ride free on the trains of the land in search of one thing or another...
...0 D 0 0 0 0 D D U g O B O I D O D 0 I m e Q D I Q Q 0 Q 0 Q o B 0 0 Q 0 O D D b Q 0 ~ D m o 0 g I U B 0 O 9 D I o 0 0 0 g e U 0 I ~ Q 0 o I 0 0 0 O D 6 O Q 0 D b 0 m B D Q Q I D g j B P 0 o 0 Q O I 6 0 0 I Q 0 o 0 D I j 0 D Q D 0 D 6 Q i D D Q 9 U D D 0 0 Q O 0 0 Q o 0 w ~ Q o ~ 0 o i 0 ~ i ~ i Feather River John Hobo Bill's Last Ride Notes on the plight of Hood River Blackie, the Waffles Kid, and Steam Train Maury--a vanishing species...
...Valentine's Day in 1975 at the age of 93...
...You will be remembered...
...If accompanied by a knowledgeable guide one could, in the span of a few days, make contact with such legendary figures as Chicken Red, who at 17 embarked on an unparalleled career of low-budget travel in 1898...
...Since the beginning of the Global Unpleasantness in 1941 the hobo has become an increasingly rare creature...
...Could you reach deep into your pocket and bring forth a donation...
...1, and the Mushfaker have anything to say about it...
...While it must be admitted that even the highest sort of hobo occasionally engaged in frisking for unwary gumps, and often anticipated the formal corn-picking of trackside farmers, he did so usually to sustain life at a very modest level of subsistence which may, I hope, be considered a mitigating factor...
...Another tale claims it is a version of the "ho boy" shouted by railroad mailhandlers in the 1880s just prior to releasing a bag of mail in the general direction of some unsuspecting station hand...
...George IVashiugton Plun/u'tt, our prize-winning political analyst, has accepted a staff position with the House Ethics committee, hut he has gradously consented to continue advising American statesmen in these times of troubles...
...We do not accept money from governmental sources, but we do encourage readers wishing to contribute to this project to contact the writer at the Hobo Foundation, Concord, Vermont 05824...
...As compassionate Asian scholars we are accepting our responsibility to humanity by establishing the "Ad Hoc Gang of Four Defense Fund...
...Is my career ruined beyond repair...
...What a slob...
...For those who help, there will be a warm bowl of mulligan in that Great Jungle in the Sky, at least if Cigarette Kid, the Grey Ghost, A No...
...Address all correspondence to The Bootblack Stand, c/o The Alternative...
...Under his benevolent leadership China reprocessed many prostitutes and shone forth as the model of compassion and progress to all humanity...
...Because of Blackie's determination to help the feeble survivors of the grand old days of the open road, he, Steam Train Maury out of Toledo, and yours truly established the Hobo Foundation early in 1974...
...By contrast, a bum is one who begs and/or steals and wanders, usually one step ahead Feather River John was in earlier times a well-known figure from the Oregon Trunk to the Clinch field...
...No longer do unemployed and dispossessed youths of our land head for the division points to swing onto a slow drag or manifest...
...Wodehouse wryly observed he had nothing else to live for, since he already was in Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum...
...Our expenses during this period were largely covered by the tidal wave of donations, totalling $32.50, that followed a sympathetic piece by "Wall Street Al" Otten of the IVall Street Journal in December, 1974...
...Flies were almost unheard of...
...Hood River Blackie, at 51 the youngest survivor of the olden times, has faithfully recorded the life stories of some 600 of his travelling friends, most of whom have now boarded that spectral Cannonball for their fmal ride to glory...
...Promise never to make such a mistake again...
...Aside from the many migratory workers using the rails only for free transportation, there was always a hard core of old-time hoboes for whom hob0ing was not so much a harsh necessity as a special way of life...
...of the law...
...Wodehouse wrote 18 plays...
...a bullet costs the Chinese government far more than Westerners would think...
...Your affecting appeal should not fail to move them...
...Stress your devotion to providing for the needs of your family and friends...
...Plunldtt: As Concerned Asian Scholars we are distraught over reports of the incipient repression of civil liberties in the People's Republic of China and of an apparent movement away from the remarkable revolutionary principles of Chairman Mac...
...With the IRS agreeing at last that the Foundation was entitled to tax-exempt status, we are now starting a campaign to raise funds and assistance in building a modest Big Rock Candy Mountain in an otherwise unused portion of Southwestern desert, near to where the Gila Monster highballs hum stock-laden to the East...
...It is only a matter of time before China slips into the condition of Spain or possibly even Chile...
...I. am sending you, forthwith, the mailing addresses of all those--living, deceased, or jailedlwho have ever attended a Lenny Bernstein cocktail party...
...GWP Dear Dr...
...Unfortunately this Lockheed briber had such atrocious table manners that I thought he was a KGB agent...
...the Waffles Kid, who in a trackside shack in Whitefish, Montana dreams of once again riding the blinds on Jim Hill's Empire Builder, and Cotton Henry, whose long life as a carefree vagabond was interrupted by the necessity for helping to exterminate some ten thousand Japanese in the bloody crags and caves of Peleliu...
...How will I ever be able to look one of my constituents in the eye again...
...As a rule, these professionals were resourceful, resilient, merry, generous, industrious (as required), responsible, and on the average as sober as the ordinary reader of this publication...
...Remember in politics the truth can sometimes be more profitable than the untruth...
...Urgently, John Stewart Service, CAS" O. Edmund Clubb, CAS" John Kenneth Galbraith, CAS" --" Concerned Asian Scholars Dear Concerned Asians Scholars: I shall gladly do better than that...
...Late in life he became a United States citizen by studied choice...
...He created or collaborated on 32 musical comedies...
...She was the one who tipped him to Plum...
...Popular demand has apparently pressed our redoubtable editor into inviting your humble servant to describe in somewhat more detail the plight of the vanishing hobo, and I am pleased to do so...
Vol. 10 • February 1977 • No. 5
