On the Fly!

Description

The first anthology of its kind, On the Fly! brings forth the lost voices of Hobohemia. Dozens of stories, poems, songs, stories, and articles produced by hoboes are brought together to create an insider history of the subculture’s rise and fall. Adrenaline-charged tales of train hopping, scams, and political agitation are combined with humorous and satirical songs, razor sharp reportage and unique insights into the lives of the women and men who crisscrossed America in search of survival and adventure.

From iconic figures such as labor martyr Joe Hill and socialist novelist Jack London through to pioneering blues and country musicians, and little-known correspondents for the likes of the Hobo News, the authors and songwriters contained in On the Fly! run the full gamut of Hobohemia’s wide cultural and geographical embrace. With little of the original memoirs, literature, and verse remaining in print, this collection, aided by a glossary of hobo vernacular and numerous illustrations and photos, provides a comprehensive and entertaining guide to the life and times of a uniquely American icon. Read on to enter a world where hoboes, tramps, radicals, and bums gather in jungles, flop houses, and boxcars; where gandy dancers, bindlestiffs, and timber beasts roam the rails once more.

Sujets

• Homelessness
• Great Depression
• Cynicism
• Drifter
• Vagabond

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629635323
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

This book is a tantalizing boxcar ride back through the history of the hobo, all told from the hobo s point of view. What more could anyone ask?
-Paul Garon, coauthor, What s the Use of Walking When There s a Freight Train Going Your Way? Black Hoboes and Their Songs and author, Blues and the Poetic Spirit
On the Fly! gathers and reassembles forgotten fragments of a lost counterculture that was once so vast it practically defined the working-class experience in the United States. Its call was so alluring to young men of all classes that the hobo became the most commonly depicted character in American popular culture between 1900 and 1920. This collection represents the view from within, the stories and perspectives of those who lived the life of The Road, carrying its burdens and glorying in its freedoms. On the Fly! is indispensable for understanding not only the hobo life but also the on-the-ground history of our urban industrial order.
-Todd DePastino, author, Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America
A wonderful and definitive collection of hobo prose, poetry, and song. Iain McIntyre has painstakingly collected a rich array of hobo writing that together speaks to the rich and varied lives these itinerant travelers inhabited along the iron highway.
-John Lennon, author, Boxcar Politics: The Hobo in U.S. Culture and Literature, 1869-1956
On the Fly! is a brilliant introduction to the subject and, more than that, a moving tribute to the creativity of men and women at the margins of society.
-Paul Buhle, coeditor, Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World
On the Fly! is a wide-ranging, fascinating collection of primary sources about homelessness from the era that defined the rise and, in the 1930s, the crisis of industrial society in the U.S. Well-known writers like Jack London, Jim Tully, and Tom Kromer are represented, but what sets this volume apart from many studies is its emphasis on first-person views of the experiences of the homeless themselves. This is social history at its best.
-Kenneth L. Kusmer, professor of history, Temple University and author, Down and Out, On the Road: The Homeless in American History

On the Fly! Hobo Literature and Songs, 1879-1941
Edited by Iain McIntyre
PM Press 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-62963-518-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017964734
Cover by Tom Civil
Interior design by briandesign
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
A Tight Squeeze
William Staats
Only a Tramp
Unknown
Leaves from a Diary: A Tramp Around the World
Sam Clover
Hobo John
Unknown
A Watch-Night Service in San Francisco
Morley Roberts
The Dying Hobo / Streams of Whiskey (The Hobo s Last Lament)
Unknown
Two Thousand Stiffs
Jack London
ARU
Unknown
One Night on the Q
Josiah Flynt
The Wabash Cannonball
Unknown
In Partnership with a Burglar
Leon Livingston
The Poor Tramp Has to Live
Unknown
The Camp
William Henry Davies
Railroad Bill
Unknown
You Can t Win
Jack Black
Big Rock Candy Mountain
Unknown
Death at My Feet
William Z. Foster
My Wandering Boy
Unknown
Tramping on Life: An Autobiographical Narrative
Harry Kemp
Can I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight, Mister
Unknown
Autobiography
Carl Panzram
The Swede from North Dakota
Unknown
The Journey Overland
Windy Bill (Ben Goodkind)
Hallelujah, Bum Again
Unknown
Thieves and Vagabonds
Jim Tully
Experience
Unknown
IWW Red Special Overall Brigade
J.H. Walsh
The Gila Monster Route
Glen Norton and L.F. Post
The Little Pittsburg of the West and Its Great Wrong
Edwin Brown
The Bum
Arturo Giovannitti
San Diego Free Speech Fight
Alfred Tucker
The Dishwasher
Jim Seymour
Riding the Rods
Glen H. Mullin
Peripeties
Haralambos Kambouris
Rambling Kid
Charles Ashleigh
Hash
Henry Herbert Knibbs
Liver la Carte: A True Story of a Camp Kitchen
T. O Donnell
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay
Joe Hill
The Modern Agricultural Slave
E.W. Latchem
The Harvest Stiff s Tipperary
Pat Brennan
The Susquehanna Flats
William J. Quirke
The Mysteries of a Hobo s Life (The Job I Left Behind Me)
T-Bone Slim
The Main Stem
William Edge
The Bum on the Rods and the Bum on the Plush
W.E. Jones
Siberian Methods in the United States: Schuettler s Spring Drive
D.M.C.
The Hobo College Yell
Bert L. Weber
Lady Hoboes
Samuel Milton Elam
The Road Kid s Song
Unknown
Blood on the Forge
William Attaway
The Timberbeast s Lament
Unknown
Bottom Dogs
Edward Dahlberg
Hobo Convention Song
George Liebst
Johnson the Gyppo
Ralph Winstead (William Akers)
The Labor Shark (After Coleridge)
Edward Connor
In a Southern Prison Camp
Isaac H. Schwartz
The Great American Bum
Unknown
A Day in the Jungle
A.W. Dragstedt
The Mulligan Stew
Unknown
The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man
Nels Anderson
Wild and Reckless Hobo
George Reneau / Traditional
The Passenger Stiff
Henri Tascheraud
Frisco Whistle Blues
Ed Bell
Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha
Ben Reitman
Hobo Blues
Peg Leg Howell
Back Door Guest
James Lennox Kerr
Railroadin Some
Henry Thomas
The Casanovas of Illinois
Barbara Starke
The T P Line
Unknown
Hungry Men
Tom Kromer
No Room for a Tramp
Roy Harvey
Bumming in California
Eluard Luchel McDaniel
Toledo Slim
Unknown
The Battle of East St. Louis
W.W. Waters
I.C. Moan Blues
Tampa Red
Heel, Toe, and a One-Two-Three-Four
George Milburn
Jungle Man
Peetie Wheatstraw
I ve Got to Take a Chance
Frank Bunce
Savannah Mama
Blind Willie McTell
The Starvation Army: Part Two
John Karazian
Hobo Jungle Blues
Bumble Bee Slim
Their Tribal Life
Thomas Minehan
Special Agent (Railroad Police Blues)
Sleepy John Estes
Why Women Become Hoboes
Walter Reckless and Mrs. Metzger
Loveless CCC
Unknown
Homecoming
Tom Tracy
GLOSSARY OF HOBO AND COLLOQUIAL TERMS OF THE 1870 S -1940 S
SECONDARY SOURCES AND POST- 1945 MEMOIRS OF RAIL RIDING
ABOUT THE EDITOR
INDEX
Acknowledgments
Dedicated to my family and the many people who have helped out with books, materials, and encouragement over the years it took to compile this anthology. Particular thanks to the staff at Victoria University, the International Institute of Social History, the British Library, the Library of Congress, and the St. Louis Public Library.

A photograph taken by Dorothea Lange in 1939.
Introduction
F rom the 1870s until the Second World War, millions of Americans left their homes to board freight trains that would carry them vast distances, sometimes to waiting work, often to points unknown. By 1914, more than 250,000 miles of railroad had been laid, putting both the incentive and means of free, albeit illegal, travel within the reach of many American small towns. Defeating efforts by the rail barons who constructed this immense network to exterminate them, at times literally, hoboes soon became synonymous with the lore and reality of the American railroad.
While the overwhelming majority of those riding the rails were driven there out of economic necessity, poverty was not the only motivating force for illicit travel. Lured by a desire for action and excitement, combined with the call of a passing train, many sought to temporarily escape the boredom of everyday life. Others wished to opt out of the mainstream altogether, as the life of a tramp, despite its hardships and dangers, offered an alternative for working-class Americans otherwise condemned to domestic drudgery and the factory floor. In hopping trains, members of the middle and upper classes could similarly carry out a lifetime of rebellion against bourgeois mores, or at least enjoy a summer s adventure. For gay and bisexual men, it additionally offered a subculture in which their orientation was often accepted.
Regardless of their initial reason for setting out, by the end of the nineteenth century the sheer number of transients crisscrossing the nation had given rise to a unique subculture. Distinct from the traditional craftsmen and vagrants who had wandered the roads of Europe for centuries and given mobility by the modern rail system, the hobo rose to an unprecedented place in American culture. Alternately hailed as romantic figures of fun and reviled as immoral and dangerous parasites, these drifters were set apart from conformist America not only by their transiency but also by a lifestyle possessing its own haunts, vocabulary, and cultural, sexual, and ethical norms.
Prior to t