Me and Red tramped all over. The Apple Butter Route to the big G, the BN down south to the Bitter Biscuit line. Couple of boxcar Willies such as you’d see about anywheres.
I met him when I was just sixteen, run away from the Oklahoma dirt farm where Pap would take out his meanness on whatever was handy, usually me. I’d lie awake nursing a fat lip or wrenched arm and listen for the lonesome moan of the night freight, steel wheels rattling my mattress springs from a mile off.
One night I just lit out. Never went back.
It’s a huge temptation to go hog wild with Hobo speak since discovering this treasure trove of slang, but the strict adherence to 100 words forbids this. I’ve always loved hobo lore, and once hopped a freight myself to see what it was like. It’s a powerful piece of Americana, at once impossibly romantic and deeply tragic.
Dear J Hardy,
This so puts me in mind of Steinbeck. There’s such a fine line between overdoing dialect and using just enough to season the stew. I’m savoring this small bite. Well done.
Shalom,
Rochelle
Lots to chew on there. Well done!
Beautiful. Pitch perfect voice in that sweet spot between grit and melancholy.
Such a great voice! Very well done.
Very evocative. The dialect was expertly distributed for a 100 word piece.
Oh, I love it. I could read a lot more of this! A perfect snatch of the life and such evocative names – Apple Butter and Bitter Biscuit. Terrific stuff
Truly well done!
Rochelle beat me to it, but I thought Steinbeck straight away too. The voice e and friendship made me think of Of Mice and Men. Well done.
Summons visions of old time bindlestiffs riding the rails and the sound of Alto Guthrie’s “City of New Orleans”.
Oh, I hope Red was a dog!
Um. No. He’s a guy.
I’m afraid my hobo very English,
That lonesome moan – a sound I can recall vivdly from visiting my son in Canada. Good story.
What a voice, distinctive to the core. Just loved all this hobo slang. Very well written.
This throws me right into the scene, like a movie. Great writing. I think the hobo slang is well balanced, just right. I had no trouble understanding it.
Rochelle’s already said it, but it also put me in mind of Steinbeck and Diary of a Supertramp. Nicely done. It’s the kind of thing I’ve read about and also dreamed of doing. (From my safe little house in England)
Nice. Very nice. I was with her.