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Once in a while (NOT, as many onliners are incorrectly saying, "once and a while"), I've heard Our Hosts discuss a word which has been adopted into general slang, but which originated in the loose and mobile community of hobos. "Beanery", "flop" (as in flop-house), "handout", "kicks" (shoes), "stiff" (as in "working stiff") and "monika" or "monicker" were all used and/or coined by travelers on the iron road.
Every sub-culture develops its own slanguage as a way to bring them together as well as keeping Those Others out. Hobos had very real reasons to keep their slang obscure, since the very thing that made them hobos was likely to land them in jail for vagrancy. Using neologisms, elisions and other lets-make-this-word-mean-what-we-want techniques, sub-cultures try to insulate themselves from ridicule, persecution and otherwise getting their butts kicked on their playground-analogues.
Hobo culture is literally a movable feast. Hopping a frieght train at a crossing (or wherever else it slowed down enough to be boarded) and going wherever it went (generally somewhere there was work to be had, even if only for a few days) didn't make for what we think of as stability. That didn't bother hobos, though, as they saw structure as stricture. It also mandated a primarily oral language because who's gonna carry around pencil and paper in their bindle when they take up space better used for important stuff like food and smokes?
There an old book The Hobo's Hornbook by George Milburn, published by Ives Washburn in 1930 that collects almost 300 pages of hobo poetry, much of it patterned after Kipling and Robert W. Service because their rhyme patterns and rhythms were easily memorized, and almost all of it in print there for the first and only time. It's hard to find a copy, especially an inexpensive one, but it does contain a lexicon of hobo slang. Each poem has a brief description by Milburn of its author (where one is known) and origins, and the book is divided into thematic chapters.
Hobo culture is rich with tradition and humor, heart-break and hard-assery. There are still hobos and road-kids out there now, as well as rubber-tramps and bindle-stiffs. Long may they wave.
Got me interested enough to try looking for it. Sure enough, 6 used at Amazon, starting at $120!
Not sure I want to spend that kinda money for the book. Then I found this excerpt:
http://www.library.northwestern.edu/news-legacy/2011/april/railroad-folklore
I was a Paul Bunyan fan as a kid, so I know that style of writing. Loved it. So now I am thinking about spending the money. Is the rest of the book of similar caliber? Must be a real mix of stuff to include the above, as well as what you describe. Do you know of any other online excerpts?
telemath said:
Heimhenge,
I agree, that excerpt is indeed a fun read. Thanks, Bud.
I could not find the book at Google Books, Powell's Books, or AddAll. However, Google Books has a feature that lets you search for libraries that have the book. You might be able to find a library near you that has it.
Telemath, look here:
There are only a half-dozen or so copies offered at AddAll.com, which should tell you how scarce it is. I lucked into my copy at a local shop for under $10 more than a decade ago. Sometimes the magic works.
Heimhenge, the excerpt you linked to must be a misattribution. There's nothing of the sort in my copy, which is worn but complete. One of the webssites that quote the same text ascribes it to a book titled German and Other Folktales, about which I can find nothing. The Hobo's Hornbook is almost entirely a collection of songs and poetry, with Milburn's notes and occasional brief, simple notation. As a compilation of hobo lore and oral history it's priceless, but a hundred and twenty bucks is a hundred and twenty bucks.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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