Education Of a Wandering Man (1990) (3 page)

BOOK: Education Of a Wandering Man (1990)
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Those who had the jobs stayed with them, while the others were left adrift in a country without work.

During the knockab years the hobo acquired a literature of his own, stories, poetry, and songs passed on by word of mouth, only occasionally printed or recorded. Among the songs best remembered, although there were hundreds now lost, were "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum," "The Bum Song," "The Dying Hobo," "Big Rock Candy Mountain," and "The Hype Song."

The folklore of the hobo has been studied but only partly explored, and is extensive indeed. The chapters on famous hoboes, tramps, and railroad detectives have been largely overlooked because too few of the old hoboes are left, and those who know the old stories are rare. The contemporary hobo is a different type entirely, with only a few similarities. For a short time here and there I lived a part of that growing folklore, seeing it at first hand.

Among the poems known by many were "Toledo Slim," "The Girl with the Blue Velvet Band," the well-known "Face on the Bar-room Floor," "Down in Lehigh Valley," and "The Lure of the Tropics."

One remembered quatrain is typical:

I've juggled a tray in a New York caf`e, Hopped bells in a hotel in Chi.

I've carried a pack down the BandO track, And hopped Red Ball freights on the fly.

Another, of the same vintage:

I've clerked in Kansas City, Sold insurance in St. Paul, Peddled books in Dallas, Texas, And gone hungry in them all.

My intention had been to write, and consequently I had made no effort to acquire a trade. Naturally, living such a life one picks up certain knacks and skills but not enough to become expert at anything.

All I had to offer was considerable physical strength and two hands, but for most jobs it was all that was required. I carried a hod, mixed concrete, shoveled sand or gravel, and dug ditches.

All the while I read. There was no plan, nor at the time could there be. One had to read what was available, and it had been so from the beginning.

Back in Jamestown there was a set of books called The Rover Boys, and I read however many there were. Several friends were reading them at the same time. We also read a series by Joseph A. Altsheler on the Civil and Revolutionary Wars.

Shortly before I entered the seventh grade I got my first job, the only one I was ever to get through influence or knowing somebody.

In this case it was a friend of my father's who was Vice-President of the Midland Continental Railroad (peggy Lee's father worked for the same company), a small railroad that serviced a farming area. I had remarked to him that I was going to get my father to buy me a bicycle.

"Why don't you buy it yourself?" he asked.

Astonished, I told him I did not have any money. "Get a job and earn it," he suggested.

I was not quite twelve at the time and the idea had never occurred to me. He turned to a friend who was Secretary and Treasurer of the same railroad and asked, "What kind of jobs are there for youngsters?"

He suggested I work as a messenger boy.

My father's friend invited me up to his office and dictated a letter to the Western Union recommending me for the job. The other man, who was also head of the local Chamber of Commerce, signed it as well, as did the County Engineer. Needless to say, I got the job.

At first, having no bicycle, I delivered the messages on foot, which called for a lot of walking. The job itself was a learning experience--in more ways than one. There were several typewriters around the place and I began typing on one of the spare machines. About the same time, one of the other messengers introduced me to pulp adventure magazines.

These were never found in my home, as my mother did not approve of them, and I doubt if my brothers or sisters ever looked at one until some of my own stories began to appear there, much later.

It was in the magazines that I first encountered Edgar Rice Burroughs and his stories "The Princess of Mars," "The Gods of Mars," and "The Warlords of Mars." (much later I had a Colorado friend who named his two burros Edgar and Rice.)

Also at this time there was a magazine called Science and Invention, published by Hugo Gernsback, a name famous to all who know science fiction. Gernsback featured popular articles on various aspects of science, but he did more than that, for in the pages of Science and Invention he published the first modern stories of science fiction. Later, when the audience demanded it, he began to publish Amazing Stories, and the rest is history.

Reading a combination of science fact and fiction led me to Professor Percival Lowell's books on Mars, the planet he was studying from his Lowell Observatory near Flagstaff.

These were not, of course, the first nonfiction books I had read. The first was, I believe, a book called The Genius of Solitude, which I found in our Alfred Dickey Library in my hometown.

About that time I had decided I was not learning fast enough in school (i was twelve), and I was enormously curious about what was available.

The Genius of Solitude devoted several chapters to various thinkers, as I recall, but the only one I remember now is Socrates.

Interested in everything, I also found in our library a very good book on the history of flying, going back to the beginnings of kite flying in China and Japan, making hot-air balloons out of gold beater's skin, and going on to the German who made more than seven hundred flights with gliders, but crashed and was killed on the eve of his first powered flight.

There was also a good history of the submarine, and somewhere along the line I dipped into books on botany, geology, mineralogy, and more.

As those who read will understand, once my years at home were ended, I had little choice about what I read, for I had to accept what was available. When I found a library, I could choose, but many of the books I read during those knockab years were what could be found in bunkhouses, ships' fo'c'sles (crew's quarters), and such places. Sometimes the discoveries were real gems; more often they were the casual reading of wandering men. Whatever the book, a reader reads.

There is no reason why anyone cannot get an education if he or she wants it badly enough and is persistent. Most cities have libraries, and often state libraries will mail books to a reader. Books are available on every conceivable subject and there are many very good "how to" books from which one can learn the basics of a trade.

My great good fortune was that from the beginning I was aware of books and their availability. But until I was eighteen or nineteen I simply read whatever I could find, with no preconceived notion of what I wanted to learn or become.

When I did settle down to acquire the rudiments of an education, the courses of study I chose were, I am sure, not those that would have been prescribed for me by any educator of whom I know, and it has been my good fortune to know a good many in these later years.

We probably had no more than two or three hundred books in my home when I was a child, but the library was available and we all used it constantly. I read Lorna Doone (a great favorite of my mother's), Kingsley's Westward Ho!, Jane Porter's The Scottish Chiefs, Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, as well as Ben Hur and The Fair God by Lew Wallace.

When I was about thirteen I discovered Alexandre Dumas. There had been talk at home of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, and I had read both. It was a great day when I discovered on the shelves of the library a set of forty-eight volumes by Dumas, and I read them, every one.

One book has always led to another with me, as I suspect it does with many, and I went on to read Victor Hugo's Les Mis@erables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Man Who Laughs, and Toilers of the Sea. The last-named was my favorite, for reasons I do not recall, unless it was because of man's titanic struggle with the sea. The idea of one man against the elements has always fascinated me, even before I had such experiences of my own.

Somewhere along the line I read a half-dozen novels by James Fenimore Cooper; and as with Balzac, enjoyed them.

About that time my education took another direction. My father and two older brothers had boxed, and I grew up knowing the rudiments. In the YMCA gym I worked out a few times with Labe Safro, who had been a crack welterweight and middleweight fighter during the days of Mike Gibbons, Mike O'Dowd, and Kid Graves. Labe was umpiring baseball in Jamestown and worked out every day.

He was a phenomenal bag puncher and had punched bags in vaudeville, keeping ten bags going at once.

And then the Petrolle boys came to town.

Do what thy manhood bids thee do, From none but self expect applause;

He noblest lives and noblest dies Who makes and keeps his self-made laws.

--Sir Richard Francis Burton Pete Petrolle was a lightweight fighter out of Schenectady, New York. His manager at the time was a former boxer who owned and operated a caf`e in Jamestown. His name was Lee Shrankel; he was also, temporarily, manager of Pete's younger brother, Billy.

Pete was a good, tough, knowing fighter who had already become as good as he was ever to get.

Billy, on the other hand, was just beginning a career that would take him to the top, where he would defeat several champions in over-weight matches (so the title was not at stake) but was never to win a championship himself.

From featherweight to welterweight he fought all the good ones, and many of them were very, very good.

At the time there were at least twenty good fighters for every one there is now, and it was about the only way a young man could come off the streets and become somebody. Now, with basketball and football paying enormous sums, there are many other ways to reach the top, and even common labor pays more in a day than one received in a week in the 1920's.

Competition in the ring was very tough and a boy had to be good to get anywhere at all. Usually that meant a year or two fighting four- or six-round bouts before a fighter got a shot at anything longer. During those years he was learning, discovering how to cope with the different styles of fighting, and refining his own.

Probably the last fighter who went through that mill was Sugar Ray Robinson, who was also one of the greatest.

How I met Pete Petrolle I do not recall, but evidently I heard he was looking for somebody to spar with. I was fourteen, but tall, with a good reach, and I knew enough about boxing to take care of myself. In the next few weeks I learned a lot more. I would guess I worked at least fifty rounds with Pete on various days before I met Billy, and then I worked with them both. They took it easy with me, but I enjoyed the workouts and was learning rapidly.

At the time a boxing magazine was published in St. Paul, Minnesota (one of the great fight towns in its day). It was printed on pink paper like the more famous Police Gazette and was called the Boxing Blade. Aside from articles on boxers and boxing, old and new, it also published the decisions in fights all over the world, These decisions usually covered two or three pages in relatively fine print, and I was an avid reader of this weekly, with a good memory for who had fought whom and the result. I also learned how certain fighters reacted to southpaws, fancy-dan boxers, and the like.

None of this interfered with my reading, which continued in every spare moment.

Our library was a gift to the town by Alfred Dickey and was named for him. He was known to both my parents but had passed on, I believe, before my time of awareness. Certainly no gift ever presented to a community was more appreciated, and especially so by me. The foundation of my education was laid there, and I learned not only how to use a library but what unexpected riches may lie hidden away on dusty shelves. That library was the first of many in my life, and I spent hours there, dipping into book after book, completing many.

It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that is nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.

So it was with me. I saved myself much hardship by learning from the experiences of others, learning what to expect and what to avoid. I have no doubt that my vicarious experience saved me from mistakes I might otherwise have made--not to say I did not make many along the way.

No doubt reading Martin Eden by Jack London, as well as other life stories of writers, prepared me for the rejections to come, and the difficulty I would have in getting published. Because of what I had read I knew there would be rejections, but I had no idea there would be so many.

Hunger I was to experience many times, but it was reassuring to know others had survived, although most written accounts of hunger are by those who never experienced it. Knut Hamsun is the only one I can think of offhand who wrote with any knowledge of the experience. In the movies one always sees a hungry man stuffing himself with food when first he gets a chance to eat. That's ridiculous, of course, for a truly hungry man eats very slowly, savoring every bite, and is almost overcome by having food at last.

Moreover, hunger shrinks the stomach and one's capacity is slight. On the second and third day after hunger, of course, there is no satisfying him. At first, he cannot eat very much.

He does, however, long for food that tastes, something either spicy or sweet. At least, such has been my experience and that of others whom I have observed.

BOOK: Education Of a Wandering Man (1990)
13.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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