JF Ptak Science Books

Hobo Exposed, or How to be a Hobo, a pamphlet  with no claim for a writer but copyrighted by “Kelly’s Specialities” in 1946,  is dedicated to Sun Down Slim, Boston Blackie, Sticks Red and Commissary Blackie. It gets right to the point of my principal interest in the work, the Hobo Slanguage.  The collection here is not quite as road-elegant as other collections from the Hobo Kings–not that it is less “regal”, just more common and less imaginative. 

For example, “Wingey” is the name for a hobo without an arm; “Sticks” is a tramp who sues a crutch; “Legs”, well, you know.  On the other hand I find “grouch bag” (which was a bag of Bull Durham tobacco worn around the neck, which was either valuable enough to be worn that way to keep people out of your pockets or you just didn’t have any pockets), “hogger” (a railroad engineer), “dice box” ( a large discarded merchandise box to sleep in), “slippins” (gravy), “canned heater” (an unfortunate tramp who drinks sterno), “Jingle Buzzard” (a tramp who begs food from other tramps), the “lump bum” (a hobo who bums food and stuff from another hobo), the “chuck bum” (as above but bumming meat), the “mush faker” (who counterfeited laundry soap and sold greasy/fat white powder-like material door-to-door,  and so on.

There are many others–here’s a further sample:

 There are useful bits beyond the Hobo lingo–essentially this is what the pamphlet is really all about.  There is info on how to jump a train moving 10 mph, what train lantern arms and signal whistles meant, how to make your own bed down (“glim”), the best use of newspapers in keeping warm and sanitary, and other such interesting ideas.

The author figures that to start tramping you should go hungry for three days, and get plenty hungry, and then the following ten days, half-hungry.  After two weeks you should have your pride behind you…and you will be on your way to full-fledged trampdom…”