March 29, 2023 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the term hobo is often confused with homeless or beggar, but the truth is, wandering through life was what they preferred. Connecticut Shorty of The Hobo Museum shares the story of the American hobo and how they are still celebrated today.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. And up next
you're going to hear from Connecticut Shorty, And yes, you
heard it right. That's the name she goes by. And
she also happens to be on the board of the
Hobo Museum. And you heard that right too, the Hobo Museum,
and she is here to share the stories of the
history of the American hobo. Betty Moyland is my given name.
(00:38):
My hobo name is Connecticut Shorty. Hobo names usually are
given to you by someone another hobo usually, but some
people will pick their nickname they had when they were
a kid, or a nickname somebody gave them along the way.
My hobo name, Connecticut Shorty came from an old time
steam air hobo name steam Train Marie Graham, a steam
(00:58):
air hobo hobo that road steam trains, and he gave
me my name in Logansport, Indiana, in nineteen ninety two
at a railroad festival. He decided that should be my name.
So that's my name. Prior to that, I had a
hobo name. It was Twinkletoes because I was kind of
a dancer, you know. So my sister's hobo name is
(01:19):
New York Maggie. I gave her that name because although
we were both raised in Connecticut, she raised her family
in Rochester, New York. She left when she was fairly young,
so I gave her the name New York Maggie. My
brother is very thin, so his hobo name is slimmed
him Redbird Express. He picked up his name because he
was a truck driver. You know. When he was driving
(01:40):
in the truck, they called him Redbird Express, so he
kept that as his hobo name. Connecticut Tutsie. Her father
used to give tutsie pops to the kids in his
shoemaking store, so she took the name Connecticut Tutsie and
out of her father. Slow Motion Shorty was an old
time steam yiror hobo. He had hit by a car
a couple of times walking along roads, and he moved
pretty slow. Of course, he had had a lot of injuries,
(02:02):
so the hobo's caused him slow motion Shorty. Oh, hard
rock kid. He got his name. He was a hard
rock miner out in the West. He liked to mind
those minerals and stuff, so he got the hobo name
hard rock Hid. So they come from a variety of places,
different names. They're kind of fun. A lot of people
mix up the American hobo. I say American hobo because
(02:23):
it's really only an American phenomena, this hobo person that
road trains. A lot of people mix up the hobo
with the homeless or the local people that you know,
hang around towns and begging stuff. So classically the hobo
worked and wandered, and they were homeless by choice. Some
of them had homes, they could go home if they
wanted to. You know, a lot of them had families
(02:44):
and homes or a relative would take him in, but
they didn't want that. They loved to be out for
American wandering. They didn't want to have a home. Sort
of gave him a clusterphobia or something. They had to
be outside. A classic example as my father, Now, he
married my mother in the nineteen forties, and he had
hobo before he met my mother, so he tried very
(03:06):
hard to settle down. He had three children, there's three
of us, and he did his best, but there was
a lot of problems in the marriage because he was restless.
Sometimes he'd leave and disappear for three or four days,
and then eventually the marriage ended and he left. So
we were raised by our mother, and he went back
to hobo and he worked and wandered his whole life.
(03:28):
He just wrote trains and wandered around America and worked.
So's there's all kinds of stories connected with hobo's having
to I guess you can't explain it to a person
that doesn't have it. It's it's called the wanderlust, where
you just can't stay there, you can't settle down into
a home and a normal kind of life, what we
call normal, But to hobo, a normal life was wandering
(03:51):
around and picking up odd jobs to make enough money
to keep going, just to see what's going on all
over the country. So the classic definition of a hobo
is they wandering work and work to wander because they
don't mind working, and they'll take a variety of jobs,
but they get restless after usually just a couple of
(04:12):
months tops, and they just got to get on the
road and see what's going on down the tracks basically,
so they leave the job. Short term jobs they started
pretty much after the Civil War. A lot of the veterans,
of course, didn't want to go home or they couldn't
go home, depending on the personal circumstances, and they had
been a lot of them wandering around, you know, fighting
(04:34):
of course, for five years or so. So they started
following the railroad working for the railroad and just wandering
and working. But they'd do anything. They'd paint, they'd wash
dishes and restaurants. They took all kinds of jobs just
to stay for a short term. Some of them worked
in lumber camps, like that hard rock kid, he'd work
in mines. They worked a lot of the migrant farm work.
(04:54):
But they really helped develop the country because the farmers
needed to help. It wasn't the modern generation and where
machines can do so much today. It was all manual
labor and stuff. So they were happy to have this
big work crew of people show up seasonally. Most of them,
like they pick apples in Oregon. At New York State
had apples, The hobos would go to New York State
to pick apples and cherries and stuff. So they were
(05:16):
all over the place, and they'd hold up in camps
that were called hobo jungles. This is where they'd gather
and meet each other and cook what they call hobo stew,
just pot of water and all kinds of vegetables and stuff.
And if they had meat, they throw that in, but
it filled up a lot of people. That's the reason
they cooked that, because it would fill up a whole
camp of people. They share stories, they talk about where
(05:38):
the jobs were. Some of them would play music. Now
that what he got through Hobo. He carried a guitar,
but very few people carried a guitar. Most of them
actually play the harmonica. The ones that played an instrument
because they could just slip that in a pocket or
a little bag or something, you know, because it's when
you're getting untrained. You can't be carrying all this big
stuff like guitars. And actually they never even carried walking
(06:00):
sticks on trains. They were in the way when you're
trying to, you know, jump on trains. Most of them
would get off trains when they were moving. They may
pick up a walking stick and carry it around the
town or something, you know, for things that might try
to hurt them. So historically it came down as fact
that this is what the hobos did, but they weren't
really riding trains with a walking stick. Some of that
stuff becomes folklore. Most of them carried out what we
(06:22):
would call a bendle or a bag slung over their shoulder.
It was more practical. Some of the hoboes would dry
their socks hanging them on trees and sticks and stuff.
At one time, this old timer had it came now,
so he was drying his socks on his walking stick.
The Hobos were originally meeting in the Chicago area. It
wasn't really the city of Chicago, it was a lot
of the surrounding smaller towns. Prior to nineteen hundred. About
(06:45):
eighteen ninety nine, word had come to Britt that the
Hobos were unhappy meeting in the Chicago area. Police were
hassling them in this and that, and they wanted to
go somewheres else. So these business people in Britt, Iowa,
there was or four main business people. They decided, well,
why don't we invite the Hobos to come to Britain.
This will give us national recognition as a city. It
(07:08):
was a railroad town, and you know it'll have tourists
come and spend money, and this will be a good
thing for us. So they got ahold of one of
the Hobos. He was the grandhead pipe of these Hobos
that were meeting in the Chicago area. His name was
Charles Snowey and the Grand head Pipe was the spokesperson
for the Hobos and the chief negotiator. So he came
(07:29):
to Britain eighteen ninety nine and met with these business
people and they did the negotiations for him to start
spreading the word for the Hobos to come and have
their convention there. And probably the biggest reason that got
him interested in having the Hobos come to Britain was
they promised him that the Hobos could have all the
free German suns that they wanted, type of free beer.
(07:51):
So this was a really big ticket item for these Hobos.
So they all agreed to come. And then nineteen hundred
was going to be the first convention and held in
Britt and they came. Most of them came by trains.
Of course, there was all kinds of trains back in
those days, and there was notoriety all over the country.
Papers out in California, Illinois, all over the country carried
(08:13):
this first annual convention. They didn't call it an annual convention.
This Hobo Convention going to be held in britt And
then that was pretty successful. So then after that Britt
started inviting Hobos. They just started coming back every year,
and we still have an annual convention today. The hobo
community people come into britt i wouldn't classify them as
(08:35):
classic American hobos anymore, but a lot of heavy duty
rail riders still come in and we sit and we
have a meeting. In the old days, they would talk about,
of course, where jobs were in, what's going on around
the town or something. Now we pretty much talk about
our community, what we need to do in the jungle,
maybe to make it better, and if there's any issues
(08:55):
in the town, we try to resolve them. Things like that.
But we still actually have an annual Hobo convention meeting
in the city of every year. And you're listening to
Connecticut Shorty tell the story of the American Hobo. By
the way, when she says Britt, she's talking about britt Iowa.
That's where the Hobo convention is held each year. And
(09:16):
hobo's well, they want to distinguish themselves from homeless people.
This is their lifestyle. This is how they choose to live,
work and wander, Connecticut Shorty said. And indeed her father, well,
he worked and he wandered, and then he kept wandering.
But she didn't resent him for it. Clearly she's chronicling
the hobo life. And when we come back more from Connecticut,
(09:39):
Shorty of the Hobo Museum. Here on our American stories,
(10:09):
and we continue with our American stories and to Connecticut,
Shorty on the history of the American hobo. He just
told us of the long standing tradition called the Hobo
Convention that takes place each year in Britain Iowa. Let's
return to Connecticut, Shorty. Originally the Hobo Convention was run
(10:31):
by those business people that I mentioned and the early hobos.
They had some sack races and games and things they did.
But now currently it's a wonderful event. It's more of
a family event. It's the second full weekend in August
every year. That's been consistent for over thirty years that
I've been going. We have a hobo jungle there. The
(10:53):
hobo jungle is really a camp now. The old time
hobo jungle was where the hobost came to meet each
other when they got off rails and they'd gather over
by the railroad station in town and they'd be around
the town in the daytime talking to the tourists and stuff.
But then at night they'd go to their own hobo jungle.
The people really didn't go over and bother them too much.
(11:14):
Probably we're a little afraid of them, of course, But
today it's more of a family event. People come into
the hobo jungle, talk to the hobos, you know, have them,
find autographs, take pictures of them. They bring their kids
down to meet them. So it's changed over the years,
but it's still considered a hobo jungle because that's where
we all are and where our campfire is, and you
(11:36):
know where many of us are sleeping. So and then
this is one of the reasons the hobos came to
britt for so many years, and we still go to
britt We have a memorial service in the Hobo Cemetery.
The Hobo cemetery is a section of the local Evergreen
Cemetery in Britain. They've given us a area where we
can bury the hobos that have caught the westbound in
(11:58):
our community. We have a morial service where we honor
not only the hobos that are buried in the brit Cemetery,
but also the hobos that caught the westbound anywheres in
the world. Really, because some of them were actually World
War two veterans, they never came home. So and then
we have a huge parade and the highlight, of course
is the election of the King and Queen. The King
(12:20):
and Queen are elected by the public. Really there's, of
course there's a lot of Hobos there, the whole Hobo
communities included in this. They gather around this little gazebo
now that they give up to a two minute speech
on to say why they should be king or queen.
And then there's judges spread around the audience. There's six
judges and they listen to the claps and they come
(12:41):
into the head judge and tell him or her who
they think got the most claps, and that person is
the person that is elected King and Queen. They're crowned
with a blue robe and a red robe, and their
crown is a straw hat with a Folgers coffee can't
attached to the top, and that stored in the Hobo
Museum and used every year. The Hobo Museum started in
(13:04):
the late nineteen eighties a Hobo historian. His name was
George Horton. He walked into the local Chamber of Commerce.
He had two boxes of Hobo artifacts that he had
been collecting and he put him on the desk of
the Chamber of Commerce lady whose name was Willie Klein
at the time, and said, here you could have these.
You know, I don't really have any place to keep
(13:24):
this collection anymore. So that generated the idea, well, why
don't we start a hobo museum in Britt. So back
in nineteen seventy four, steam air hobo named slow Motion
Shorty had caught the westbound and he had left several
thousand dollars with a nonprofit that was called the Hobo
Foundation that was organized also by coincidence in nineteen seventy
(13:46):
four by three hoboes. So the money was just kept
in the the bank account of the nonprofit for years.
So then the city people and the hobos worked together.
They found the Chief Theater downtown britt that was empty
and they slow Motion Shorty's donation to purchase it. So
opened as a hobo museum you're talking thirty years ago
(14:07):
now somewheres around there. Since then, of course, all kinds
of artifacts have come in because what happened over the years,
especially a lot of people in britt had these hobo
collections that they'd have hobo signed things, and sometimes hobo
would give them gifts and stuff, and as they get
older and older for various reasons, they donate their stuff
to the Hobo Museum. The hobos themselves donated stuff. Artifacts
(14:30):
come in from all over the country, so it's grown
to be a world class museum now with thousands of
Hobo connected items. We have a nice collection of paintings.
There's two really neat paintings in there. Hobo Joe had
those commissioned their Hobo jungle scenes, and what's unique about them,
he had himself painted into the pictures. So in each
jungle scene you can find Hobo Joe, which is kind
(14:51):
of unique. There's a nice collection of various walking sticks.
There's a quote that was hand embroidered by hobo named
Texas Ma Man. It's made a denim and he sowed
the sayings and the various things on the patches with string.
Can you imagine had sown a quilt together with string?
I can't even imagine it. But he'd carry some patches
(15:12):
in his little pack and little by little he'd make
this and assemble it. And there's some photography crafts done
by the hobos. There's a knot collection in there. Frisco,
Jack E. Hobot, and he was a merchant marine and
he was an expert not tire. He donated a collection
of knots. It's a pretty unique place. It's the only
hobo artifacts museum in America in the whole world for
(15:33):
that matter. So it's one of the most unique museums
in anywhere is that you could find because it's a
mass quite a collection of items. I've been on the
border directors for the Hobo Museum since nineteen ninety two.
Today there's a lot of steam aair hoboes still alive,
but most of them, you know, are in their nineties
or over one hundred years old. The genuine classic steam
(15:53):
air hobo, which is the history that we're trying to
preserve in britt. We had only one steamair hobo come
to britt this year. His name is Minnesota Jim. He's
ninety four years old. There's other hoboes still alive from
that generation, but they don't necessarily come to Britt. So
what we have today coming to Britt, not cout in
Minnesota Jim, is mostly what I would call rail riders.
(16:15):
We have a lot of younger generation coming in the
riding trains from California to Minnesota and making their way
to Britain and stuff. But I wouldn't call them a
classic cobo anymore. The hobos that worked and wandered are
pretty much gone. So today we have people that still
ride trains. Some of them been riding trains since the seventies.
They're heavy duty rail riders. Still coming to the Hobo
(16:38):
Convention and coming into the Hobo Jungle where we share
a lot of stories in history. There's still a lot
of us older people wandering around that are happy to
talk about the Hobos to anybody. There's a neat little
restaurant and Britt called the Hobo House that has all
kinds of hobo memorabilia on the walls and around the restaurants.
So if people are interested in hobo history, the place
(17:01):
to come is britt, Iowa. And you can't do any
better than that. You just never know who's going to
be there, who's going to show up. Like some people,
they come back year after year. I've actually been to
thirty one consecutive Hobo conventions myself, and there's still a
handful of us. Redbird Express and my sister have been
there thirty one years consecutively many afters Jewel has been
(17:24):
there forty one consecutive years. This year she's ten years
ahead of us. So there's some really old timers there,
and the most fun is meeting your friends. A lot
of times you see people there that you haven't seen
all year. You see him once a year they show
up in brit Sometimes you'll meet a unique person and
you'll spend a lot of time talking to him or
socializing with them, and you'll never see him again. So
(17:47):
I think it's probably the interactions with the various people
that is the reason I keep going back to britt personally,
and of course my father's buried there Connecticut slim we
I think we mostly go for each other to meet
our friend ends and honor our dead. That's really the
big reason the hobo's go to our dead. When we
have our hobo service out at the cemetery, at the
(18:09):
end of the service, we all walk around and touch
all the stones with our walking sticks to show the
people that have caught the westbound honor. So that's a
tradition that we have that probably started oh forty years ago.
I just think that Brita's unique, wonderful small town in
Iowa that honors these hobo since nineteen hundred, and it's
worth a stop when anybody's passing through. And a great
(18:34):
job on the storytelling by Madison, and a special thanks
to Connecticut Shorty or sharing her passion with the American
hobo with all of us. And we all learned something
from that story. A that it is a unique thing,
the hobo. It's an American thing. Moreover, that there's a
convention where people convene to talk about hobos. And we
(18:55):
also learned that there are not many hobos left. And
indeed the hobo life is over in large part though
the heavy duty rail riders, well, they still prevail all
over this country. The people who just love hopping on
a train. By the way, The Emperor of the North,
a movie with Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin, is a
(19:15):
classic story centered around hobo life and hobo jungles. The
story of the Hobo Museum ere on our American stories.
And we returned to our American stories. And up next
you're going to hear from Connecticut Shorty, And yes, you
heard it right. That's the name she goes by. And
she also happens to be on the board of the
Hobo Museum. And you heard that right too, the Hobo Museum,
and she is here to share the stories of the
history of the American hobo. Betty Moyland is my given name.
(00:38):
My hobo name is Connecticut Shorty. Hobo names usually are
given to you by someone another hobo usually, but some
people will pick their nickname they had when they were
a kid, or a nickname somebody gave them along the way.
My hobo name, Connecticut Shorty came from an old time
steam air hobo name steam Train Marie Graham, a steam
(00:58):
air hobo hobo that road steam trains, and he gave
me my name in Logansport, Indiana, in nineteen ninety two
at a railroad festival. He decided that should be my name.
So that's my name. Prior to that, I had a
hobo name. It was Twinkletoes because I was kind of
a dancer, you know. So my sister's hobo name is
(01:19):
New York Maggie. I gave her that name because although
we were both raised in Connecticut, she raised her family
in Rochester, New York. She left when she was fairly young,
so I gave her the name New York Maggie. My
brother is very thin, so his hobo name is slimmed
him Redbird Express. He picked up his name because he
was a truck driver. You know. When he was driving
(01:40):
in the truck, they called him Redbird Express, so he
kept that as his hobo name. Connecticut Tutsie. Her father
used to give tutsie pops to the kids in his
shoemaking store, so she took the name Connecticut Tutsie and
out of her father. Slow Motion Shorty was an old
time steam yiror hobo. He had hit by a car
a couple of times walking along roads, and he moved
pretty slow. Of course, he had had a lot of injuries,
(02:02):
so the hobo's caused him slow motion Shorty. Oh, hard
rock kid. He got his name. He was a hard
rock miner out in the West. He liked to mind
those minerals and stuff, so he got the hobo name
hard rock Hid. So they come from a variety of places,
different names. They're kind of fun. A lot of people
mix up the American hobo. I say American hobo because
(02:23):
it's really only an American phenomena, this hobo person that
road trains. A lot of people mix up the hobo
with the homeless or the local people that you know,
hang around towns and begging stuff. So classically the hobo
worked and wandered, and they were homeless by choice. Some
of them had homes, they could go home if they
wanted to. You know, a lot of them had families
(02:44):
and homes or a relative would take him in, but
they didn't want that. They loved to be out for
American wandering. They didn't want to have a home. Sort
of gave him a clusterphobia or something. They had to
be outside. A classic example as my father, Now, he
married my mother in the nineteen forties, and he had
hobo before he met my mother, so he tried very
(03:06):
hard to settle down. He had three children, there's three
of us, and he did his best, but there was
a lot of problems in the marriage because he was restless.
Sometimes he'd leave and disappear for three or four days,
and then eventually the marriage ended and he left. So
we were raised by our mother, and he went back
to hobo and he worked and wandered his whole life.
(03:28):
He just wrote trains and wandered around America and worked.
So's there's all kinds of stories connected with hobo's having
to I guess you can't explain it to a person
that doesn't have it. It's it's called the wanderlust, where
you just can't stay there, you can't settle down into
a home and a normal kind of life, what we
call normal, But to hobo, a normal life was wandering
(03:51):
around and picking up odd jobs to make enough money
to keep going, just to see what's going on all
over the country. So the classic definition of a hobo
is they wandering work and work to wander because they
don't mind working, and they'll take a variety of jobs,
but they get restless after usually just a couple of
(04:12):
months tops, and they just got to get on the
road and see what's going on down the tracks basically,
so they leave the job. Short term jobs they started
pretty much after the Civil War. A lot of the veterans,
of course, didn't want to go home or they couldn't
go home, depending on the personal circumstances, and they had
been a lot of them wandering around, you know, fighting
(04:34):
of course, for five years or so. So they started
following the railroad working for the railroad and just wandering
and working. But they'd do anything. They'd paint, they'd wash
dishes and restaurants. They took all kinds of jobs just
to stay for a short term. Some of them worked
in lumber camps, like that hard rock kid, he'd work
in mines. They worked a lot of the migrant farm work.
(04:54):
But they really helped develop the country because the farmers
needed to help. It wasn't the modern generation and where
machines can do so much today. It was all manual
labor and stuff. So they were happy to have this
big work crew of people show up seasonally. Most of them,
like they pick apples in Oregon. At New York State
had apples, The hobos would go to New York State
to pick apples and cherries and stuff. So they were
(05:16):
all over the place, and they'd hold up in camps
that were called hobo jungles. This is where they'd gather
and meet each other and cook what they call hobo stew,
just pot of water and all kinds of vegetables and stuff.
And if they had meat, they throw that in, but
it filled up a lot of people. That's the reason
they cooked that, because it would fill up a whole
camp of people. They share stories, they talk about where
(05:38):
the jobs were. Some of them would play music. Now
that what he got through Hobo. He carried a guitar,
but very few people carried a guitar. Most of them
actually play the harmonica. The ones that played an instrument
because they could just slip that in a pocket or
a little bag or something, you know, because it's when
you're getting untrained. You can't be carrying all this big
stuff like guitars. And actually they never even carried walking
(06:00):
sticks on trains. They were in the way when you're
trying to, you know, jump on trains. Most of them
would get off trains when they were moving. They may
pick up a walking stick and carry it around the
town or something, you know, for things that might try
to hurt them. So historically it came down as fact
that this is what the hobos did, but they weren't
really riding trains with a walking stick. Some of that
stuff becomes folklore. Most of them carried out what we
(06:22):
would call a bendle or a bag slung over their shoulder.
It was more practical. Some of the hoboes would dry
their socks hanging them on trees and sticks and stuff.
At one time, this old timer had it came now,
so he was drying his socks on his walking stick.
The Hobos were originally meeting in the Chicago area. It
wasn't really the city of Chicago, it was a lot
of the surrounding smaller towns. Prior to nineteen hundred. About
(06:45):
eighteen ninety nine, word had come to Britt that the
Hobos were unhappy meeting in the Chicago area. Police were
hassling them in this and that, and they wanted to
go somewheres else. So these business people in Britt, Iowa,
there was or four main business people. They decided, well,
why don't we invite the Hobos to come to Britain.
This will give us national recognition as a city. It
(07:08):
was a railroad town, and you know it'll have tourists
come and spend money, and this will be a good
thing for us. So they got ahold of one of
the Hobos. He was the grandhead pipe of these Hobos
that were meeting in the Chicago area. His name was
Charles Snowey and the Grand head Pipe was the spokesperson
for the Hobos and the chief negotiator. So he came
(07:29):
to Britain eighteen ninety nine and met with these business
people and they did the negotiations for him to start
spreading the word for the Hobos to come and have
their convention there. And probably the biggest reason that got
him interested in having the Hobos come to Britain was
they promised him that the Hobos could have all the
free German suns that they wanted, type of free beer.
(07:51):
So this was a really big ticket item for these Hobos.
So they all agreed to come. And then nineteen hundred
was going to be the first convention and held in
Britt and they came. Most of them came by trains.
Of course, there was all kinds of trains back in
those days, and there was notoriety all over the country.
Papers out in California, Illinois, all over the country carried
(08:13):
this first annual convention. They didn't call it an annual convention.
This Hobo Convention going to be held in britt And
then that was pretty successful. So then after that Britt
started inviting Hobos. They just started coming back every year,
and we still have an annual convention today. The hobo
community people come into britt i wouldn't classify them as
(08:35):
classic American hobos anymore, but a lot of heavy duty
rail riders still come in and we sit and we
have a meeting. In the old days, they would talk about,
of course, where jobs were in, what's going on around
the town or something. Now we pretty much talk about
our community, what we need to do in the jungle,
maybe to make it better, and if there's any issues
(08:55):
in the town, we try to resolve them. Things like that.
But we still actually have an annual Hobo convention meeting
in the city of every year. And you're listening to
Connecticut Shorty tell the story of the American Hobo. By
the way, when she says Britt, she's talking about britt Iowa.
That's where the Hobo convention is held each year. And
(09:16):
hobo's well, they want to distinguish themselves from homeless people.
This is their lifestyle. This is how they choose to live,
work and wander, Connecticut Shorty said. And indeed her father, well,
he worked and he wandered, and then he kept wandering.
But she didn't resent him for it. Clearly she's chronicling
the hobo life. And when we come back more from Connecticut,
(09:39):
Shorty of the Hobo Museum. Here on our American stories,
(10:09):
and we continue with our American stories and to Connecticut,
Shorty on the history of the American hobo. He just
told us of the long standing tradition called the Hobo
Convention that takes place each year in Britain Iowa. Let's
return to Connecticut, Shorty. Originally the Hobo Convention was run
(10:31):
by those business people that I mentioned and the early hobos.
They had some sack races and games and things they did.
But now currently it's a wonderful event. It's more of
a family event. It's the second full weekend in August
every year. That's been consistent for over thirty years that
I've been going. We have a hobo jungle there. The
(10:53):
hobo jungle is really a camp now. The old time
hobo jungle was where the hobost came to meet each
other when they got off rails and they'd gather over
by the railroad station in town and they'd be around
the town in the daytime talking to the tourists and stuff.
But then at night they'd go to their own hobo jungle.
The people really didn't go over and bother them too much.
(11:14):
Probably we're a little afraid of them, of course, But
today it's more of a family event. People come into
the hobo jungle, talk to the hobos, you know, have them,
find autographs, take pictures of them. They bring their kids
down to meet them. So it's changed over the years,
but it's still considered a hobo jungle because that's where
we all are and where our campfire is, and you
(11:36):
know where many of us are sleeping. So and then
this is one of the reasons the hobos came to
britt for so many years, and we still go to
britt We have a memorial service in the Hobo Cemetery.
The Hobo cemetery is a section of the local Evergreen
Cemetery in Britain. They've given us a area where we
can bury the hobos that have caught the westbound in
(11:58):
our community. We have a morial service where we honor
not only the hobos that are buried in the brit Cemetery,
but also the hobos that caught the westbound anywheres in
the world. Really, because some of them were actually World
War two veterans, they never came home. So and then
we have a huge parade and the highlight, of course
is the election of the King and Queen. The King
(12:20):
and Queen are elected by the public. Really there's, of
course there's a lot of Hobos there, the whole Hobo
communities included in this. They gather around this little gazebo
now that they give up to a two minute speech
on to say why they should be king or queen.
And then there's judges spread around the audience. There's six
judges and they listen to the claps and they come
(12:41):
into the head judge and tell him or her who
they think got the most claps, and that person is
the person that is elected King and Queen. They're crowned
with a blue robe and a red robe, and their
crown is a straw hat with a Folgers coffee can't
attached to the top, and that stored in the Hobo
Museum and used every year. The Hobo Museum started in
(13:04):
the late nineteen eighties a Hobo historian. His name was
George Horton. He walked into the local Chamber of Commerce.
He had two boxes of Hobo artifacts that he had
been collecting and he put him on the desk of
the Chamber of Commerce lady whose name was Willie Klein
at the time, and said, here you could have these.
You know, I don't really have any place to keep
(13:24):
this collection anymore. So that generated the idea, well, why
don't we start a hobo museum in Britt. So back
in nineteen seventy four, steam air hobo named slow Motion
Shorty had caught the westbound and he had left several
thousand dollars with a nonprofit that was called the Hobo
Foundation that was organized also by coincidence in nineteen seventy
(13:46):
four by three hoboes. So the money was just kept
in the the bank account of the nonprofit for years.
So then the city people and the hobos worked together.
They found the Chief Theater downtown britt that was empty
and they slow Motion Shorty's donation to purchase it. So
opened as a hobo museum you're talking thirty years ago
(14:07):
now somewheres around there. Since then, of course, all kinds
of artifacts have come in because what happened over the years,
especially a lot of people in britt had these hobo
collections that they'd have hobo signed things, and sometimes hobo
would give them gifts and stuff, and as they get
older and older for various reasons, they donate their stuff
to the Hobo Museum. The hobos themselves donated stuff. Artifacts
(14:30):
come in from all over the country, so it's grown
to be a world class museum now with thousands of
Hobo connected items. We have a nice collection of paintings.
There's two really neat paintings in there. Hobo Joe had
those commissioned their Hobo jungle scenes, and what's unique about them,
he had himself painted into the pictures. So in each
jungle scene you can find Hobo Joe, which is kind
(14:51):
of unique. There's a nice collection of various walking sticks.
There's a quote that was hand embroidered by hobo named
Texas Ma Man. It's made a denim and he sowed
the sayings and the various things on the patches with string.
Can you imagine had sown a quilt together with string?
I can't even imagine it. But he'd carry some patches
(15:12):
in his little pack and little by little he'd make
this and assemble it. And there's some photography crafts done
by the hobos. There's a knot collection in there. Frisco,
Jack E. Hobot, and he was a merchant marine and
he was an expert not tire. He donated a collection
of knots. It's a pretty unique place. It's the only
hobo artifacts museum in America in the whole world for
(15:33):
that matter. So it's one of the most unique museums
in anywhere is that you could find because it's a
mass quite a collection of items. I've been on the
border directors for the Hobo Museum since nineteen ninety two.
Today there's a lot of steam aair hoboes still alive,
but most of them, you know, are in their nineties
or over one hundred years old. The genuine classic steam
(15:53):
air hobo, which is the history that we're trying to
preserve in britt. We had only one steamair hobo come
to britt this year. His name is Minnesota Jim. He's
ninety four years old. There's other hoboes still alive from
that generation, but they don't necessarily come to Britt. So
what we have today coming to Britt, not cout in
Minnesota Jim, is mostly what I would call rail riders.
(16:15):
We have a lot of younger generation coming in the
riding trains from California to Minnesota and making their way
to Britain and stuff. But I wouldn't call them a
classic cobo anymore. The hobos that worked and wandered are
pretty much gone. So today we have people that still
ride trains. Some of them been riding trains since the seventies.
They're heavy duty rail riders. Still coming to the Hobo
(16:38):
Convention and coming into the Hobo Jungle where we share
a lot of stories in history. There's still a lot
of us older people wandering around that are happy to
talk about the Hobos to anybody. There's a neat little
restaurant and Britt called the Hobo House that has all
kinds of hobo memorabilia on the walls and around the restaurants.
So if people are interested in hobo history, the place
(17:01):
to come is britt, Iowa. And you can't do any
better than that. You just never know who's going to
be there, who's going to show up. Like some people,
they come back year after year. I've actually been to
thirty one consecutive Hobo conventions myself, and there's still a
handful of us. Redbird Express and my sister have been
there thirty one years consecutively many afters Jewel has been
(17:24):
there forty one consecutive years. This year she's ten years
ahead of us. So there's some really old timers there,
and the most fun is meeting your friends. A lot
of times you see people there that you haven't seen
all year. You see him once a year they show
up in brit Sometimes you'll meet a unique person and
you'll spend a lot of time talking to him or
socializing with them, and you'll never see him again. So
(17:47):
I think it's probably the interactions with the various people
that is the reason I keep going back to britt personally,
and of course my father's buried there Connecticut slim we
I think we mostly go for each other to meet
our friend ends and honor our dead. That's really the
big reason the hobo's go to our dead. When we
have our hobo service out at the cemetery, at the
(18:09):
end of the service, we all walk around and touch
all the stones with our walking sticks to show the
people that have caught the westbound honor. So that's a
tradition that we have that probably started oh forty years ago.
I just think that Brita's unique, wonderful small town in
Iowa that honors these hobo since nineteen hundred, and it's
worth a stop when anybody's passing through. And a great
(18:34):
job on the storytelling by Madison, and a special thanks
to Connecticut Shorty or sharing her passion with the American
hobo with all of us. And we all learned something
from that story. A that it is a unique thing,
the hobo. It's an American thing. Moreover, that there's a
convention where people convene to talk about hobos. And we
(18:55):
also learned that there are not many hobos left. And
indeed the hobo life is over in large part though
the heavy duty rail riders, well, they still prevail all
over this country. The people who just love hopping on
a train. By the way, The Emperor of the North,
a movie with Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin, is a
(19:15):
classic story centered around hobo life and hobo jungles. The
story of the Hobo Museum ere on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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