Tramping on Life Part 36

I said no to them, that they must not take up a collection for me ... I did not really feel that way, at heart, but I liked better seeming proud and independent, American and self-reliant....

Later on, at the very dock, I acceded ... but now I was punished for my hypocrisy. The boys were so eager to be home again, they only threw together about five dollars for me ... when, if I hadn't been foolish, I might have had enough to loaf with, say a month, at San Francisco, and do a lot of reading in the Library, and in books of poetry that I might have picked up at second-hand book stores....

However, I gathered together, before I went ash.o.r.e, two suits of khaki and two army blankets, and a pair of good army shoes that afterwards seemed never to wear out.

And a young chap named Simmons, who had been sergeant, had joined the army by running away from home, took me to an obscure hotel as his valet ... he wanted to "put on dog," as the Indians say.

He had parents of wealth, back in Des Moines.

I served him as his valet for the two weeks he stayed at the hotel. He had been shot through the left foot so that a tendon was severed, and he had to walk with a cane, with a foot that flopped at every step.

He gave me fifteen dollars for wages. After he had departed I rented a cheap room for a week.

Standing in front of a store on Kearney Street, one afternoon, dressed in my suit of soldier's khaki, looking at the display in the window, I got the cue that shaped my subsequent adventures in California....

"Poor lad," I heard one girl say to another, standing close by, "he looks so sick and thin, I'm sorry for him."

They did not notice that my soldier's uniform had cloth b.u.t.tons. Simmons had made me put cloth b.u.t.tons on, at the hotel,--had furnished them to me--

"I don't want you going about the other way ... you're such a nut, you might get into trouble."

Mule-drivers and others in subsidiary service were allowed khaki with cloth b.u.t.tons only ... at that time ... I don't know how it goes now.

The girls' taking me for a sick, discharged soldier made me think. I would travel in that guise.

With a second-hand Shakespeare, in one volume, of wretched print, with a much-abused school-copy of Caesar, in the Latin (of whose idiomatic Latin I have never tired), an extra suit of khaki, a razor, tooth-brush, and tooth-powder--and a cake of soap--all wrapped up in my army blankets, I set forth on my peregrinations as blanket-stiff or "bindle-b.u.m."

Where I saw I could escape without awkward questioning, I played the convalescent ex-soldier ... I thrived. My shadow-thinness almost turned to fatness. It would have, had there been any disposition toward obesity in me....

At times I was ashamed of doing nothing ... queer spurts of American economic conscience....

Once I worked, plowing ... to drive the horses as far as a tall tree for shade, at the end of the third day, sneak back to the house ... and out to the highway with my bundle and my belongings, kicking up my heels ecstatically, glad to be freed from work.

I plumped down in a fence corner and did not stir till I had read a whole play of Shakespeare, and a s.n.a.t.c.h of my Caesar.

Once or twice, sheriffs who were bent on arresting me because I had no visible means of support, let me go, because it awed them to find a tramp reading Shakespeare....

"It's a shame, a clever lad like you bein' a b.u.m!"

Tramps, though anti-social in the larger aspects of society (as, for that matter, all special cla.s.ses are, from millionaires down--or up), are more than usually companionable among themselves. I never lived and moved with a better-hearted group of people.

By "jungle" camp-fires--("the jungles," any tramp rendezvous located just outside the city limits, to be beyond police jurisdiction), in jails, on freights ... I found a feeling of sincere companionship ... a companionship that without ostentation and as a matter of course, shared the last cent the last meal ... when every cent _was_ the last cent, every meal the _last_ meal ... the rest depending on luck and Providence....

Tramps often travel in pairs. I picked up a "buddy" ... a short, thick-set man of young middle age, of Scandinavian descent ... so blond that his eyebrows were white in contrast with his face, which was ruddy with work in the sun. He, like me, was a "gaycat" or tramp who is not above occasional work (as the word meant then--now it means a cheap, no-account grafter). He had recently been working picking oranges ...

previous to that, he had been employed in a Washington lumber camp.

Together we drifted along the seacoast south to San Diego ... then back again to Santa Barbara ... for no reason but just to drift. Then we sauntered over to San Bernardino--"San Berdu," as the tramps call it....

It struck chilly, one night. So chilly that we went into the freightyard to put up in an empty box-car till the sun of next day rose to warm the world.

We found a car. There were many other men already there, which was good; the animal heat of their bodies made the interior warmer.

The interior of the car sounded like a Scotch bagpipe a-drone ... what with snoring, breaking of wind in various ways, groaning, and muttering thickly in dreams ... the air was sickeningly thick and fetid. But to open a side door meant to let in the cold.

Softly my buddy and I drew off our shoes, putting them under our heads to serve as pillows, and also to keep them from being stolen. (Often a tramp comes along with a deft enough touch to untie a man's shoes from his feet without waking him. I've heard of its being done.) We wrapped our feet in newspapers, then. Our coats we removed, to wrap them about us ... one keeps warmer that way than by just wearing the coat....

The door on each side crashed back!

"Here's another nest full of 'em!"

"Come on out, boys!"

"What's the matter?" I queried.

"'stoo cold out here. We have a nice, warm calaboose waitin' fer ye!"

Grunting and grumbling, we dropped to the cinders, one after the other.

A posse of deputies and citizens, had, for some dark reason, rounded us up.

One or two made a break for it, and escaped, followed by a random shot.

After that, no one else cared to be chased after by a bullet.

They conducted us to what they had termed "the calaboose," a big, ramshackle, one-roomed barn-like structure. Piled in so thick that we almost had to stand up, there were so many of us--we were held there till next morning.

But we were served, then, a good breakfast, at the town's expense. The owner of the restaurant was a queer little, grey-faced, stringy fellow.

He fed us all the buckwheat cakes and sausages we could hold, and won every hobo's heart, by giving all the coffee we could drink ... we held our cups with our hands about them, grateful for the warmth.

"Say, you're all right, mister!" ventured a tramp to the proprietor, as he walked by.

"Bet your G.o.d-d.a.m.ned life I'm all right!... because I ain't nothin' but a b.u.m myself ... yes, an' I'm not ashamed of it, neither ... before I struck this burg an' started this "ham-and" and made it pay, I was on the road same es all o' you!"

"Kin I have more pancakes, boss, an' another cup of coffee?"