From a piece titled "Always moving: A transient way of life," which includes a great set of photo portraits. The "traveling" referred to in the quote is the sort I would associate with the old-fashioned word "hobo."
Here's the link to the photographer's website. His name is Michael Joseph.
ADDED: Jack Kerouac, "On the Road: The Original Scroll":
We lay on our backs looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when he made life so sad and disinclined. We made vague plans to meet in Frisco. My moments in Denver were coming to an end. I could feel it when I walked her home in the holy Denver night and on the way back stretched out on the grass of an old church with a bunch of hoboes and their talk made me want to get back on that road. Every now and then one would get up and hit a passerby for a dime. They talked of harvests moving North. It was warm and soft. I wanted to go and get Ruth again and tell her a lot more things, and really make love to her this time, and calm her fears about men. Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk---real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious. I heard the Denver & Rio Grande locomotive howling off to the mountains. I wanted to pursue my star further.
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20 comments:
Like a rolling stone with nothing left to lose. And with nothing to give to a wife and children....how very romantic and very narcissistic
"I had no friends until I started traveling. No one understood me. I was always bored with everything everybody else wanted to do. I didn't want to go shopping. I wanted to go out into the woods and hike, and nobody understood that." - David Sweat
I wonder how many times the "valedictorian" has been raped ?
There are those who have made it a matter of principle not to give a rip about Mad Men, which is fine, but for those who are willing to take a minimal risk and watch one single episode, this blog commenter humbly recommends "The Hobo Code" (1:8, 2007).
It's available for streaming for free, somewhere on the internet, probably.
The photos romanticize a sad group of lost and broken people.
I first heard of the word "traveler" being assigned to the gypsies who took on other people's identities. "The Riches" with Eddie Izzard as the head of a family in a TV series back in 2008 made the life into an art form.
Apparently some travelers are more crafty than hobos.
Michael K said...
I wonder how many times the "valedictorian" has been raped ?
6/30/15, 8:27 AM
If she doesn't mind it, is it really rape? Assuming you are correct, perhaps it seems normal to her, for strangers to make use of her body. If so, who are we to judge?
@m stone - The Riches tells the story of two American descendants of Irish Travellers, who are considered a distinct ethnic/social group, predominantly found in Ireland but also throughout the UK and US. They are itinerants who have a fairly bad reputation for all sorts of devious behaviour, but the term is not limited to those who take on others' identities. They're a protected class in Ireland, although their status is quite controversial amongst the "settled" folk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Travellers
Did you know that Kerouac once owned a home in Denver? Summer of 1949. Lakewood. You and Meade should drive by and take a look. It's still there.
The photo of the one guy with the missing arm demonstrates the downside of hopping aboard moving trains. If he ever gets shot by the cops, it will be legitimate to say that the cops shot an unarmed man........I don't think facial tattoos are the way to go if you depend on hitch hiking for transport. The author should do a follow up story on people who stop to give psycho loners a lift. Some kind of subliminal death wish or, perhaps, they themselves are serial killers.
"...Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together..."
Makes me thing of the first couplet from this Hold Steady song.
I am Laslo.
@Laslo
Thanks. I didn't know that song. I had that passage from "On the Road" highlighted in my Kindle and I was searching the word "hobo" and it jumped out at me again. I think I've blogged that passage before.
The couplet in the song is: "There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right/Boys and girls in America, they have such a sad time together."
"Sal Paradise" is Jack Kerouac (his name for himself in "On the Road") so there is no question that's a deliberate quotation, not plagiarism or a coincidence.
Here's the earlier post with a shorter clip of the same post.
There is a distinct difference between these travelers and the ones m stone mentioned.
As noted by one of the travelers, most of these youngsters suffer from depression. Noting one being a valedictorian is representative. These are people who suffered something in their youth. They are troubled.
Like homeless or even ex-cons who spent many years in prison, the world outside of the one they live in now can be quite uncomfortable, hence the draw to remain a traveler. It becomes the easy way out.
Oh gosh, Jack Kerouac, what a sad man. Literally and figuratively sad. I went through a period where I read all his books within the space of a few weeks. What a depressing experience. They had the same effect on me as Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (discussed in a recent thread). All I could see was the desperation and sorrow of Kerouac and his pals. They struck me as lost and doomed and utterly clueless. You could just see in Kerouac's writing how they were going down a bad road without knowing it and you wanted to shake them and tell them to stop and somehow save them. Yet other people loved them and found the descriptions of their lives as rendered by Kerouac uplifting and life-affirming. They found the the Beats to be free-spirited. At the time I was friends with Tom Waits (sorry for the name-drop, but true) and he was just getting started in his career and we used to have long talks about Kerouac and the Beats. Tom idolized the Beats and tried his level best to become a Beat hobo troubadour even though he was a middle class college educated kid from San Diego. I thought this strange of him--couldn't he see how sad they were?--and he thought I was missing the point, and the poetry, of the Beats. After we parted ways I heard he went through some hard times with alcohol and all that but finally wised up and straightened himself out. I wonder if he still admires the Beats?
There's something very final about a face tattoo. Very sad.
I hitch-hiked around Mexico. So there.
Thanks again Bob Boyd. I love the commenters here.
@Roughcoat
I'm a generation younger than Kerouac, but I do recall enjoying "On the Road" in my late teens. Probably, I read more into it, than I gleaned from it. My romanticized notion of driving my '71 Dodge Charger up and down the California freeways, dreaming of stuff, seemed poignant and innocent at the time. It was healthy, but temporary. I certainly wasn't dropping out of life, work, society or rebelling against anything.
I do remember a college-age road trip to Arizona, where our car broke down, and I hitchhiked back to LA in the camper of a nice Mexican family. That was exciting, but I guess people aren't supposed to do that now. One thing's for sure -- nobody is writing books about it!
The photos make me sad - because the people in the photos, if history is any guide, are lost and rudderless. Why this is romanticized is beyond me.
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