Distinctly Montana Magazine

DISTINCTLY MONTANA MAGAZINE • WINTER 2022-23 38 "Hobo jungles" developed in Lew- istown, Helena, Bill- ings, and countless other Montana towns. These were small camps where hobos would rest, tell stories, or have a drink while waiting for the next train. Often, someone would be cooking a meal for the assembled hobos—"slumgul- lion stew" or "mulligan stew," dishes that had no recipes and were always different. Someone would almost certainly be singing a song, perhaps the aforementioned "Big Rock Candy Mountain," made famous as a pop song by Burl Ives, but derived from an older and stranger song by the busker Harry McClintock. Ives's version, besides omitting cigarette trees and whiskey ponds, pointedly excludes the final line of McClintock's version, sung in the 1890s: "I've hiked and hiked till my feet are sore, I'll be god damned if I hike any more/ To be buggered sore like a hobo's whore on the Big Rock Candy Mountains." When Burl Ives sings it, his voice recalling mid-century Christmas albums, it sounds like a children's song, but from a lyric like that, we might conclude that there were those for whom the hobo's life had, at some point, turned sour. Take an- other representative example from Woody Guthrie: "I Ain't Got No Home in This World Anymore." As the centrality of the train to American life waned, the hobo began to disappear. You could still see them in the 1950s, maybe even the 1960s. And today, of course, there are still those who will catch out and head west. They might be bohemians, free travelers, adventurers, vagrants, homeless, unhoused individu- als, or urban nomads, but hobos are few and far between. Funny how things go—as soon as they start to disappear, they get canonized. Consider how many little boys of the 1930s-1960s wanted to be hobos. Look at those ghastly paintings of sad clown hobos—in fact, think of how much of the American version of the clown derives from the figure of the hobo. Witness Freddie the Freeloader, the bindle-clutching character Red Skelton played in hobo-drag on TV, who would do things like get arrested for sleep- ing in the library and have to be represented by his lawyer, Perry Masonjar. The hobo was something between a joke and a dream, now that they were gone. Well, not entirely gone. The National Hobo Convention is held every year in Britt, Iowa. Hundreds still catch the rails to get there, and every year a king and queen of the hobos are elected. Slumgullion stew is cooked and eaten, and stories ex- changed. Tonight, in Montana, someone is waiting, sipping a beer. Maybe at Hap's in Helena, or at any of the bars abutting any of the trainyards in our state. He or she is sitting and waiting for their train to come in so they can catch out. When the bar closes, they'll have to move to the yard and try to find a dark corner to hide in until the train arrives. When it does, they better hope there's an open freight car, or, if they're really lucky, an unsecured engine car at the back of the train. Those have chairs, and fridges full of water, after all. But some- one checks them every few hours, so you've got to be ready to move and maybe even disembark on the run. It's a dangerous way to travel, but it's a hell of a ride. PANZRAM WAS ARRESTED IN BUTTE, MILES CITY, AND HELENA BEFORE EVENTUALLY COMMITTING AT LEAST 22 MURDERS.

• Cover