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The Hobo King: Leon Ray Livingston, Chapter One · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always for
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: tuning in. Now picture this If you have chanced to
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: cross this podcast and you are looking for a sign
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: about whether or not you should listen, Imagine in your
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: head a circle with an arrow pointing to the right.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: That arrow and that circle together mean go this way
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: and something called hobo code. Uh will make sense of
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: this all later. I hope Hi. My name is Ben. Hi,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: my name's Noel Squeaky Chair Brown. That's my hobo name,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: and I also have a squeaky chair. I've been listening
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: back to the episodes occasionally and noticing the dulcet tones
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: of my squeaky chair. I think it's time for a
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: replacement there. But yeah, it's true, Ben, A hobo code
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  Speaker 1: is something we've delved into in the past in our
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  Speaker 1: other life as as conspiracy realists on stuff they don't
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: want you to know. In fact, the very first live
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  Speaker 1: tour we ever did um was a live episode on
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  Speaker 1: that very subject. It was sort of a grab bag episode,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: but hobo code was one of them. And in fact,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I promised myself and my daughter that I was gonna
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  Speaker 1: get a tattoo of this one hobo code that's like
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  Speaker 1: a I with like some kind of lines around it,
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  Speaker 1: like almost like an a frame, and it means safe harbor.
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  Speaker 1: I never did that thing, and my daughter won't stop
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  Speaker 1: ragging me about it. Um, But it's true. Ben hobo code,
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  Speaker 1: it's a thing. It is a secret language, which is
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  Speaker 1: why we covered it and stuff they don't want you
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  Speaker 1: to know. But today we're talking about the man, uh,
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  Speaker 1: the myth, the legend, the hobo King himself, super producer
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegram. That's right, that's right. Oh no, no, no,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: you're talking about Leon Ray Livingstead. I am Casey Pegram.
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  Speaker 1: Is is his own kind of hobo king. Um. But
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  Speaker 1: the original hobo King, maybe not the original, but the
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  Speaker 1: self proclaimed hobo King a k a. A. Number one
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  Speaker 1: born in eighteen seventy two, died in nineteen forty four.
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  Speaker 1: Was what you'd call a bit of a rambling man.
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  Speaker 1: I know you hear about that in songs a lot.
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  Speaker 1: I was born a rambling man, and all that. The
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  Speaker 1: idea of making a living, doing the best you can,
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  Speaker 1: going from place to place. It's not that this is
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  Speaker 1: necessarily being homeless or being in any way some kind
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  Speaker 1: of derelict or some kind of you know, no good nick. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: The the edge of the hobo back in those early
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  Speaker 1: days was almost one of reverence. Uh. It was this
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  Speaker 1: idea of someone who kind of made their own way
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  Speaker 1: in the world and was able to just go where
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  Speaker 1: they wanted to and do what they wanted to and
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  Speaker 1: live this really freewheeling kind of lifestyle. And you think
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: about the image of the hobo from cartoons and books
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  Speaker 1: and things like you know, the Grapes of Wrath. A
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  Speaker 1: lot of this revolved around migrant labor, work that would
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  Speaker 1: be seasonal perhaps, or work that would be um, you know,
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  Speaker 1: a particular project like building a bridge or um you know, uh,
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  Speaker 1: harvesting a crop and then you move on to the
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  Speaker 1: next job. Livingstone, however, wasn't really didn't really fit that
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  Speaker 1: image of the merry tramp with his bendle and his
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  Speaker 1: you know, his toe sticking out of his shoe, roasting
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  Speaker 1: his can of beans over the open fire. He was
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  Speaker 1: actually a pretty well dressed man. He owned a fancy
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  Speaker 1: suit and kind of passed for a like a middle
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  Speaker 1: class leave an upper class gent right, let's bust some
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: myths or I would like to at least bust some
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  Speaker 1: base about the word hobo. So if you if you
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  Speaker 1: hear the word hobo nowadays in the West, you're going
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  Speaker 1: to associate it with the stick and bendle with maybe
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  Speaker 1: a lovable tramp hat, uh, some something like the chimney
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  Speaker 1: sweep and Mary Poppins plush of freight train writer. However,
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  Speaker 1: the word hobo or the concept of uh hobury, I
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  Speaker 1: don't know. I'm church if I'm words here. The concept
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  Speaker 1: there comes from the idea of migrant workers who had
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  Speaker 1: to travel like vagabonds from one work site to the next.
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  Speaker 1: There is am I would say there's a discrepancy in
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  Speaker 1: some of the research here because you'll hear the the
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  Speaker 1: da the life of a migrant worker somehow romanticized. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: This was very much not the case. The rise of
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  Speaker 1: the hobo is a very old story. So in post
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  Speaker 1: Civil War America, hobo's were seen as somehow a bit
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: of metonymy for the US at large. They were seen
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  Speaker 1: as avatars of this rugged identity, this pioneer lifestyle. Everything
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  Speaker 1: west of the Mississippi right you light out for the territories,
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  Speaker 1: as Mark Twain said, you're taking on odd jobs. You're
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  Speaker 1: chasing that dream somewhere on the horizon. But during the
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  Speaker 1: Great Depression, many people who would not just uh hop
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  Speaker 1: on a train and work odd jobs for fun were
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  Speaker 1: forced to because the economy crashed, and so the idea
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  Speaker 1: of being a hobo was at that time replaced. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: the romantic ideal was replaced by a clear picture of
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  Speaker 1: a nation in crisis. And we're getting some of this
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  Speaker 1: from a great Mental Floss article that has a contemporaneous
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  Speaker 1: quote about the hobo lifestyle. It says, the hobo lifestyle
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  Speaker 1: is one that requires skill, adaptability, and both a sense
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  Speaker 1: of place and lack of identification with a specific home.
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  Speaker 1: It's not a lifestyle everyone can follow. But no, maybe
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  Speaker 1: we can. Maybe we can explore a little bit more
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  Speaker 1: about the relationship between the railroads, the Civil War, and
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  Speaker 1: what we call hobo's. Absolutely, they really are kind of
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  Speaker 1: two sides of the same coin. I don't know if
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  Speaker 1: that fully applies here, but I'm working with what I got.
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  Speaker 1: It's a little earlier than we usually record. Um, it's
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  Speaker 1: true because as the railroads continued to kind of spread
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  Speaker 1: throughout the country, uh forty five thousand miles before eighteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy one to around two hundred thousand miles by nineteen hundred. UM,
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  Speaker 1: it became pretty easy for folks to you know, hit
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  Speaker 1: your ride. Something we see today. Ben, you always talk
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  Speaker 1: about your fascination with the train hopping lifestyle and like
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  Speaker 1: train kids songs and you know you're here in Atlanta,
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  Speaker 1: um and little five Points. That's a place where a
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  Speaker 1: lot of these these folks kind of gather and hang out.
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  Speaker 1: And that's a lifestyle choice largely as well, we have
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  Speaker 1: to remember that these individuals weren't necessarily destitute. They were deciding, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not going to have a stable home situation in
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  Speaker 1: favor of this kind of freewheeling, you know, by the
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  Speaker 1: seat of our pants kind of lifestyle. So it very
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  Speaker 1: much was something that people were doing very consciously for
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  Speaker 1: the most part. Um And so the interesting I was wondering,
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  Speaker 1: I was trying to look up like hobo seems like
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  Speaker 1: a portmanteau of some sort, like a combination of two
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  Speaker 1: sounds that are from two different words, but it's not
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  Speaker 1: really not. Nothing that I can find indicates that it's
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  Speaker 1: just sort of a word that came around to describe
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  Speaker 1: this type of person. Uh And there is a female
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  Speaker 1: equivalent called a boet, which is which seems a little
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  Speaker 1: diminutive and kind of sexists, sort of like a mini hobo.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, that's what the the Internet Dictionary of Hobo
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  Speaker 1: Slang has to say about it. But this is something
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  Speaker 1: that really began to kind of take hold in popular
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  Speaker 1: culture in the nineteenth and early twenty centuries, um, because
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  Speaker 1: this really was kind of you know, people who considered
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  Speaker 1: themselves kind of work a day, you know, Joe's and
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  Speaker 1: and and Jane's. There was something to kind of envy
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  Speaker 1: in this lifestyle, the ability to not be tied down
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  Speaker 1: and to be able to go where where you wanted to.
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  Speaker 1: And folks like Jack London and W. H. Davies were
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  Speaker 1: actually you know, followed along with a lot of these
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  Speaker 1: types and wrote books, uh kind of you know, romanticizing
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  Speaker 1: this whole lifestyle. And even the character of Charlie Chaplin,
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  Speaker 1: his most famous character, the Little Tramp, which was just
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  Speaker 1: that a little tramp wearing that kind of hobo garb um.
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  Speaker 1: That became his absolutely most popular and recognizable character. Um,
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  Speaker 1: probably one of the most recognizable characters in all of
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  Speaker 1: cinema in the twentieth century. There are three people who
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  Speaker 1: could pull off that mustache. Uh, there's Michael Jordan's, there's
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  Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin, and then of course there's Hitler, who shows
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  Speaker 1: up inevitably in any history show. It's true. I would
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  Speaker 1: say out of the three, Charlie Chaplin is the best
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: person to wear what's called a toothbrush mustache. His best film,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: by the way, is The Great Dictator. I recommend people
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: watch his very rare speaking role. It's a fantastic monologue.
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  Speaker 1: It's almost like a precursor to mel Brooks, you know,
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  Speaker 1: and its satire like. It's really really great. I will
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  Speaker 1: add a one more name to the toothbrush mustache pull
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: off club. That's a weird sounding thing. Um the keyboard
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: player for the band Sparks. If you're not familiar, he
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  Speaker 1: has rocked that mustache since the seventies. Uh, probably despite
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  Speaker 1: multiple style in stelling. I mean maybe I ought to
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  Speaker 1: go in a different direction. I want to be very
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  Speaker 1: clear about The Great Dictator. Uh by Charlie Chaplin. Now,
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  Speaker 1: as any fans of Charlie Chaplin, no, uh, he was
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  Speaker 1: you know, the tramp character, and often he was doing
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  Speaker 1: silent film. However, in these times especially, I recommend everybody.
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  Speaker 1: Check out the final speech from the great Dictator. I
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  Speaker 1: would say it is prescient. I would say it's well
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  Speaker 1: written and it should frighten you. Uh, this is this
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  Speaker 1: is a tangent and let me not get too political here.
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  Speaker 1: But as he said, no, Charlie Chaplin dubbed himself the
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  Speaker 1: little tramp. He never dubbed himself King of the Hobos.
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  Speaker 1: And that's something that Leon Ray Livingston actually did. We
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  Speaker 1: have to be careful with the phrase hobo king again,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: not to be confused with Hoboken, New Jersey, because Leon
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  Speaker 1: Ray Livingston was not core, he didn't have a coronation,
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  Speaker 1: he was not set like the other the other itinerant
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  Speaker 1: workers in the population did not say Leon Ray Livingston
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  Speaker 1: in his forty dollar suit, he's our emperor. No. It
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  Speaker 1: turns out that Livingston dubbed himself King of the Hobos.
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  Speaker 1: Mr Livingston, I presume no, that's a different Livingston. I
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  Speaker 1: presume yeah. He was born to a pretty well off
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  Speaker 1: family in San Francisco on August in the year of
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  Speaker 1: Somebody's Lord seventy two. His dad was French, his mom
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  Speaker 1: was German, and he claims that he was able to
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  Speaker 1: speak both German, and French fluently at a very early
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  Speaker 1: age by grade school. Uh, and that he also learned Spanish,
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  Speaker 1: so he was like he was a very worldly gent. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And we we know most of what we know about
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  Speaker 1: Livingston from this book that he wrote, which is actually
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  Speaker 1: in the public domain. I listened to a little bit
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  Speaker 1: of an audiobook version of it for this episode. You
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: can find it on YouTube. It's like six hours long.
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  Speaker 1: You can hear the whole thing. And this book in particular,
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  Speaker 1: I think he wrote a few is called The Tale
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  Speaker 1: of the Tramp by Leon Ray Livingston, and um, it's
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: there's a couple of different parts. It's actually I'm sorry,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: it's not six hours four hours, but you can find
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  Speaker 1: that all on one part on YouTube for free right now.
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  Speaker 1: Highly recommend giving that a listen. Yeah, it's interesting because
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: just like his self Coronation, self proclamation, all of what
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  Speaker 1: we know of of Eingston, or probably the majority of it,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: is based on the books that he wrote. So he's
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  Speaker 1: at best a biased source, and he's kind of he's
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  Speaker 1: got some braggadoc show. He's he's sort of building his
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  Speaker 1: own mythology, which is a very American and very cool
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  Speaker 1: thing to do. I'm sticking up for him a little
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: bit because like Casey, like Nolan, like yours. Truly Livingston
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  Speaker 1: has an August birthday. Uh it's weird, no, because he
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  Speaker 1: says he was born in San Francisco, and he actually
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  Speaker 1: was not born into penury. He was born well to
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  Speaker 1: do and at age eleven, acting out raging against the machine, uh,
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  Speaker 1: pulling his whole pink Floyd the wall kind of uh
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  Speaker 1: scenario led him to a life on the road. The
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  Speaker 1: story goes that the day after his eleventh birthday, so
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  Speaker 1: the twenty August, his teacher sent him home with a
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  Speaker 1: note said, this kid is behaving poorly and your father,
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  Speaker 1: young Livingston, has to sign this note. You have to
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  Speaker 1: return it to me. So eleven year old Leon Ray
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  Speaker 1: Livingston one did not show his father that note. And then,
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  Speaker 1: according to his book, this was in a philosophy of tramping.
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  Speaker 1: He spotted his teacher heading towards his house. The next morning,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: he snuck out of the house and then he just
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  Speaker 1: kept going. That's his origin story. That is an extreme
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: reaction to a bad note home from school. I have
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  Speaker 1: to say, I remember running away from home. I'm doing
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: quote fingers here. When I was a kid. I made
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: it as far as put putt golf, which was maybe
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: a mile from the house, and just was like playing
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: video games and and realized, like, I'm out of money now,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: I should probably just go back home. Uh but no, no,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: our boy Livingston went the full mile. Uh, well, the
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: the figurative mile. I went a full mile and then
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: a full mile back home. Um. But yeah, it's your
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: quick question, Ben. Side note, did you ever get a
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: bad note at home from teacher or like something along
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: those lines and you tried to bury it? You tried
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: to like, you know, keep it from your parents with
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the like the misguided notion that they weren't just gonna
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: like call I'm a revolutionary at heart. So any behavioral
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: disagreements I had with an authority figure I one double
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: down on and was fairly assertive about voicing with my parents.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: So I see no use in hiding uh that kind
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: of stuff. But you know, it's a very terrifying situation
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: for a lot of us when we're young. Right here
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: in the US, a lot of kids are graded on
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: a one to one hundred scale for objective measure of success,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: but especially in early grades, a lot of kids were
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: graded on let me ask you guys this, Uh did
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: you ever get the uh satisfactory not satisfactory ratings for
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: behavior as a child? Casey smirking, you get it. You
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: know we had like s S plus you It was
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: like a thing hanging up on the wall. This is
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: like first grade or maybe even kindergarten, and like it
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: was it was kind of like soccer rules, like if
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: you you know, one one violation, they like pull the
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: first card out and like as you go, like you
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: would get down to that U card, which would be
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: kind of like the yellow card or the red card whatever,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: and and and that that would be it. Like you
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: would be dreading the rest of the day because you
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: know you're gonna go home with it, and uh, there
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: would be a price to pay, Casey on the case. Uh,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: and our boy Livingston definitely paid that price. So he
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: was a you uh probably a U plus or you
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: minus whatever you want to whichever direction you want to
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: go with that, which means the worst. Um and he
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: decided he'd had it with school, so he packed up
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: twenty two caliber rifle and uh a little bit of
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: cash while he could stuff in his pocket some that
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: he had stolen from his mom. Um for shame uh
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: and uh and some that he had gotten as a
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: birthday present from an uncle. Um. He boarded a steamboat
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: uh in San Francisco Harbor um and made it to Sacramento,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: where he apparently booked the most expensive hotel in the city.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: He was unaware of this, so he burned through that
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: cash that he had very very quickly during this four
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: nights stay. Um he had like twenty bucks I think.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: And then there's an interesting, uh, little little tidbit of
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: currency exchange here, Ben that I was look confused when
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I first read, but you kind of set me straight. Well,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: it's okay, I'm gonna be honest. I think the guy
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: is at best embellishing, at worst lying. Maybe he's got
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: a bit of barnum to him, and fans of the
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: circus you'll understand the reference there. Uh. So he says
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: he stayed at the most expensive hotel in Sacramento and
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: it costs him twenty dollars for four nights. That's a
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: lot of money back then. But then he talks about
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: how he left a one d franc note with a
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: bank cashier uh, and he he essentially ran out of
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: the bank because the teller we can only presume said, hey,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: you're eleven, what are you doing with one franc? And Uh.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: The weird thing about this is that I don't know.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: It doesn't match up. Far be it for me to
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: be a hater. But at this time, it's safe to
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: say most eleven year olds did not have twenty U
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: s dollars, much less one hundred French dollars or equivalent thereof.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: And so he says that he still had a rifle,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: and he still had a couple of bucks U s dollars,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: we assume, and because he had lost one d frunc
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: with the bank hash here he was at his wits end,
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  Speaker 1: at his young wits end. So he walked to a
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  Speaker 1: spot along railway, a spot where the train would stop
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: for water, and at the train he gave his rifle
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: to a to an employee of the train of Brakeman,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: specifically in exchange for the ability to stow away on
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: a ride to truck Ee. No no, uh truck e
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: t r U c k e E. That's not a
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: big metropolis, is it. Yeah? I do think I think
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: it's still around. It kind of makes me think of
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: places like Barstow or like Modesto, not to malign any
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: of these places. But there's sort of a little more.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: You think of California in terms of its metro areas
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: in terms of like, you know, a lot of affluence
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: and hustling, hustle, but there's a ton of very small,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: kind of more dusty, kind of one horse towns all
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: over California. Listeners from California, let us know, have you
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: been to truck Ee. We did look it up. It
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: does still exist. It looks kind of charming. Actually, it's
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: sort of like a little old timey downtown area. Probably
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: hasn't changed much since the the time of this story.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: But he actually didn't make it to truck It. He
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: got put off by uh under a brakeman. I guess
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: which is the guy that like breaks the train, um
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: and win a Muca win Amucca. Gosh, we're gonna get
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: emails about this one. I'm gonna go with winn Amucca.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Uh Nevada. That's in the desert. So he got put again.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: You're right, then we gotta keep taking grains of salt
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: with this stuff, because like the whole idea of and
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: then I was ejected from the train in the middle
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: of the deserts and I had to fed with nothing
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: but my pocket knife, and I traded my rifle, and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: I had to you know, red so giants scorpions with
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: my bare hands. That's not in here. But you know, well,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: let's just double down on on dude's fantabulism. UM. So,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: around four fifty miles from San Francisco is where he
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: was let out here. Uh So he decided that he
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: wanted to kind of hone his survival chops even further. So,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: you know, he didn't have the best luck in this
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: first run. He realized he was, you know, he was caught,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: and he needed to do a better job of hiding
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: himself and kind of learning some of the rules of
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: the road or the rails as it were. Um. But
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: he liked it. He got a taste for it, and
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: he decided that he this is the life for him.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: He was going to start in earnest a career, I
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: guess as as a hobo. UM. And that's when he
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: really just went ham on on, hopping the rails and
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: writing all over creation, taking these itinerant jobs that we
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: talked about, UM, crossing the country right as the industrial
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: rev alution was really taking hold. UM again, a lot
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: of his braggadocia would come out and in his writings,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and he uh did boast that he traveled five hundred
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: thousand miles on trains while only spending a little over
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: seven bucks on fairs. Five hundred thousand. I don't know
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: about that. What do he come on? That's wow? Yeah, yeah,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: that's the thing. His experience was not the average experience
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: you know of many itinerant workers, many migrants. But you're right, Noll,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: he spent decades on the road, that part is true.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: He also took to writing about his uh, writing fanciful
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: stories about his time on the road, and he eventually
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: published about Baker's dozen books concerning his travels. The most
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: through one, I guess the compendium is a book called
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Life and Adventures of a Number One, America's most celebrated tramp.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: This was published in nineteen ten. At that point, he
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: had been on the road for almost thirty years, and
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: it includes a lot of early tales of his hobo origin.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: And if this were an album, one of the breakout
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: tracks of Life and Adventures of a Number One is
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: this story about him working on a British trade ship
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: that left New Orleans for Belize. Uh. And the idea
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: here is that he took the job, but then he
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: eventually jumped ship and began working at a mahogany camp,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: meaning a camp that was set up to harvest maha.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: A Guinny would also going back to what we said
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: in the beginning of this episode, A number one is
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: his hobo name, and it plays a big part in
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: our ability to prove that at least some of his travels,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: In fact, many of his travels actually happens. So the
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: guy is not just sitting at home in San Francisco
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: writing some sort of fan fiction about an alternate version
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: of himself. He really is on the road, and some
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: of his details actually makes sense, even if they are fabulous,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: as you said, even if they are a bit embellished.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: But believe Central America, that's pretty crazy, right to get
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: to there in the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: A man after your own heart, Ben, I mean, you
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: had some kind of tramp like days in Central America
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: yourself or South America. You tell some great stories about
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: about those years in your life that that I don't know.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: It seems like you've got a kindred spirit here in
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Mr Livingstone, No comment, no comment, Okay, fair enough, And
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: this period in Livingstone's life really made for some fantastic tales.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: His time in the British Mahogany camp. Um, he even
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: you know, was able to kind of report on some
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: of the conditions in these camps, which, as we can imagine,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: you know, if you know anything about this time in um,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: the history of of labor, uh not good, not a
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: lot of oversight. Uh, And he was able to kind
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: of report on some of that. He apparently multiple times
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: attempted to desert his employers and uh and kind of
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: extort them, uh for the money that would get him home. Um.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Talked about things like eating roasted baboon and uh a
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: sort of maybe a drama to over aramatized version of
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: malaria that he referred to as the black swamp fever. Uh.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Never heard that used anywhere outside of this this gentleman's writing. UM.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: And you know again it was all this kind of
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: really you know, cartoony, romanticized, really flowery writing, very self aggrandizing.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Who knew that a guy that dubbed himself the Hobo
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: King and a number one would potentially have an overinflated
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: sense of uh self? But it makes for some really
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: entertaining writing. And this is some of the stuff he
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: wrote about some of the really tragic socio economic conditions
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: of life in this Mahogany camp um, making references to
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: the food that he was forced to eat as well. Quote.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: I became acquainted with roasted baboons, fried parrots, turtle at
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: armadillos Stew's uh tap here steak tape tap taper t
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: a p I R. I don't know that tap here cool.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Should have just quite while I was had iguan uh
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: an enormous and ugly tree lizard. He says, monkey, soup, etcetera.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: And he describes one particularly let's say, treacherous journey that
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: he took up river. He says, we embarked in dugouts, canoes, right, men, women, children, dogs,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: household effects, provisions, etcetera. He's fond of this, etcetera. And
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: paddled up the Rio Hondo. After several hours, passing through
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: mangrove swamps, we came to higher ground and then we
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: only could use poles as the river became crooked, shallow
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: and full of rapids. Alligators and enormous turtles slid from
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: the banks as we approached them, and at night, when
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: we camped on the river bank around the fires, we
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: could hear the cries of panthers, mountain lions, wildcats, monkeys,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: and coyotes in the dark jungle. Good stuff. So the
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: problem with that passage, I think what you read starts
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: with we embarked in dugouts and ends at coyotes in
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the dark. Goal. So that whole thing is is one quote. Uh.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: The problem with that quote is that it I'm not
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: going to say plagiarizes, but it echoes on earlier account
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: made by a guy him Trade or Horn about a
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: river trip in Gabon, in the Agoe River or on
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: the Agoe River. So we don't know how true it is.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: We we know that he went to Belize, probably, but
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: we don't know if he actually ate monkey soup or
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: if he's quoting another book that he read. According to
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: the story. While he's in this Mahogany camp, he gets
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: his first letter from home, which means that he is
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: still somehow in contact with his family and his kinfolk
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: as they say in the South in San Francisco, and
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: his parents are giving him the equivalent of a five
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: star rating or casey to your point, they're giving him
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: an s plus for his disappearances. Uh, they say, we
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: are so delighted to hear from you. We thought you
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: were dead, but you're super cool. Good job, kiddo. And then,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: according to his story, he writes back to them and
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: he says, yeah, I'm having adventures. I ate monkey soup.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: I would have been sailing around Central America and rivers
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: and the ocean and such. Also, I need a little
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: bit of scratch to make my way home, even though
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: I'm having the time of my life. And he writes
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: these incredibly uh evocative descriptions. He details his day to
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: day life to his parents, where he says, I'm eating
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: all kinds of new fruit. Have you heard of java?
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: What about breadfruit? Etcetera. Look at these butterflies I saw.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: The birds are awesome. People have treated me like the best.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: It's amazing here. All my coworkers are cool. And I
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: made myself popular by making everybody else fat. That's basically
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: what he says. And Uh, I also gave people a
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: deal at the company's store. And so now I've got
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: all these souvenirs. Mom, dad says a number one. I'm
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: having an amazing time. Also, give me money so I
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: can go home. You see the discrepancy there, You see
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: how the story doesn't quite add up if you're having
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: that much of a good time, I one hundred thousand
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: million percent do. And I gotta say I can't even
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: fault him for it, because the stuff really is pretty
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: fun to read. And I could see this absolutely catching
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: the American kind of zeitgeist by storm. Um. And there's
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: so much more are left to tell about this guy,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Ben to the point where we didn't really know this
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: going in, you know how we roll. But we have
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: decided to cut this into two parter um, and we
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: we teach some stuff at the top of the show
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: about hobo code and about you know, the stuff that
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: we had researched into that with stuff they don't want
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: you to know, um, And and we're gonna kind of
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: leave you without following through on that, but we promised
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: that we will in the next episode, and I think
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: you're going to really enjoy it in the meantime. Huge
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: thanks to super producer Casey Pegram Alex Williams, who composed
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: our theme. Christopher hasciotis here in spirit. Yes, that's right.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: This is the first part of a two part series.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: We are leaving Livingstone in Belize, which I'm gonna start
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: using as a catchphrase for different things. So leaving Livingstone
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: in Belize, learn more about his further adventures, learn why
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: he is called a number one, and learn how he
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: coordinated himself as the quote unquote hobo King. Big thanks
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: as always to our main man or magnetic North of Research,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Gay Bluesia, who still refuses to tell us how to
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: pronounce his last name. I respect that, and big big
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: thanks to Eaves Jeffcoat, our peer podcaster. Big thanks to
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: the trains, which are imperfect but play a huge role
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: in the development of these United States. I mainly run
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: on time. Um, who else? Anybody else? Thanks to Jonathan Strickland.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Where's that guy? I hope he's okay. He seems so
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: lonely last time. UM, we got you, Jonathan. We will
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: we We did change up the zoom code, but we
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: will send you those new digits very soon. Uh, and
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: hope for you to to zoom bomb us in the
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: very near future. I look forward to it, honestly, because frankly,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: I'm feeling a little isolated to we're back to lockdown
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: here in Atlanta. Um, so a little bit of healthy,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: mischievous ribbing from the old quister himself would probably do
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: us all good. We'll see you next topix. For more
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.