IOWA: Bad Days for the Bo

Britt, Iowa, hung its bunting out again last week; the hoboes were coming to town. They cannonballed from east & west, bedded down in the town park, the jungle under the railroad water tank, in freight cars. Scholarly Roger Payne, 72, and plump Polly Pep were exceptions. Payne slept in the school doorway; Polly, the only woman delegate to the bindle stiffs’ first postwar convention, picked a haystack.

In a business sense, there was little doing at the high powwow. The hoboes were glad to be back in Britt (pop.: 2,000), where they had met off & on since 1900. The “big spuds” (city officials) welcomed them because they lured some 10,000 curious North Iowa visitors to town. In gratitude, the boes ladled enough Mulligan stew from billycans to feed the crowd. They chewed the guff about life on the road and the state of the union. All agreed that times were tough. There were so many jobs to be had, it took an iron will to remain a hobo.

When the time came to elect a king, the boes looked to their professional ethics. A hobo cannot be a tramp or a bum. He must not beg or steal or ignore soap & water. Now & then he must work a while. His peers elected Bo Sigurd (“Skeets”) Simmons, 56, of Detroit, who hitchhiked from New York in seven days, spent $10 for food en route. Ben (“The Coast Kid”) Benson, twotime king of the jungles, ran a poor fifth. There were strong hints that Ben was a “greaseball” and never took a bath. Said one hobo: “He’s just a bum.”