Grandma, Hoboes, Handouts, and Rhubarb Pie

Photo by Hayford Peirce

Back, a little closer to the mid point of the 20th century, late 60's to be a little more precise, I had my first brush with an individual that lived a life so removed from mine, and the people i knew, that the only means to know this man, for me, was through conjecture and imagination. So conject and imagine i did.

This encounter occurred while I was visiting my Grandma, who lived in a small house less than a quarter mile from the railroad tracks and a mile or so from the train yards. I had not yet completed my first decade of life, but was getting close to that milestone. At Grandma's house that day there were six of my cousins, all of the younger than me by varying degrees. One girl, a year younger than me, and five boys, the youngest at the time being three. Theses other kids belonged to two of my dad's sisters.

To more fully develop the scene, or maybe to indulge a grandson who is now a granddad himself, let me illustrate the nature and character of Grandma. She was widowed a year before i was born, lived alone in this small house on a corner lot in the south end of St. Joseph, MO. She may have lived alone, but she seldom was, having seven daughter and 3 sons. My father, the second oldest child and the middle boy, had married and moved out while the family still lived in the Black Snake Hills south of town. Her offspring had reached the age that they could take care of each other, and the farm chores. Her husband was off driving a tractor trailer to support the family. Many, if not most, would have accepted the circumstances as a well deserved reprieve from the grind of scratching out a living in those hills. Instead Grandma, being of hill stock who took to heart sayings like, "idle hands are the devil's workshop", set out to gain employment.

She had the distinction of being the first woman to work on the line in the meat packing house, which was the backbone of the local economy in those days. There were women in the offices working as secretaries and such, but none on the meat processing lines. Grandma had accomplished this feat by showing up for work before seven in the morning ready to work every workday for nearly a month. Upon her arrival the management would send her away with rejections and phrases that, I surmise, included; man's job, no place for a woman, and other gender based reasons. Knowing Grandma, I'm sure all of these comments were countered politely with past stock butchering experiences on the farm, and an affirmation that she would be back to see if they needed help and would give her a trial.

The distance between the small farm in the Black Snake Hills and the packing house was close to ten miles. Grandma never drove or owned a car in her life. To arrive at the packing house by seven Grandma would get up before dawn, pack her lunch, and walk out of the hills down to the flats, across the tracks, through the stockyards, to the meat packing house. I don't have, and can't fully grasp, the resolve, conviction, and determination it must have taken to make that journey every morning, knowing that what awaited at the packing house was rejection, dismissal, and the walk back, up, into the hills. I'm sure it was that indomitable spirit and resolve that finally won over whoever made the decision to give a woman a chance to work on the line at the packing house.

One might assume the woman with such a deeply ingrained work ethic would have no sympathy or charitable inclinations for the able bodied man, in his late twenties or early thirties, that knocked on her back porch door asking if she might have a scrap of food or some morsel she might spare. Not Grandma, despite the work ethic she held to her entire life, and had instilled into each of her children without exception, she was one of the last people to judge or cast aspersions. She invited the stranger in for a set down meal. No doubt she would have put him at the kitchen table had it not already been filled elbow to elbow with her grandchildren.

I had spent much of the morning watching and helping Grandma make 3 big rhubarb pies. What had occupied my mind all morning was what rhubarb pie taste like. I had never eaten rhubarb pie before. I looked a lot like red celery to me. I had washed the rhubarb stalks in the kitchen sink for Grandma and all the while couldn't imagine this, vegetable looking, plant being used to make a pie. With the appearance of the road worn stranger all those curiosities had been replaced.

Grandma had shown him to the bath room and said there's a bar of soap on the sink and a hand towel on the rack if he'd like to wash up before lunch. I may have stared a little too long, but I found this stranger, that had unexpectedly appeared just before our noontime meal, exceedingly interesting. From his bundle, rapped with a rope and stowed against the wall on the screened in back porch, to his sun darkened skin. He had deep crows feet, from smiling i assumed, since he seemed to have a permanent smile as though his face was incapable of anything but a happy expression. His clothes were worn with patches and new holes waiting to be patched. I wondered where those cracked leather, thin soled, work boots had come from and where they were going. I saw far off deserts, mountains, and forests and envied those boots for the adventures they had seen.

As Grandma dished up the chicken and noodles, made from a bird she had boiled on top the stove while we had worked on the rhubarb pies, my mind spun with questions I wanted to ask the wavy haired man. I kept my mouth shut. I had been told to, "mind my business" enough times to know you didn't greet new people with questions and interrogations. Some of my younger cousins couldn't resist blurting out questions, unsure of the stranger in our midst, directed at Grandma.

From various positions around the table came, "Grandma, Who is that man?" Why is he here?" "How come he's eating lunch with us?"

Grandma said, "This is Hank. He's eating lunch for the same reason you are, cause people get hungry. Now 'mind your business' and eat your lunch."

Hank just quietly and smiled through the indirect questioning and only said, "Thank you, ma'am" as Grandma sat a plate with 2 big slices of breaded, fried, eggplant and 3 slices of bread with butter down next to his chicken and noodles. Hank finished all the food Grandma had set before him. I followed suit.

One piece of rhubarb pie was all I could handle. It had an intense tart taste. Hank ate two big pieces. Hank thanked Grandma heartily. Grandma just said "You be careful out there young man." Smiling he nodded his head. Then she handed him a paper bag. Hank said "No thank you ma'am, you've done more than enough."

Grandma said, "Nonsense, now take this."

Hank smiled and took the bag repeating "Thank you."

Hank hoisted his bundle on his back using a loop of the rope as a shoulder strap and headed out the back door the way he had come in.

I got up and walked to the front porch and watched as Hank headed west toward the tracks with a steady brisk gate.

I have always been an avid reader, at that young age I had read many books about explorers and had dream of adventures in far off places. I thought that my explorations could only be achieved by organizing a well funded major expedition, like Louis and Clark or Jacques Cousteau. My eyes had been opened that sunny spring day. I now knew that a pair of boots, a short length of rope, a bed roll and the kindness of strangers was all that was needed to venture off into the unknown.

Grandma had more than her share of strangers looking for handouts in the following years. I had overheard my dad and uncle talking that they thought the house was marked but couldn't find where or how. I have since come to realize that, although it was common practice for hobos to mark homes where a good meal could be had, one of the reason for Grandma's popularity was the fact that here house looked like a Grandma's house and that is was on a corner lot with easy access to the back door.

It didn't take long for the hungry road traveler to realize that people are more receptive at the back door. Bill collectors, politicians, and sales men knock on the front door. An unexpected knock at the front door means people begin to prepare themselves with reasons why they can't and don't want to be bothered. On the way to the door they begin to wonder what this unexpected intruder is going to try to get out of them. A knock at the back door is usually a friend or family member that is met with more open generosity. The kitchen is almost always at the back of the house.

In today's culture there are fewer people knocking on doors looking for "handouts". You are too likely to get the police called on you. Modern media has the populace expecting a thief or worse behind the face of any stranger that would dare ask for something at your door. Today the modern road dawg "flys a sign" alongside a busy intersection or they "brusk" (entertain and pass the hat), among other methods, to get money for their next meal or other traveling expenses.

"It began to look as if I should be compelled to go to the very poor for my food. The very poor constitute the last sure recourse of the hungry tramp. The very poor can always be depended upon. They never turn away the hungry. Time and again, all over the United States, have I been refused food by the big house on the hill; and always have I received food from the little shack down by the creek or marsh, with its broken windows stuffed with rags and its tired-faced mother broken with labor. Oh, you charity-mongers! Go to the poor and learn, for the poor alone are the charitable. They neither give nor withhold from their excess. They have no excess They give, and they withhold never, from what they need for themselves, and very often from what they cruelly need for themselves. A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog."

Jack London 'The Road'

Check out Jack London's 'The Road' for a good ebook on riding the rails and tramping in the early days of the twentieth century.