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MR: Could you tell me the story about the hobo?

MB: All right. On 27th and the railroad track was a manufacturing plant. They made pianos. It was the Champion Piano Company. And near the Champion Company, the railroad used to pile up their ties that they need for their tracks, and the ditches on each side of the track was very deep, and the ties would be piled over this hole, and it made a dandy place for the hobos to sleep. And Orga and I used to play around the manufacturing plant quite a bit, and we'd walk, we'd used to walk the rails, and we began to see these hobos there. And they'd ask us to go to the store for them, and we'd go to the store for them, and some of them paid us a few cents, most of them did not, but that was all right with us. Then we met this one hobo who was neater than all the others. He always wore clean clothes, and he asked Orga and I if we would go to the store for him. He wanted us to get him a loaf of Underwood's deviled ham and a loaf of bread, and then he gave us a dime for running the errand for him, and Orga and I were real happy. We skipped on home and showed Mama the dime the hobo gave us. She wasn't happy for us. She scolded us. We weren't ever to take anything from anybody. "You go right back and give that hobo the money back," and so we went and gave him the money back. And about two weeks later, he asked us to go to the store again. This time he wanted two cans of deviled ham, one regular size can that like he wanted, and a small, a can, a small one. Small one cost eleven cents, and the bigger one I don't know what it cost. And when we got back he said, "This is for you to take it home to your mother," so we took it home, and my mother let us keep it. That one small can of Underwood's deviled ham, smaller than any of the cans you see here, was enough to spread four slices of bread, so we had, each of us kids had a deviled ham sandwich for lunch, and then our other sandwich would be usually peanut butter. Back then, the peanut, back then, the peanut butter we had was better, a lot better flavored than the peanut butter we have now. The only thing is it stuck in your mouth, and, so you know, you had to chew and chew to get it down. And most of the kids at school never brought peanut butter sandwiches because they said that was poor man's food, but we didn't care. We liked that peanut butter, and we ate our peanut butter sandwiches.

Well, this hobo, most of the hobos were just there one night, one or two nights, and they were gone. This hobo was there a long time. And since our farm where we raised our peas was adjoining the manufacturing company, Mama did see this hobo, this man, and she told him, she watched him, and all he picked was some wild greens. He had a gallon can that he put over a fire, and he cooked in it, and he picked the wild greens and put in it, and so Mama told him to help himself to peas, but he never did. Anyway, the Champion Manufacturing Company had toilets. They had six toilets, outside toilets. They were flush toilets. They were in a long building that, you know, people had to use, and then there was water faucets outside where you could wash your hands and things like that, and so the hobo used the toilets and the water, and we kids did too. And that man was around for a long time, and he told us different stories. He said that he'd been, where he'd been. He'd been on the road a long time and where he'd been, and he said he, as long as he'd been on the road, I guess, he'd been on the road about four years at that time, and he had never gone, seen the ocean. See, what he did was follow the railroad tracks, and the railroad tracks don't go to the ocean, so he had never been, that was his one regret never having gone to the railroad tracks. After about two months, he was gone. We missed him, but he was gone. And then it was another four years, and we got a letter from a lady up in Idaho, I think it was called Weld, Idaho. She said her father who had been a hobo talked about two little girls. And she said that after he died and maybe about a year after he died, they were going through his things, and she came across this book where he had written about us kids, and his visits, you know, through the country, and she wanted to thank us for having been good to her father. And I wrote a letter back, but my sister who was supposed to mail it for me never mailed it, I don't think, because I never got another letter. And then it was another two years or so she came looking for us. She found us, you know. Her father, when that first letter that she had sent, she had written 28th and Columbia Boulevard. She didn't know our name or she didn't know our address, and he had written, oh, he had found out what our last name was, so he had written that and 28th and Columbia Boulevard, and we had gotten the letter, and I guess in the same way, she found us. And I talked to her for a little while, but my sister chased her away. My sister said, "No. They probably want something." She said, "You can't stay," so she chased her away. So I never got to talk to her, but I hope she understands that I would have liked to talk to her, and that's the story of the hobo.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.