The Big Rock Candy Mountain

"The first and foremost thing to understand about hoboes is that hoboes are not bums. Got that? Hoboes are not bums. Hoboes fully embrace the Protestant work ethic, bouncing from place to place, looking for short-term jobs to earn their keep, while bums and tramps want to just bum everything—money, food, or cigarettes. But free-loading tramps and hard-working hoboes have one thing in common: Both have traveled the rails, starting in the 19th century, much to the chagrin of the railroad owners."

"The Big Rock Candy Mountain" was first recorded by Harry McClintock in 1928. For me the "real" version is the one sung by Burl Ives that I linked above. It's long been a popular song for summer camps or other places that kids sing, at least it was when I was a kid. McClintock himself was a hobo -- his hobo name was Haywire Mac, according to Wikipedia. He said that he wrote the song in 1895, borrowing bits and pieces from earlier folk songs about life on the road. The Wikipedia article documents how the song was cleaned up for the 1928 recorded version, and then cleaned up some more by Burl Ives’ 1949 version, making it more appropriate as a camp song for kids.

Thinking about the song, I read a lot more about hobo life, including the quote at the head of this blog post. The source, "Don't Call Them Bums: The Unsung History of America's Hard-Working Hoboes" by Lisa Hix provides a wealth of corrections to negative stereotypes of the hobo. Hix sketches a number of colorful hobo personalities, gives amusing examples of the special language of hobo life, and offers a fantastic list of books about hobo history that I'm tempted to read some time. I was aware that the hobo lifestyle was a frontier lifestyle, at a time when labor for building railroads and for agriculture was scarce and the railroads weren’t as policed as they are now. I was aware that hobo ethics embodied a pretty clear code of conduct towards themselves and others that they followed pretty faithfully. But I didn't know this: as a young man Ernest Hemingway once rode the rails! 

A scene in a hobo “jungle,” which offered a place to eat and sleep while traveling.
You can see the cooking pot where these men might make a mulligan stew. (source)

Mulligan stew is one hobo invention that really fascinated me. In a hobo encampment, there were a lot of communal practices, including combining a number of food items that had been collectively begged or bought in town near the hobo jungle. “Each day, a hobo would be expected to search for fuel for the fire and bring something for the communal soup known as ‘mulligan stew’ or pay a quarter or half dollar into the food fund. ... Those who didn’t pitch into the stew and ate others’ scraps were called ‘jungle buzzards’ and thrown out.”

Hobo reality didn’t much resemble the hobo dreams in “The Big Rock Candy Mountain.” Who wouldn’t want to drink from the lemonade springs — or find the little springs of alcohol  that come tumbling down the rocks! Even the hobo fantasies of freedom from the police and being locked in jail seem to me to come from a more innocent era. I’m dedicating these thoughts to the bloggers who participate in Elizabeth’s weekly blog event at Altered Book Lover. 

blog post © 2020 mae sander, images as credited.