A Tradition Rides ‘the Westbound’ : Lifestyle: Changing times have ended the wandering life for many hoboes. Their annual convention in Iowa is a chance to remember the way it was.

Under a 15-foot cross far from the rest of the graves at Evergreen Cemetery, Harmonica Mike breaks the morning silence by blowing a short railroad riff. Taking his cue, El Paso Kid begins to recite a litany of names--No Thumbs Alabama Palm, K.Y., Boxcar Jan, Onion Cotton--that goes on for five minutes, each colorful moniker punctuated by a mournful harmonica wail.

These are the names of those who have caught the Westbound--hobo slang for that final ride.

With this memorial service begins the big event of the year for the people of Britt--the National Hobo Convention. Hoboes and onlookers from all over gathered this month for a two-day shindig complete with a parade, carnival, music, poetry, plenty of Mulligan stew and--the highlight--the election and coronation of the hobo king and queen.

Begun in 1896 and moved to Britt in 1900, the convention, like the hoboes themselves, goes back a long way. It was only last year, however, when Evergreen officials donated plots near the tracks, where hoboes could bury and remember their dead.

So far, four of them--Mountain Dew, Hardrock Kid, Hafey Zale and Slow Motion Shorty--lie near the giant cross made from railroad ties, their graves marked by simple stones. After many speeches, prayers and songs, the large group of solemn, albeit garishly dressed hoboes march around the graves, pointing their walking sticks at the dead.

A vocal group of locals and hoboes had opposed the ritual of pouring whiskey on Hardrock Kid’s grave, saying it set a bad example. 1990 Hobo King John (Songbird) McCue, having negotiated a compromise, was allowed to fulfill Hardrock’s dying wish only after this disclaimer:

“We are not trying to push alcohol, or teach kids that it’s OK to drink,” intones McCue, a hefty figure whose face is hidden by an expansive salt-and-pepper beard. “But this is tradition.”

The hobo lifestyle was born after the Civil War and peaked during the Depression. But it is colliding with the hard facts of the 1990s: The decline of the railroads; the gradual replacement of boxcars with containers; the top-heavy age distribution of the hobo population.

There also are new social issues, some discussed at this year’s convention: a tiff over the use of the sexist term “Hobo brotherhood” and the use of alcohol--many once hard-drinking hoboes are now teetotalers.

“It’s getting harder out there,” says McCue, a 45-year-old Vietnam veteran who has retired from the illegal--and dangerous--practice of hopping trains.

“Trains are faster. The insurance companies got everything locked up. The bulls (railroad police) are crazy, worried about their jobs,” he says.

Also, real hoboes, who have traditionally depended on day labor to feed themselves, are living in a society too crime-wary to let in vagabonds knocking at the back door offering to work for food.

So, the focus in Britt--home of the Hobo Foundation, which this year also inaugurated a hobo museum--has moved from promoting the hobo life to preserving its memory.

Like McCue, many of those camped here no longer respond to the train whistle’s call. They “ride the cushions”--buses, planes, Amtrak--or, even better, are “rubber tramps,” roaming the country in vans and RVs. They gather here to meet old friends, play music and, as one old “steamer”--someone who rode steam locomotives during the Depression--freely admits, “tell lies.”

“I don’t even (ride the rails) once in a while now. You get old, you get tired and there’s a rattle on those things that shakes you up quite a bit,” says Oklahoma Slim, 77.

Still, when a train pulls up alongside the convention’s “hobo jungle,” hanging onto one of the grain cars is proof that life on the rails is far from extinct.

“What’s today? Friday?” asks a soot-blackened but exhilarated Bear Grease. He, along with another hobo named Cardboard (all hoboes christen themselves with rail names) has just jumped off the train. “Oh, I think I left about a week ago.”

Bear Grease, in his 40s, is one of the younger, diesel-era hoboes. He regularly sets out from his tiny pig farm in Bremerton, Wash., to roam the country picking apples and working the shipyards.

“You’re free,” he says of his rambling. “You don’t think about no phone bills. You don’t think about no nothing. You wake up in the morning and the sun is shining and you’re not sure which direction you’re going, but you don’t care. That feeling doesn’t come around very often.”

At the senior end of the active vagabonds are people like Road Hog, the “Crown Prince of Hoboes,” as he is dubbed in a fireside ceremony the first day of the convention. A salty Sean Connery look-alike, Road Hog began riding trains in the ‘50s. He learned the craft from the steamers.

“I’m being a jocker now,” he says, dropping his Rs in gravelly New Englandese. “That means teachers. The older ‘boes that have experience on the rails teach the younger ‘boes how they can make it, how they can earn some money.”

While the real hobo hops the train to follow harvests, most of the fresh blood here comes in the form of recreational (or, less charitably, yuppie) hoboes. They take off a weekend or two from their regular jobs to indulge in rail-riding adventure.

“I’ve been interested in railroads all my life,” says Tehachapi Bob, Harmonica Mike’s nephew and a weekend hobo who works as a Hollywood motion-picture lighting technician. “Just last year, the bug bit me.” Like many others of this new breed, Tehachapi Bob (a.k.a. Robert Cuozzo) says his main concern is to “keep the hobo tradition alive.”

Gypsy Moon, the 1990 hobo queen and daughter of a hobo, says this means preserving the past. She’s been collecting oral histories for years and has traveled the country lecturing to schools, civic groups and newspapers.

“I think I’ve made some contribution toward helping people understand the difference between a hobo and a bum,” she says, taking her place on the lead float in the convention parade. “A hobo was a worker. A bum wasn’t. It’s that simple.”

The convention was brought to Britt as a public relations ploy to put Britt on the map, but townspeople have come to adopt the hoboes as their own. This is an irony in a stable farming community (pop. 2,134) where people grow up, get married and grow old.

For the 17,000 or so townspeople and tourists who descend on Britt--about 150 miles north of Des Moines--the convention and the museum offer a chance to touch history.

“It’s fascinating to just talk to these people and listen to them talk to each other,” says Lynn Van Dyke, a 28-year-old actuary for a Chicago insurance company.

After some speeches and an auction of hobo crafts, the electioneering begins. The female candidates address the crowd from the park gazebo. Slo-Freight Ben stresses seniority and her feat of bicycling the parade route the last two years, while a younger candidate, Minneapolis Jewel, who’s logged 5,000 miles on the tracks, positions herself as the ideal female role model.

“A lot of women dream about the wanderlust that men get to do,” she tells the crowd.

Of the men, Gas Can Paddy, the flamboyant Ohio Ned and the youthful Inkman, are marked as favorites.

When the ballots are tabulated--that is, the audience’s applause for each candidate is haphazardly gauged--the coffee-can crown is laid on the heads of an emotional Ohio Ned and Minneapolis Jewel.

Back in the jungle, the new king and queen bask in regal glory, while musicians get out their instruments and tourists and locals scour the crowd, getting the hoboes’ pictures and autographs before they disperse. Upstaging even the spectacular fireworks show on the convention’s final night is the performance of the “Hobo Shuffle.” Like an upbeat version of the convention’s opening funereal march, the hoboes dance around the fire, waving their sticks to the beat of a rollicking blues tune.

“This is close to ending,” reflects Oklahoma Slim, as the convention wound down. “Us old steamers, we’re going to be gone in, oh, we ain’t got much longer. We just got time to sit around, brag and lie a little bit. But, the wanderlust is in everybody’s soul.

“You may have it corralled like a lion,” he says, “but something might trigger it off someday and man, you’re gone.”