Fans Make Tracks to a Rail Hobo Happening

There hasn’t been a train come within spitting distance of Beverly Hills in quite a spell, but that doesn’t stop the hobos from gathering.

The second Tuesday of every month at Chrystie’s Bar & Grill, those who have heard the call of rails--and the people who love them--gather to swap stories, plan new escapades and hang out. While all the boots, denim and bandannas present can pass as rugged urban chic, last Tuesday’s giveaway that this was not Beverly Hills as usual were the apples being sold for a prewar 5 cents.

“We’re celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Great Depression,” says Garth Bishop (rail handle, Captain Cook), president of the National Hobo Assn., an organization dedicated to promoting and preserving the culture of America’s rail-traveling vagabonds.

True, the market crashed in October, 1929, making this year the 63rd anniversary, but Bishop, using some admittedly arbitrary hobo calculations, figures it took three years for the crunch to sink in. In addition to the apples, dollar cans of “Hobo Soup” were on sale.

Although hobos date back to the Civil War--some believe the word originated as a shorthand for a homeward bound soldier --it wasn’t until the hard-up ‘30s that these freewheeling migrant workers became a fixture on the American scene.

Thus, Bishop believes, they have a lot to teach us about survival during the current economic malaise.

“They know a lot about thrift and working with their hands,” he says. “If people today had more of these hobo skills, they’d be a lot better off.”

This message of austerity took place under the same roof as a more glittering celebration, the 50th birthday party of Melvin Franklin, an original Temptation and a Crystie’s regular.

This evening, sharing space with the hobos and the watering hole’s regular clientele of after-work Beverly Hills professionals and a smattering of music industry types, was a group of dressed-to-the-nines heavy hitters including Berry Gordy.

But who says hobos can’t be Beverly Hills types. Many of the hobos here, Bishop included, were never more than recreational, so-called yuppie hobos.

A few genuine carhoppers, however, do show up at Chrystie’s. Depression-era hobos, called Steamers, are getting rarer than a buffalo nickel.

Most of the genuine articles at Chrystie’s, like Uncle Freddie (real name, Fred Liberator--really), are Bridgers, meaning they rode the rails in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, bridging the gap between the steam trains and diesel era.

It is they, as well as the dwindling number of full-time contemporary hobos, who carry the bulk of hobo knowledge and folklore.

“I was driving cars, washing dishes, breaking horses, harvesting wheat--whatever I needed to do,” Uncle Freddie reminisces. “I’d hit a town and I’d go right to work.”

The most eager recipients of all this lore were Cali Clarke, Courtney Hauschild and Heidi Simmons, three 14-year-old girls from Corona, who’d come as part of a high school history project.

Dressed in period paper-hawker costumes, they helped sell the soup and apples while learning about hobo life.

Name: Hobo Night at Chrystie’s Bar & Grill.

Where: 8442 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. (213) 655-8113.

When: Second Tuesday of every month beginning at 7 p.m.

Drink prices: Hobo night prices are $2 for domestic beer, $2.50 for imported. Well drinks start at $3.50.