The hobo

“The hobo lives in a Disneyland, Pete-the-Tramp land, where everything is human lions, tin men, moondogs with rubber teeth, orange-and-purple paths, emerald castles in the distance looming. . . . The hobo has two watches you can’t buy in Tiffany’s, on one wrist the sun, on the other wrist the moon, both bands are made of sky.”

—Jack Kerouac, The Vanishing American Hobo, from Lonesome Traveler, 1960.

the Black Hobo

“What about the Black Hobo? Moonshiner? Chicken snatcher? Remus? The black hobo in the South is the last of the Brueghel bums, children pay tribute and stand in awe making no comment. You see him coming out of the piney barren with an old unspeakable sack. Is he carrying coons? Is he carrying Br’er Rabbit? Nobody knows what he’s carrying.”

—Jack Kerouac, The Vanishing American Hobo, from Lonesome Traveler, 1960.

A River Runs Through It: Naked Lunch

ringed by the rainbow

“Suddenly a green-rose rainbow appears right on your ridge with steamy clouds all around and an orange sun turmoiling . . .

What is a rainbow,
Lord?—a hoop
For the lowly

. . . and you go out and suddenly your shadow is ringed by the rainbow as you walk on the hilltop, a lovely-haloed mystery making you want to pray.—”

—Jack Kerouac, Alone on a Mountaintop, from Lonesome Traveler, 1960.

Harry Smith cortometraggio 7

Pull My Daisy

The Mother Road

“Known as The Mother Road, the nostalgic journey from Chicago to L.A. takes one back to the good old days.” A Christmas postcard from Tricia Tommerdahl.

I Say A Little Prayer

Face the Music

Unaffordable Home Design

“Clearly you need new furniture. To select exactly what you want, you need to have some Creative Decorating Ideas, which you get by purchasing about $65 worth of glossy magazines with names like Unaffordable Home Design. Inside these magazines will be exquisite color photographs of the most wondrously perfect, profoundly clean rooms anybody has ever seen, rooms where even the air molecules are arranged in attractive patterns. How, you ask yourself, can rooms look like this? Where are the hand smudges? Where is the dark spot on the carpet where the dog threw up the unidentified reptile? And how come there are never any people in these photographs?
    The answer is: These rooms are only four inches high. The magazines have them built by skilled craftsmen solely for the purpose of making your home look, by comparison, like a Roach Motel. In fact, occasionally a magazine will slip up, and you’ll see through the window of what is allegedly a rich person’s living room, what appears to be a 675-pound thumb.”
   
—Dave Barry, Subhumanize Your Living Room, from Dave Barry’s Greatest HIts, 1988.