Super-Tramp

The Internet is off again _this is becoming a bothersome routine. This time I have also forgotten my USB on my desk at UCL so I am handwriting this. I said before and I said now: like it better than typing with a laptop. This I wrote last night, once I finished picking up my clothes from the washing machine down in the kitchen to the upper room. For a moment, the house is dead quite, in kind of a mortal, sonorous silence all around. Don't like that a bit now; however, I stop for a second and take it.

I am reading through these days W. H. Davies' The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp. Do you remember when I told here the way I learn of the difference amongst hobos, tramps and bumps? Well, Davies was a tramp, a super-tramp, in the sense that he did not avoid working from time to time or when needed. He has already arrived into America and is roaming about with Brum and a third bump called Australian Red. All beggars had picturesque names: Detroit Fatty, Saginaw Kid, Chicago Slim. The winter time is come and the three tramps look purposely for the most renamed of jails in the State of Michigan to spend thirty days, warmed and cozy, at the tax payers' expense:

"The Marshall produced the three cakes of tobacco, seeming to be well prepared for these demands, and giving us a paper dollar, requested us to go to Donovan's saloon, which we would find in the main street, where he would see us later in the day; 'when, of course', he added, winking, 'you will supposed to be just a bit merry'. (...) About an hour and a half had elapsed when we discovered ourselves to be alone in the bar, and without means of procuring more liquor. 'We had better going', said Brum, and we passed into the street. Brum saw the Marshall coming up the road and began singing in a lusty voice, to the astonishment of some of the storekeepers. Australian Red, being the worst for drink, and forgetting that we had only to feign this part, began to roar like a bull, merry in earnest. On this the Marshall quickly crossed the street and in the hearing of several citizens, shouted in an authoritative voice -'I arrest you for being drunk and disorderly', and we followed him like lambs" (W.H. Davies, Amberley, edition 2010).

I once met and held certain acquaintance, if not friendship, with a mighty tramp for a handful of years. He was a wretched and fractured soul, with difficult redemption on Earth. The shelter where he used to return whenever he ran out of money was not cozy nor friendly at all; the welcome hallo was a plastic biker and an urinary and that repulsive stink of tobacco and bleach combined. Next to the church, where the homeless where taken every morning before making it for work, was a landscape of unshaven faces underneath lank, long hairs, tired looks and bony limbs attached to cigarettes, all-season jeans and T-shirts... . Wherever you might be, God Bless You, N.Mc. Long time no see; not since I took off, with no looking back, from my own run-away.