My grandfather was a butcher in a small Iowa town with a big train station. This was long before he started working for the Gummy Bear factory and started bringing us 5lb bags of gummy stuff at holidays. Anyway, back in the days when hobos rode the rails, sometimes one would come around the butcher shop to see if my grandpa had any scraps of meat. My grandpa is one of the most accepting and friendly people I know, and would of course give them what he had and chat a little. He told me that there was a celebration every year to crown a Hobo King, and the time it was held in this small Iowa town, he gave them meat for their hobo stew. I can just imagine my grandpa taking a break behind the meat locker, smoking a cigarette in the humid Iowa heat and passing a bottle back and forth with a man who smelled like railroad and all of America at once. I can hear their voices, the crickets, and the liquor sloshing in the bottle. Maybe they stepped into the locker to cool off among the monolith-like hunks of meat that hung from the ceiling. I remember them from when I was very little.
I don't know how to justify or explain writing a blog entry about this, it was just on my mind. I feel sad I missed out on this time. Rail riders and barnstormers.... Slow dancing.... I'm nostalgic for an older generation's past.
Hell, I feel sad that soon the phrase "mixed tape" will be obsolete.
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