Tim's "Service" Station
The Webmaster's Corner of the Mount Horeb Area Historical Society Web Site

Left - Sante Fe Jack and Bugs. Sante Fe handles the sales for many of the hobo musicians and poets.
Bugs prefers the hopping a freight to hitchhiking. She travels the road with a canine companion. Photo taken at the Britt, Iowa Hobo Convention.

Click Here for Santa Fe's Website

Bindle Stiff
by Robert W. Service

When I was a brash and gallant-gay
Just 50 years ago,
I hit the ties and beat my way
From Maine to Mexico;
For Though a Glasgow gutter bred
A hobo heart had I,
And followed where adventure led,
Beneath the brazen sky.

As I tramped the railway track
I owned a single shirt;
Like canny Scot I bought it black
So's not to show the dirt;
A handkerchief held all my gear,
My razor and my comb;
I was a feckless lad I fear,
With all the world for home.

Yet oh I thought the life was grand
And loved my liberty!
Romance was my bed-fellow and
The stars my company.
And I would think, each diamond dawn,
"How I have forged my fate!
Where are the Gorbals and the Tron
And where the Gallowgate?"

Oh daft was I to wander Wild, And seed the Trouble Trail,
As weakly as a wayward child,
And darkly doomed to fail . . .
Aye bindle-stiff I hit the track
Just fifty years ago . . .
Yet now . . . I drive my Cadillac
From Maine to Mexico.

From Rhymes of a Lyrics of a Low Brow, published 1951