Wherein I discover a hidden talent and acquire a new name.
“And now the challenger: Tennessee Tex Tornado!”
You might be surprised to find out that I was that challenger. No, I wasn’t from Tennessee, I wasn’t from Texas, and I’m not sure how someone could be from both. Was I a tornado? That was just flair. But in boxing a flurry of punches is a very good thing. Especially if it’s on the Hobo Boxing Circuit.
But let me back up and start from where I last left off. After I ascertained that my clone was not evil (or not evil enough to fuck things up), I finally decided to go on my summer adventure. I didn’t really have set plans, and I didn’t really have a lot of money, so I had to find what I could. I packed a backpack with a dog-eared copy of On The Road, a jar of peanut butter, a roll of toilet paper, and I set off to ride the rails.
Riding the rails has fallen out of fashion in recent years. There are safety concerns, like the emergence of serial killers and the like. Some would mention that trains are much more secure these days with the advent of terrorism and the general rise of criminal mischief, so sneaking onto them would be difficult. To these I would say it’s all a bunch of bullshit. There’s no homier place than a boxcar full of displaced transients sharing stories and cans of beans. Also, nothing quite smells like it either.
But wait, you might ask, how did you get from just riding the rails to the Hobo Boxing Circuit? Well, it is a funny story. But first, to dispel myths. You might think it is insensitive of me to bring up the homeless for purposes of humor, as if somehow satire is okay in the face of great social injustice. In addition, you might think me a terrible person for using the word “Hobo”. To this I refer you to the words of Swearing Jim, one of my great mentors on the rails: “I don’t want none of them straights calling us ‘Hobo’ anymore. It’s our word now, and we’re taking it back.” So you see, I’m just doing them the authenticity they deserve. Also, none of those Hobo bitches are going to be reading this website from their cardboard boxes, so I can call them what I want.
Now another thing said is that the homeless are just poor souls that were turned out of mental institutions during the ‘80s, tragic victims of Reaganomics. While it is true that schizophrenia runs rampant in their ranks, oftentimes this just makes them jolly. Some of the funniest people I ever met were homeless schizophrenics. I think they used to write for late night television before they decided to give it all up and return to nature. No person is closer to the noble hobo when they feel the gentle pounding of nature when they stick their heads out from under a bridge and take a leak on the pavement.
Lastly, there are those that claim that the hobos are just loners, getting together in small groups when the need arises, but eschewing larger gatherings. They talk as if it is a problem of individuals while completely missing the rich culture of hobos, complete with rituals and a vast lexicon of phrases and rants. It was this culture that I was indoctrinated into.
It started on a boxcar traveling from New York to Georgia. I had crawled in a clean man, and little did I know that at the end of things it was going to be a new, much dirtier man who jumped out of somewhere in the wilds of Georgia. I entered the boxcar at night and I found myself welcomed by a group of five men sitting in a circle. They were older, their hair scraggly, their beards twisted and kinky. They were wrapped warmly in patched-up clothes. When they spoke, a stink like you wouldn’t imagine drifted across the car. I coughed the first few times I smelled it, before the noxious vapors made me lightheaded, granting me an immunity from the immediate discomfort. Once I could listen without coughing, I also noticed that I had more teeth than all the men put together. Hobo healthcare is not what it should be under the current administration.
They knew I was not one of them when they welcomed me, but just the same, they offered me their hospitality. I squeezed into the circle between a man who smelled like a rotten eggs and another who smelled like rancid spam. I’m sure there could have been a spoiled breakfast sandwich created from their intermingling fumes. They were passing around a large can of beans and a bottle of whiskey. Some ate the beans and took a sip of whiskey, but the truly hardcore amongst them put beans in their mouth, then took a huge slug of whiskey, before finally swishing them together in their mouths like mouthwash. After this process was done, they swallowed the mixture in one gigantic gulp. When it was my turn, I simply ate the beans and took a sip of whisky. It burned like fire in my stomach.
This was all the experience of a tourist. I could have easily parted ways with a smelly handshake and a wave goodbye. But fate stepped in and put me on the road to hobo boxing. After all those beans and whiskey came the inevitable farting contest. Well, I’m not sure if it was a contest as much as ritual. Each man knew what was coming almost instinctively; perhaps it was just a long lifetime of experience, perhaps it was just indoctrination within the culture. Without even a look or a nod to each other, there was a pause, and one man let rip a loud, wet fart. It lasted a good ten seconds before ending. Then there was just silence and the sound of the rails beneath the train. The other men nodded approvingly. Then there was another silence, which a second man filled with his own brand of music.
And so it went around the circle. Or it should have. Unfortunately, there were processes beyond my control. One man finished, and it was clearly the turn of a gentlehobo with a bushy red beard named Felchin’ Rick. All sat quiet in silence for the man to do his business. I wanted to give him his time, but there was a war going on in my belly. The United Federation of Beans was fighting with the Confederate Revolutionary Army of Whiskey. I’m not sure who was winning, but it was turning my stomach into a torn no-man’s land of shifting gases. I tried to hold back, I tried to show the proper respect, but my situation was so dire that my body reacted on its own. When Rick went to take his turn, he had barely started his fart when a roaring torrent of gas went screaming from my ass. Like the growl of some sort of caged tiger, the scream of a raging beast, it broke through the car, completely overwhelming the sound of Rick’s fart. It lasted a full thirty seconds before it was spent, entirely expelled. My stomach felt immediately better.
There was a long silence. I could tell from the faces of the men that they were not in agreement. Some were pale and shocked. One laughed. But Rick’s face was a mask of anger. It was a shocked anger, which meant he did not regain his ability to talk for another moment more.
He poked at me. “Just who do you think you are?”
“Leave him alone, he’s just a kid,” said the man I would come to know as Swearing Jim.
“No, I won’t,” said Rick. “New meat here just broke one of our most sacred traditions. I want satisfaction.”
“Satisfaction?” said Jim. “He’s not even one of us.”
“I demand it. He ate of our beans and our whiskey. That makes him enough of one of us. I demand satisfaction!” Felchin’ Rick stood up and went to the other side of the box car, where he began taking off his frayed gloves and one of his jackets.
I smiled nervously. “What does he mean?”
“Well, he’s got a right to satisfaction,” said Jim again. The others nodded.
“What does that mean?”
Jim stood up and put out his hand. I grabbed it and he pulled me up. “Plainly, it means he gets to fight you.”
“What? Fight me?”
“Not to the death or anything,” said Jim. “We ain’t savages. Just bare knuckle boxing. He may get to mess up yer face a bit if he’s lucky.” He paused. “Or yer unlucky, I guess.”
I looked over to where Rick was stretching out. He then moved to jumping from one foot to another with his fists in front of him in an unintentional parody of nineteenth century boxing. I turned to Jim. “So what are the rules? Is there a ref? Who says when it starts?”
I turned back to look at Rick for just a second, long enough to be on the receiving end of a painful punch to my gut. I doubled over in pain as Rick danced away.
“Whenever he wants it to start,” said Jim. “Hobo boxing ain’t got a lot of rules.”
I struggled to take a breath while keeping track of Rick from the corner of my eye. I gasped – he had just barely knocked the wind out of me. Slowly I straightened back up, just in time for Rick to come at me again. I barely dodged, practically falling backwards with my arms flailing wildly. I caught myself and steadied myself as Rick came at me again.
This time he aimed at my head. He narrowly missed, but tatters from his sleeve whipped across my face. I don’t know what they were covered in, but my eyes burned. I stumbled, clutching my eyes. I couldn’t open them due to the burning sensation. I began rubbing them, but was interrupted by another punch to the gut. I staggered, but remained standing.
I was blind. My eyes were watering, but I still couldn’t see. It’s a funny cliché that when you lose one of your senses that the others become enhanced, compensating for the missing sense. It was somewhat true in this case; or at least I damn well wished it was true. I tried to listen for Felchin’ Rick, but the sound of the train obscured any ability to hear footsteps I had. There floor was thick enough that I couldn’t feel any vibrations when he moved. Instead, something in me resorted to the last option I had: my sense of smell. Even after two hours with these gentlemen, my nose had not yet become completely numb to their stench. Instead, if anything, it had become more discriminating. I knew the stench of one of these men from the others. There was the garbage-dumpster-mixed-with-rotten-lemon smell of Swearing Jim, the rotten-egg-mixed-with-meat smell of another. All I had to do was differentiate.
It was a Zen-like moment as I stood there, turning my head to sniff the air. Later Jim would tell me that Rick paused, unsure of what I was doing. Eventually my opponent bored of this and decided to once again go on the offensive. However, I had caught his scent by that point, a wry combination of vomit and babyshit. My nose followed it as he feinted right, then left. Somewhere in my mind burned the opportunity and I took it. I put everything I had into a right-handed uppercut.
I felt it connect with a great crack. I had unbalanced myself in the movement, so I went stumbling across the car and fell down to the floor. That just made me hurt more. I waited for the inevitable attack from Rick, but none came. Slowly my tearing eyes stopped burning, and in a minute I was finally able to see.
I looked up to see most of the men standing around the body of an unconscious Felchin’ Rick. Only Swearing Jim stood by me. He offered me his hand and helped me. As they saw me standing, the other men came and stood around me.
“That’s a helluva punch you got there,” said Jim with a smile.
“I guess,” I said. “I’ve never really had to hit someone like that.”
“Maybe you should,” he said. “Have you ever considered boxing?”
* * *
We decided right there to call me Left Hook Collins. I protested that neither my first nor last name was Collins, but Swearing Jim said it didn’t matter. I also pointed out that the punch which got his attention was actually a right hook. “Shh,” he said, “That’s where we’ll get the element of surprise!”
This name lasted until my first bare knuckle hobo boxing fight in Georgia. It turns out that there had already been a fighter in years gone by named Left Hook Colm, so it wouldn’t be right to call me that.
“Why not? “ I said. “We would be honoring Left Hook Colm.”
“No,” said Jim. “Left Hook Colm had to have his left arm amputated due to diabetes complications. Now we call him Short Reach Henderson. Left Hook Collins would just remind him of what he had lost. And a man who loses one arm becomes that more vicious which his other. Provided he’s an honorable man and don’t hit nobody with the stump. And Short Reach ain’t no honorable man.”
“So would I have to fight Short Reach Henderson?” I asked.
“God, no! Amputee boxing is a whole ‘nother league. You ain’t prepared to get in the ring with their likes. You wouldn’t last five seconds. No, just keep to two armed boxing. You’ll be fine. We just need a new name for you.”
“Can’t I just use my own name?”
Swearing Jim’s laugh rang out across the night. Hobos from the other side of the camp even turned to look. “No, son, you can’t use yer own name. That ain’t the hobo way.”
“Okay, I’ll think of something.”
“Also wrong,” said Jim. “Hobo names aren’t chosen, they’re given. We’ve got to give you a name.”
“But all your names are stupid,” I pointed out. “It’s like you thought of them while sniffing paint fumes.”
“Ah, and there goes another hobo secret we thought we had! How did you find out? Was it on 20/20? They sure do some good journalism there, when they’re not answering to their alien masters. Must be something special they do when they look into their crystal balls.”
“What? That doesn’t even make any sense. You might as well have put any collection of words there that also made a sentence”
He gave me a rough pat on the back. “Now yer learning our ways!”
So in an eleventh hour stroke of inspiration, Swearing Jim decided to call me Tennessee Tex Tornado. I still don’t know why.
Add A Comment