Hard Travellin'

It was the railway system which moulded the American hobo into the legendary figure he became, especially in the depression years, but surviving until today. His origins, however, go back to the early pioneer days. He is in fact a unique and indigenous American product, 'capriciously used and discarded by a callous but dynamic system'. Revered and romanticized by some as the prototype of free man, he is hated and feared by others for his nonconformity.
In order to trace the origins of the various types of hobo and their effect on American life, Kenneth Allsop travelled 9,000 miles across the continent, following old hobo routes, interviewing and researching as he went along.

During the 1960's and until his death in 1973 Kenneth Allsop was one of the best known faces on BBC television. From reporting and interviewing on the innovative and hugely influential Tonight programme to being one of the main anchormen on the flagship current affairs programmes 24 Hours and Midweek he was watched and recognised by millions.
But although it was television that made him a household name it was his writing that brought him the greatest pleasure. He produced half a dozen novels, most of them around the birds and nature that were his passion, and a book of short stories (nature again). In non-fiction he wrote a critically acclaimed account of new British writing in the 1950s (The Angry Decade), possibly the definitive history of Prohibition in America (The Bootleggers), and Hard Travellin', a history of the American hobo. He also published two collections of his journalistic writings - Scan and In The Country (recently republished).
His journalistic output was truly prodigious. He was, at various times, feature writer for Picture Post, book critic for the London Evening News, jazz critic and book critic for the Daily Mail, and a regular contributor to Punch, Nova, Listener, The Spectator, The Sunday Times, and many other magazines and newspapers.
In his introduction to Scan(1965) he estimated: "During my 20 years in journalism (printed and televised) I have interviewed a thousand people, reviewed 2,000 books, visited forty-odd countries and written (apart from books) a million-and-a-half words, which is almost twice as many as the bible....)."
He was also one of the first true environmentalists, sounding warning calls in his writings and his broadcasts about the damage man was doing to his world 30 years before this became a popular cause.
He was in constant pain from the stump of a leg amputated in 1943 as a result of an accident whilst in the RAF.
He died of a barbiturate overdose in May 1973 in his beloved Dorset millhouse.

Prefatory Note

Part One: Strangers and Sojourners
1 Some people just got that roamin' blood in them
2 King of the road
Part Two: Stones in My Pathway
3 Extinct (Official)
4 Leatherstocking of the freight cars
5 The phantom deer arise
6 The pot of gold
7 In God we trusted, in Kansas we busted
8 Out into the kindly sunlight
9 Strict beauty of locomotive
10 A little strychnine or arsenic
11 The curse of our Yankee nation
12 The dream cinder dick
13 Weary Willy and Tried Tim
14 Father, fix the blinds so the bums can't ride
15 The wand'ring boys
16 Roosevelt roosts
17 The abyss, the channel-house
18 Sex and the single man
19 Hobo-trekkers that forever search
20 Voices calling in the night
21 Men without allegiances
Part Three: The Great Harp
22 Feet got to rolling like a wheel, yeah, like a wheel
23 The freezin' ground was my foldin' bed last night
24 If they had met God they would have asked him for a bone
25 Ain't it hard to stumble when you got no place to fall
Part Four: Join The Wob, Wob, Wobbly Band
26 Halleluiah, I'm a bum
27 Don't waste time in mourning. Organize!
28 Agitators and pork-chop philosophers
Part Five: Goths And Vandals
29 The black shadow
Part Six: River's A-Risin'
30 Wrap your troubles in dreams
31 They'd toughed it out just as long as they could take it
32 Who we gonna fight?
33 Dust can't kill me
34 Rentaslave
Part Seven: Picture-Book Heroes
35 You've been to that town a thousand times
Part Eight: The Woods Are Full of Wardens
36 The American spectre
Bibliography