The poem
When I was brash and gallant-gay Just fifty years ago, I hit the ties and beat my way From Maine to Mexico; For though to Glasgow gutter bred A hobo heart had I, And followed where adventure led, Beneath a brazen sky.
And 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 freckless 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 seek 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.
I thought I had all of Service poetry, but this volume I missed. I shall do a search. I to was a Hobo, but with me it was 70 years ago. This poem arrives as i am in the process of reading a couple of books about hobos,whave have set off a few of my own versen, for I have been there and done that.
So,I think of those hobos
That I once knowed
And I wish I was twenty
And back on the road.