American Ballads and Folk Songs: page - 0126

Complete Text, Lyrics & Sheet Music

	American Ballads and Folk Songs When she hove in sight far up the track, She was working steam, with her brake-shoes slack. She hollered once at the whistle-post, Then she flitted by like a frightened ghost. He could hear the roar of the big six-wheel, And her driver's pound on the polished steel, And the screech of her flanges on the rail, As she beat it west o'er the desert trail,                                     ! The John got busy and took the risk,                                       ! He climbed aboard and began to frisk, He reached up high and began to feel, For the end-door pin—then he cracked the seal. 'Twas a double-decked stock-car filled with sheep— Old John crawled in and went to sleep. She whistled twice and high-balled out, They were off—down the Gila Monster Route. HALLELUJAH, BUM AGAIN "The song was found scribbled on the wall of a Kansas City jail where an old hobo, known as ^One-Finger Ellis/ had spent the night, recovering from an overdose of rotgut whisky." George Mil-burn in his Hobo's Hornbook (published by Ives Washburn, New York) quotes the following version of the famous hobo song and gives its source in the above note.