Valet Reader

“You Can’t Win,” possible theme for 2010, could very well be. That very first week of the year, I thought, no one can beat me. I almost thought about screaming “I’m on top of the world” while standing on the bow of a ship, but I didn’t. And damn, am I glad I didn’t. Right about now “you can’t win” pretty much sums things up. I’m not gonna wallow and look for pity and sympathy, it’s not my style instead I’ll just start kicking some ass, taking names and stay out of jail, kind of the same way Mr. Jack Black did. Oh, and before I delve too far into this review I should mention that this is not the big boned Jack Black from Nacho Libre, this is Jack Black the professional hobo, born in 1881. (visual comparison below)

If you didn’t know it you could almost mistake this book for fiction. Yet, it is not. It is a true account of this remarkable professional hobo/outlaw written by the man himself. Originally written in order to help dissuade criminals from continuing on their downward spiral this book has never faded (after all the book has been reprinted).

His lifestyle and the adventures therein as displayed in the book are very representative of the times. Here is a guy who grew up stealing, freight hopping, doing stints in jail, escaping from jail and for a time getting hooked on opium. Of course it’s only representative of the “yegg” community (criminal brotherhood) of the time but at the same time displays the futility of the justice system and the prisons in early America.

I think that had I read this story when I was much younger I would probably have been running around the hills surrounding my house playing Jack Black as opposed to GI Joe. Then again I’m pretty sure that my mother wouldn’t have wanted me reading this book back then for fear that I would be so moved by it that I’d aspire to be a professional hobo criminal. Which, in reality, actually sounds quite alluring right now. Naturally, the exact opposite effect that Black was trying to inspire. Ambiguous cowboys never really did it for me (of course they do now) but Black is like a not-as-ruthless Billy the Kid.

If I were to print out one page of the book that encapsulates the intentions behind Black’s book it would have to be page 177. I would almost say I’d give this page to a hardened criminal to reflect but I have a hard time acknowledging that it would truly affect them. On this particular page Black outlines how it is he became a criminal and how every time he stole he was aware of the crime being committed and the way he was “working a hardship on the loser.”  He goes ahead and states that “nobody wants to live and die a criminal,” which is something that he clearly comes to realize late in his career. Fortunately for Black he was able to heed his own advice and during his last stint in prison befriended the owner of The San Francisco Call, a newspaper of the time, and was hired on as a librarian.

I can’t recall who recommended I read this book but I’m thankful. It was, after all, pretty interesting. Black’s stories of the Wild West were wildly entertaining and the book itself was cohesive. In the end it’s a romantic story of what our society was like leading up to the great depression and the emergence of the underground beat movement.

Can you Spot the difference?












And for good measure I thought I’d pass along a little tid bit I learned from reading this book. Ever wondered where the term “pegged” comes from? Yeah, I didn’t think so, neither had I but I’m going to tell you regardless. Of course you probably thought it had something to do with the game of cribbage and if that’s the case I’d laugh in your face (ok, you probably had no thought of it being related to cribbage, I realize that). It actually comes from the practice of thieves placing a small wooden peg in the door jam after a potential robbery victim closes up their shop. When the thief returns at four or five in the morning and finds the peg still in place it means the store has not been visited during the night and the store is prime for the picken’. If the jam is out of place the thief must then scout the location over night to see what time the store is visited during the night and by whom. Well, there ya go, know you now some trivia. You can thank me later.