New blog: March 9: Huge TFD original-art sale! About TFD / Videos / RSS Feed        Links: Natalie Dee / MTTS / Superpoop

ARTICLE 118: hobos are my heroes OCTOBER 2003 the end of october is halloween which is pretty awesome if you are a kid because it means you can get candy for free!! usually on halloween i put a giant empty plastic bowl outside along with a sign that says DEAR HALLOWEEN GUESTS: PLEASE ONLY TAKE ONE! then i stay inside or do something else, nobody knocks on the door because they think that i am generous and someone took all of the candy before they could get to it!! this year i do not have a job so i decided to dress up for halloween and give children candy. also because i was at the grocery store and there was an entire aisle of bags full of tiny candy bars. it is like heaven if your favorite dinner is cheez-its and marshmallow peeps!! so i bought about ten bags of those tiny unsatisfying candy bars and some black shoe polish at the store. i do not really ever polish my shoes but it is the only disguise i would need!! i went through my clothes and found some pants with holes in the knees and some shirts that were torn up. then i got the shoe polish and put it on my clothes and face and hands, and took some razor blades and a comb and an old toothbrush and tied them up in a handkerchief and put it on a stick. suddenly i had transformed into HOBODREW!!! in case you have not figured it out yet, hobos are my heroes. they travel all over the country for free and they always look pretty dirty and they eat terrible food, and some of them drink jug wine a lot too! if you are a hobo you never have recruiters calling you and asking why you have not had a job for the last month because you do not have a telephone. and you never ever see pop up ads because you have NO COMPUTER! HALLOWEEN GUESTS I AM READY FOR YOU!!! i told the front door of my apartment. the official halloween hours here are from six o'clock to eight o'clock and it was almost six so i sat on my couch and waited! i was not bored because i had some old dirty string that i tied in a loop, and i was playing the classic hobo game "cat's cradle". it sounds boring but it is perfect for spending long hours in a box car, and it is very challenging when you have had a lot of hobo wine to drink!! i had been playing it for about a half hour and nobody came to my door, so i set down the string and walked outside to look around. there were no kids anywhere around in the neighborhood!! maybe it was the people in the alley or maybe all of the neighborhood kids where i live spend their halloween dressing up like a rapper or stealing cars. i just moved into this neighborhood a few months ago and i did not know that it was not useful for halloween!! i started to get mad until i realized the trick that lots of people used when i was a kid. the trick is to drive to rich neighborhoods and get candy, except my trick would be to drive to rich neighborhoods and give out candy! i got in my car with my bindle (that is the official hobo word for the hobo pouch) and candy bars and took off. i got off the freeway exit with the nicest-looking bushes and landscaping, and drove off on some road i had never been on before. sure enough, after a couple of minutes, i was in the suburbs, and there were nice neighborhoods everywhere! i drove down the first street and rolled down my windows to prepare to give the candy out. there were kids everywhere!! i was planning on stopping and giving them candy out of my car but i knew that parents would probably think it was a bad idea so i just drove around slowly with the candy! TRICK OR TREAT, TINY PIRATE!!! i yelled, and threw a handful of tiny unsatisfying candy bars at a pirate child. TRICK OR TREAT, SOME KIND OF ANIMAL!! TRICK OR TREAT, SOMEONE'S MOM LOOKING AT ME ALL MAD! TRICK OR TREAT, CHILD DRESSED UP AS A CHILD IN A WHEELCHAIR! TRICK OR TREAT, THIRTEEN YEAR OLD WHO IS TOO OLD FOR HALLOWEEN AND DID NOT REALLY DRESS UP BUT WANTED CANDY ANYWAY!! TRICK OR TREAT, HOBODREW! (that is what i said whenever i stopped throwing candy to put candy in my own mouth!) by the end of the night all of the candy in my bags was gone, the night was a success! the lesson here is that rich neighborhood people can afford to dress up in fancy costumes and walk around, and poor neighborhood people know better than to leave their house at night! PS. when i put articles in the magazine i always check to make sure they are not full of things that people only do in america! so i tried to find out what people do on halloween in england using the internet (http://www.terra.com/specials/halloween/traditions7.html) and it looks like they do exactly the same thing as in america. from what i can tell candy is the universal language, it is like a version of esperanto that everyone understands, that you can put in your mouth!!! (back to the writing index page)