The Toothpick Kid-Take Two

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

They still talked about the Toothpick Kid in all the hobo camps, the railroad jungles and skid row flophouses and soup lines of the West, long years after he passed away, long after his amazing exploits had entered in entered into hobo, tramp, bum legend. By the way nobody ever called him by his real name, or maybe even knew his real name, but only his tramp moniker derived from his addiction to chewing toothpicks, a habit he picked up when he faced really hard times to stave off hungry, whisky thirsts, or cigarette cravings and so it stuck. Stuck like lots of half-thought out monikers gathered from childhood on, stuck like lots of guys want stuck so that they can hide from wives, ex-wives, repo men, the law or the IRS, hide from their past mainly from an abandoned wife here, some lonesome debt there , their kin, or their own horrors.

Later, after the Kid ran the rack, after his number came up, after he went to that hard rock candy mountain from that song a guy was always humming, someone, Benson Billy maybe since as old as he was and as familiar with the ethos of the road was always too inquisitive, found out that his real name was George Nelson a son of a small trading- post owner out in the high California desert near Barstow. However out of respect for the Kid’s exploits every skid row rooming house, every railroad jungle, and every make-shift camp denizen stayed with the moniker Toothpick Kid when they mentioned his name. It was like such a straight arrow name as George Nelson could not fit in, had no place in, the Boston Blackie ,Benson Billy, Blue River Benny, Be-Bop Kid, Swagger Sid, world of the highway and that was that . And maybe they were right to whisper among themselves his road name if only to make themselves feel better that one of their own tweaked the noses of the cops, the railroad bulls, and the respectable citizenry of the towns out there in the high desert, places like Yucca Falls, Cheyenne Flats, Winnemucca, Victorville and Barstow.

Let face it despite the romance of the road stuff that guys like Woodie Guthrie, Jack Kerouac,and Utah Phillips, the hoboes, bums, and tramps of the world mainly sit around their camps, warmed by the fire, warmed by the rotgut whisky of wine depending on whether somebody successfully put the “touch” on a civilian, and their flops, warmed by that rotgut whiskey ( paying more than a dollar for a pint was some kind of sacrilege and thus no Johnny Walker blended, or such high- shelf stuff passed through the camps and rooming houses. More likely Willie’s Premium mixed from all the highway and park- found bottles into a suitable elixir. Sterno if times were tough), and speaking endlessly of all the heroic exploits they were capable of. Talk, all talk when it came right down to it since the only heroic things most of them were capable of was to con some respectable out of a few bucks on a hard luck story, maybe do a little back alley jack-rolling, or some other two-bit cheapjack scam which they not only tell endlessly but have never gotten over since they pulled it in about 1937. The Kid put them all to shame, put them all in the shade. The Kid went for the big score, the one all the other guys just talked about in the light of some moonless night’s campfire. Yes, for a while, a short while as far as human existence goes, the Toothpick Kid had them all, friend and foe alike,on their toes.

See the Toothpick Kid went for the big score, the big score that every guy in the skid row community dreamed of, dreamed that he was capable of, capable of doing more than dream about. He took out the Southern Pacific-delivered payroll for the Delmo Company that was supposed to be taken over to Hightower out near Needles on a late Friday afternoon by one of its agents. The Toothpick Kid got wind of that fact, the fact that this payroll was delivered weekly on late Friday afternoons and make his plans accordingly. The routine was that Bill Hayes, the railroad agent, would deliver the dough, roughly $50,000, to the guardhouse at the entrance to the Delmo works and the guard, usually only a single guard, would take it from there to the paymaster’s office a couple of miles up the road.

Simple routine, no heavy security, a piece of cake thought the Toothpick Kid. All he saw was easy street ahead, and maybe he was right and maybe he was wrong on that score, but he saw his chance, saw that his young life was going nowhere without some big score to tide him over, saw he was going to wind up some old time geezer bindle stiff buried in some potter’s field graveyard if he didn’t make his move and he was ready to stake his life on success. Life on the road, the hard camps road was, in short, nasty and brutish unlike the romance of the road stuff you read in books by guys who were on the road for a week or two, got their fill of romance and headed back just as quickly as possible to their Mayfair swell digs. So he leaped into his future and let he deal go down.

The robbery itself actually was a piece of cake. Simplicity itself. First the Kid came upon the guard standing alone in his guardhouse to ask the way to Hightower and as the guard was prepared to tell him the directions he quickly beat him over the head, beat him to a pulp, with a pipe he had acquired along the way. A few minutes later, after removing the guard’s body to his small office, taking his clothes off and then putting them on, Bill Hayes came up in his Southern Pacific Railroad company car. Before Bill could even ask where Hank the regular guard was the Kid shot him point-blank with Hank’s gun. The Kid pulled Bill out of the car, placed him alongside Hank in the guardhouse office, and went back to Bill’s car and checked to see that the payroll satchel was there. It was, and he was gone in Bill’s car like a flash. Beautiful, and many a lonely hobo jungle camp night, many a tramp roadside hungry day, and many a skid row rotgut whisky barroom turned electric to the thrill of some guy telling the details of the Kid’s saga. Jesus, fifty grand, and like taking candy from a baby.

Of course what the Kid didn’t count on, or maybe even figure on in his figuring was the Southern Pacific blowback. The hard fact of life that even in the square’s world a couple of murders and a major robbery when the railroads were going down in the hazy superhighway night required some attention. To speak nothing of the Delmo Company’s position that something, something big and right now had to be done about the thing. As so the railroad, the company, Sagamore county, and the California State Police police went at the case tooth and nail. Offered rewards, ran roughshot over the camps, jungles, and skid row flops from the Mexican border to Eureka up in Redwood country, and plastered the particulars of the case (not much) on walls, telephone poles and wherever the hobo world congregated. A massive effort.

Funny though they probably never would have caught the Kid if it hadn’t been for a woman, well, a woman, and a bum (let me tell you sometime the differences, the social, political and economic differences between bums, hoboes, and tramps and there are and are recognized in the community as such but it doesn’t affect this story so later okay). The Kid had hightailed it to Reno up on the border and was laying low, well not really laying low, but spending his dough of dope, booze, women and whatever else caught his fancy in a very private suite in a very private hotel just outside Reno. After about a year of that though easy street ran out of steam, he just ran out of dough.

That is where the woman comes in, the woman, Heidi, whom he spent most of his dough on. When funds got low he put her out on the streets to do a few tricks to keep them in clover. She agreed to it so there was nothing wrong there. What was wrong was that she tried to hustle a guy she had known, an old flame going under the moniker Black River Sid, from way back, who had fallen on hard times, had been roughhoused in one of the cop raids looking for the Kid down in Lancaster and so knew the Kid legend, and asked what she had been up to but more importantly why was she doing cheapjack tricks on the streets. So she told him the story, the Kid dough story, except she did not know how the Kid had gotten his dough (or think to ask as long as the dope, booze, casino chips and occasional off-hand piece of jewelry was around). And that was that.

Black River Sid when he put two and two together came up with reward, reward and his own getting well again (he has a serious cocaine habit that needed some attention) and so he snitched, snitched as hard and fast as a man could snitch. So one early morning, before sunrise, the combined forces of law and order in California and Nevada, combined railroads of the West, and the combined mineral resources organizations and Black River Sid gathered in front of a certain private hotel outside Reno and attempted a forced assault on one Toothpick Kid and his honey.

Yes, the Kid went down, went down in a hail of bullets after a several hours gunfight (as did Heidi who stood by her man until the end) as he probably knew he must, or maybe should have known he must it is hard to tell the difference in such cases.

But before the Kid left this good green earth he took down two railroad bulls, a couple of deputy sheriffs, and one Black River Sid (directed to his attention by Heidi). So to the Kid (George Nelson), RIP. And you wonder why fifty years or more later they speak of him in hushed whispers wherever guys are down on their luck, down on their dreams, and down in the fellahin ditches out in the American West night.