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A favorite device of hoboes is to base their monicas on the localities from which they hail, as: New York Tommy, Pacific Slim, Buffalo Smithy, Canton Tim, Pittsburg Jack, Syracuse Shine, Troy Mickey, K.L. Bill, and Connecticut Jimmy. Then there was "Slim Jim from Vinegar Hill, who never worked and never will."
By themselves come the road-kids, sporting an infinite variety of monicas. On the water-tank at San Marcial, New Mexico, a dozen years ago, was the following hobo bill of fare: Main-drag fair. Bulls not hostile. Round-house good for kipping. North-bound trains no good. Privates no good. Restaurants good for cooks only. Railroad House good for night-work only.
Very few tramps care to remember their pasts during which they ignobly worked, so monicas based upon trades are very rare, though I remember having met the following: Moulder Blackey, Painter Red, Chi Plumber, Boiler-Maker, Sailor Boy, and Printer Bo.
You were "blowed-in-the-glass" all right. A week later I, too, got my ship, and on board the steamship Umatilla, in the forecastle, was working my way down the coast to San Francisco. Skysail Jack and Sailor Jack gee! if we'd ever got together. Water-tanks are tramp directories. Not all in idle wantonness do tramps carve their monicas, dates, and courses.
Others seem to take their monicas in part from the color-schemes stamped upon them at birth, such as: Chi Whitey, New Jersey Red, Boston Blackey, Seattle Browney, and Yellow Dick and Yellow Belly the last a Creole from Mississippi, who, I suspect, had his monica thrust upon him.
I have met hoboes who, in trying to catch a pal, had pursued clear across the continent and back again, and were still going. "Monicas" are the nom-de-rails that hoboes assume or accept when thrust upon them by their fellows. Leary Joe, for instance, was timid, and was so named by his fellows. No self-respecting hobo would select Stew Bum for himself.
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