Moniker: Identity Lost and Found, Buz Blurr 8 Massillon and the Moniker Tradition, Alexandra Nicholis Coon 12 J.B
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1 1 3 3 © Massillon Museum 2018 121 Lincoln Way East Massillon, Ohio 44646 massillonmuseum.org ISBN: 0-9830553-7-8 Library of Congress: 9780983055372 This catalog is made possible, in part, by Ohio Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. TOM E. DAILEY FOUNDATION 4 5 ontents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 6 THE ESSAYS Moniker: Identity Lost and Found, buZ blurr 8 Massillon and the Moniker Tradition, Alexandra Nicholis Coon 12 J.B. King Esq, Andy Dreamingwolf 14 Jim Tully, Paul Bauer and Mark Dawidziak 24 Leon Ray Livingston: A-No.1, Andy Dreamingwolf 28 Moniker Writing as Invented Tradition, Susan A. Phillips 36 Bozo Texino, Andy Dreamingwolf 44 Drawing and Deciphering, Scot Phillips 58 Jack London, Andy Dreamingwolf 66 Palm Tree Herby, Andy Dreamingwolf 72 buZ with Markals Gurdon, Arkansas, 2016 Monikers in the Independent Media, Kurt Tors 76 Photograph by Scot Phillips Kilroy Was Here, Andy Dreamingwolf 80 National Hobo Convention, Andy Dreamingwolf 88 Colleen Claybourn’s Moniker Photography, Scot Phillips with Michael Green 90 Read Between the Lines, Kurt Tors 92 THE PANELS 98 THE TRIBUTES 126 THE GLOSSARY 140 THE CONTRIBUTORS 142 5 cknowledgements The project team is extremely grateful for funding provided by the Ohio Humanities to offset To those who authored articles for inclusion in this unprecedented catalog effort and have devoted expenses associated with the exhibition, catalog, and programming. Moniker: Identity Lost and time professionally and personally, driven by their passion and sought out for their expertise on the Found is rooted in tradition, language, history, and folklore. It speaks to a prominent subset of our topic, we thank you: buZ blurr, Andy Dreamingwolf, Kurt Tors, Scot Phillips, Alexandra Nicholis country’s workforce rarely identified as anything other than its profession. These individuals are Coon, Michael Green, Susan Phillips, Paul Bauer, and Mark Dawidziak. celebrated for staking claim to personas which allow them to emit creativity and document their existence. Ohio Humanities’s understanding of the Massillon Museum’s desire to tell their story Thank you to Margy Vogt for providing professional and sensitive editing support and to Dan Bates has been paramount to our success. Additional funding for the project was provided by the Tom E. and Jillian Bates-McKenzie for their assistance with catalog layout, photography, and printing of Dailey Foundation, Cyrus Custom Framing, and, by way of operating support, from ArtsinStark and this beautifully rendered document. We appreciate the editing assistance of Megan Fitze and the Ohio Arts Council. The indiegogo campaign supporters who pledged their belief in the project the glossary assembly of Shauna Wenneman. Thank you also to Mark Pitocco, who provided included Russell Butler, John Charette, Alexandra Nicholis Coon, Dave Desimone, Tav Falco, Carol photography assistance, and to Museum staff, interns, and volunteers who assisted with all facets Ann Garner, Micah Gibson, Christian and Ashley Harwell, Brian Marra, Sandra and Scot Phillips, of production from research to scanning, shipping, and gallery and event preparation: Jillian Decker, Irene Stergios, and Daina Valatis. Nancy Jobe, Lois McHugh, Michelle Persons, and Amanda Sisler. Thank you also to Andy Rock Fine Art Services, and to Colossus of Roads for the handwritten lettering used in the catalog’s titles. The following individuals provided invaluable support toward realizing this project in a variety of forms, from casual conversations which gave shape to big ideas, to fabrication of exhibition We sincerely appreciate the curatorial and documentation assistance from Heather Haden, who materials and loaning artifacts for inclusion in the exhibition and catalog, to cheerleading along the was involved at the outset of this project and helped articulate the vision in its early stages. And way. We owe them a tremendous amount of gratitude for their support of our work to validate and to Mandy Altimus Stahl, we extend much appreciation for her support of this project and assistance document this little-studied art form: Paul Bauer, Black Butte Center for Railroad Culture (BBCRC), with organizing all archival information for catalog production and exhibition preparation. Irene Bosnjak, buZ blurr, City Slicker Press, Coaltrain, Dr. Will Cooley, Bill Daniel, Fat Owl, Busch As always, we appreciate the support and guidance of the Massillon Museum’s Board of Directors Hog, Mark Dawidziak, Danny Devine, Charlie Duckworth, Jennifer Hachita, Toby Hardman, Frank throughout the life of this project, from its inception to its culmination. And to a man who gave Harris, Hellephant, The Hobo Museum, Anthony Johnson, Kent Historical Society, Kentucky Metal more than thirty years of his retired life to the Massillon Museum, who, though only having given Fabrications, Khaze, Kris Krengle, Kevin Lahm, Massillon Plaque Company, Medford Railroad Park, roughly two years of his professional life to the railroad, had loved it for all its history, mystery, Melissa Melton, Michael Merritt, Midwest Railway Preservation Society, Missouri Pacific Historical and adventurism since childhood, we offer a special dedication to John C. Sparks. Society, Museum Acrylics, Mr. Nar, NEAR, North Bank Fred, NY Tomato, Pat Perry, Sandra Phillips, The Rambler, George Reese, Joe Riley, Smokin’ Joe, The Solo Artist, Dale James Tetley, Jacinda Wolf, Nia Wolf, Wooden Axle, and all of our participating artists. 6 7 7 oniker—Identity Lost and Found Seemed everybody on the railroad had a nickname, and I’ve had a few myself. Mr. B tried to pin the My father’s options were open to stay with the railroad, in a management position of Assistant appellation of “Kaw-Liga” on me for my static, stoic, inscrutable countenance, from Hank Williams’s Roadmaster, or go on either the traveling rail or tie gangs; another proposition was made by my Wooden Indian, but it didn’t stick. For awhile I was known as O.C. Moon, for my embarrassing mad mother’s brothers who could get him on at the aircraft factory in Riverside, California. He chose fits when I showed my you-know-what. the identity of railroad man, and accepted the management position, to her consternation. My father called me Brush. Everyone in the paternal side of the family called me Brush. When We moved to Paragould, just eight miles south of where my father was born; he became the I asked him why, he replied, “’Cause you’re just brush, we’ll see if you make a tree.” Assistant Roadmaster, and I started the eighth grade. No sooner did we move than he was assigned to the position at Earle, Arkansas, on the Bald Knob to Memphis line. The promised salary, with Dad was the youngest of nine kids raised in a section house on the Missouri Pacific Railroad, expense account enticement to stay with the R.R. (railroad) as lower-level management, was between Paragould and Knobel, on the Helen Sub-division, now no longer extant. Grandfather was being imposed upon him in Missouri Pacific’s attempt to avoid receivership, by Dad’s cruel District the foreman on this same section of track from 1907 until he retired in 1945. My father hired out Engineer’s denial of most of his expense account submission and moving allowance, thus driving us with maintenance-of-way as well in 1942, and retired in 1983, and died less than a year later. deeper and deeper into debt. I hired out in train service in 1962 and retired in 2003. Each of us had careers of forty-one years, over a ninety-nine-years span of time, with my grandfather having hired out in 1904. As a result of our attempts to keep up with Dad’s various assignments, I attended ninth grade in Earle; tenth grade in Palestine, Texas; eleventh grade in Monroe, Louisiana; and senior year where After years of working the traveling rail gangs and tie gangs, staying in bunk cars, seldom coming I now reside in Arkansas after Dad bid in the position as Roadmaster. home if they were too far away, dad finally had enough seniority to bid in a section foreman position on the Helen Sub, south of Wynne, and we moved into the section house on the coldest Christmas Reading On The Road by Jack Kerouac in tenth grade along with other novels while traveling on all- Day I can remember. When school resumed, I was in the second grade. night passenger trains back to Earle to see my girlfriend on weekends, and returning Sunday nights to Palestine, gave me the ambition to be my own Sal Paradise, or Holden Caulfield, Beatnik poet, Missouri Pacific had been under bankruptcy since 1933, and eventually discontinued the and adventurer in my teenaged romantic fantasies. maintenance process by sections, switching instead to periodic wholesale reconditioning by expanded rail and tie gangs. Thus ended my tenure by the tracks at the section house, where When I graduated in 1961, I wanted to join the Navy to see the world, outside the confines of I became aware of the graffiti on the railcars of passing trains, whose origins were described the squabbles and harangues of our indebtedness; but being seventeen years of age my parents’ by my father as “hobo chalk marks.” signatures were required. The R.R. was hiring college boys to work the trainmen extraboards to 8 9 replace vacationing workers, but they had already hired the group for 1961, and you also had to be eighteen. My folks shamed me into going to the nearby state college until the next summer of ’62, when my dad was certain he could get me hired on as a brakeman, to help pay down the debt, some of it incurred by my juvenile delinquent activities and car wrecks.