Railroad Date Nail
Overview
This Railroad “Date Nail” is a fine and valuable example of these markers, traditionally shared among Gentlepeople of the Road as tokens of especial friendship, most desirably being marked with the year of the recipient’s birth. They are either carried loose on the person or worn on necklaces of copper wire (“railroad bling”).
Date Nails are a tangible symbol of the personal relationship and bonds of affection between giver and recipient as recognized within the larger context of the American Over-soul. The Over-soul, a dynamic confluence of lives on this continent, is described by Ralph Waldo Emerson, invoked in the poems of Walt Whitman, and found on America’s railroads and highways.
Readers conversant with street or road culture will have a first-hand understanding of this phenomenon in its utmost manifestations, and all who have taken a road trip or family vacation will likewise have felt rushing around them, however passingly, the transcendental slipstream, which, here, is entered through motile action. Also, an allegorical figure, experientially and effectively similar to the Over-soul in its outward-regarding aspect, hovers over Saint-Gaudens’ 54th Massachusetts Volunteer (colored) Infantry Regiment as they march to open recognition of their place in not only the collective unconscious, but also the national consciousness.
Acquisition Data
Gift of Hansum Jack, Tramp, immediately preceding a July 2007 performance at the msm by the musical group “Pariah Beat.” The flyer for this performance features a colorful character urging attendance at the concert and featuring numerous motifs and attributes associated with tramp, punk and other subcultures, too numerous to list here but including nautical stars similar to those embroidered on the fabulous 1848 “Sailor Pants” at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Attributes include “Doc Martens” footwear, rowdy attitude, striped railroad cap, old-fashioned tattoos, belly full of roast chicken, handgun, spliff or hand-rolled. The figure gestures with his right hand; a band member, expressing uncertainty, identified the gesture as “(heavy) metal … devil’s horns,” while agreeing it could also be an unidentified or unidentifiable gesture of blessing or ecstasy originating in other, older religious and/or folkloric practices, the interpretation favored by some experts at the msm. It can be no accident that this nail joined our collections at this time, so thank you, Hansum Jack, for your generous gift, and for drawing integrity and ecstasy together in perspective upon this iron point.
Background: From the mid-19th to the late 20th centuries, railroads drove nails like these into the wooden ties to help monitor their condition. More effective anti-rot treatment of the ties, and information stamped directly onto the ties, have effectively ended the use of date nails. When dropped on a wooden or concrete surface, this nail produces a cheerful clink.
Note: When I arrived at the Museum for the Summer 2007 Museum Fellowship, I, already holding a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the policy and social issues relating to contemporary homelessness, had it in mind to study “hobos,” knowing as I did that White River Junction, a once and future railroad hub, even now sees its share of transients, including some who ride the rails. The presence in WRJ of the New England Transportation Museum likewise focused my attention on the “hobo” phenomenon, as that museum hosts “New England Railroad Days” every fall, a festival of nostalgia and regional pride which has sometimes included spaghetti dinners, song fests, and other enjoyable events hosted by Hobo clubs.
In interviewing the town’s transients under age 30, though, I immediately learned that many strongly disfavor the term “hobo,” associating it with nostalgic magazine articles, the annual hobo festival in Britt, Iowa, the experiences of generations other than their own, and, in short, anything but actually riding the rails, today, with all its grubbiness, loneliness, despair, and occasional unexpected, unplanned joys (such as snowy, leafless spring woods which are nonetheless newly filled with birdsong; a loaf of bread and a block of cheese given, unasked, by a friendly hand; warm new friendships, a cold can of beer, and some hot rockin’ tunes all converging as the late-summer sun sinks below the far horizon; the appearance of a steady job and a place to live for the winter).
Because rail-riding was originally, and is still in its essence, a practical solution to an age-old, yet evergreen, problem (“desire to go somewhere else + no money = ?”), rather than a cultural gesture, let alone a posture of self-regard, we find the position of the younger tramps a compelling one: they are not “hobos,” they are “tramps.” The Main Street Museum therefore in this label and in all instances, including verbal exchanges on museum premises, adopts this usage, and strongly urges all museum visitors and supporters, as well as all scholars and Americans everywhere, to do likewise.
Jack London in White River Junction, Vermont
The cooling New England nights were a reminder that he had to head west before winter set in. Grabbing a “virtuous coach in room 88,888 (blind baggage) first floor Hotel de la Boston and Maine,” as his Boston acqaintaince put it, he headed out of Boston. He passed through Lawrence, Massachusetts, and was especially watchful of “shacks and “bulls” (railroad brakemen and policemen) as his train moved toward Vermont. He had heard that many tramps were arrested on unfounded charges in the Granite State and were sentenced to hard labor in the Rutland Quarries.
*London wrote a Vermont correspondent: “’they have quarries in Rutland, haven’t they. About 13 years ago I tramped through to Vermont, coming up from Bsoton. The nearest I got to Rutland was White River Junction, and there I had a narrow escape from being ‘pulled in’. I understood at the time that tramps were getting 90 days in the quarries.’” —Jack London. The Road
References
tr.1929.07.di
