Uncle Lord Open Road 1920-1981
When I was in my 30s and 40s, I used to call my parents, and
sometime during the conversation, they would relate to me all their friends who
had died since we’d last talked. It seemed so gruesome. Now that I have reached
the same age they were, I’m the one who’s beginning to lose friends.
Celebrities I grew up with seem to be dying like the leaves falling from the
trees in autumn. Dear friends have lost spouses. My son died.
At the same time, one of my hobbies keeps me in the world of
the dead – genealogy. My ex used to call it “searching for dead people.” And
one expects ancestors born hundreds of years ago to be long gone; however,
there was a time when I hoped to find relatives still living. When I discovered
they had died just a few years before, it was a blow. If only I’d begun my search
sooner; if only I’d researched more intently; if only…
In the 70s, I set out
to find my maternal grandmother. I remember when I was a child, my mother asking me to
put my finger on the brown twine that surrounded the brown paper package she
said she was sending to her mother for her birthday or for Christmas. Then she
stopped sending packages. My mother often talked about her very dysfunctional
family from Oak Grove, Missouri, an alcoholic abusive father who died in a fall
when she was 12, her father’s sister who kept her as a housekeeper in Dixon,
Illinois, and caned her for walking home with a boy, her baby sister who was “adopted
by a dentist from Coffeyville, Kansas, when she was three years old."
When I finally “found” my grandmother, in the days before
the Internet and Google and Ancestry.com, she had been dead only a few years,
having died in a nursing home in Kansas City, Missouri. I felt guilty to be the
bearer of such bad news, so I set out to find my mother’s baby sister, the only
other relative for whom I had any sort of details. Almost by accident, I found
her. We (my mother, my sister, and I) exchanged photos and letters and phone
calls with my newly discovered aunt. And then, about a month later, she told my
mother she could no longer have anything to do with us because she was afraid
her adopted sister would think she didn’t love her anymore. Well, that was it.
I wasn’t going to look for any more of my mother’s relatives because it only
brought her grief. I didn’t have many details on her three brothers, except I
did know that she was deathly afraid of her oldest brother, James. He had
pulled a knife on her once, had been in jail, and was a bad person, my mother
said. She feared that my research would alert him to where she was living, and
he would find her and do her harm.
She is 95 now and suffering from advanced dementia. She hasn’t
known me for years. I can’t have a conversation with her. Sometime ago, I
realized that if my mother is elderly, so is her older brother, and he no
longer represents any danger. So, I began my search.
He was one of the most difficult of the brothers to find.
One brother had changed his name, perhaps when he was adopted, but used his
birth name to apply for a Social Security number. Another brother had served in
the Navy and was buried in a National cemetery. But James was a problem. Born
in Oak Grove, apparently never in prison, but difficult to find.
Then one day, I came across a death certificate for James
Harrison Langford, who died in Dalhart, Texas, from “Massive Hemopericardium
Due to Multiple Stab Wounds to the Chest” at about 9:00 p.m. “At the Intersection
of 1st and Amarillo Streets” on 24 April 1981. Could this be my
uncle? The birth date matched, born in Missouri, live by the sword (according
to my mother) die by the sword? But what a lonely death. “Behind Warehouse,”
says the death certificate. He was 60 years old.
Being a university instructor, I don’t have much time for
genealogy research during the school year. But eventually I started looking for
my mother’s relatives again. During June 2016, I came upon an article on the
Internet – I failed to note it or save it, so I don’t know which one it is –
that told the story of a James “Lord Open Road” Langford, a hobo, who was
killed in Dalhart, Texas, for $3.65. When his friends and fellow travelers learned
of his death, they obtained his remains and had him buried in Britt, Iowa, the
site of the annual Hobo Days Festival and convention, where he was always
campaigning to be King of the Hobos, but never (to my knowledge) crowned.
There’s a hilarious story about two hobos, Adman and Skinny,
who were sent by the then king, Steamtrain Maury Graham, to recover Lord Open
Road’s remains for reburial in Britt. Paupers in Dalhart were buried several to
a grave, so when Open Road was exhumed, his remains were mixed with quite a bit
of dirt, as his was not the pine coffin on top. These remains were cremated,
but they ended up being significantly heavier than the ashes of one person, and
Adman and Skinny realized that they could not carry Open Road all the way to
Britt on the rails. So, on every train they rode, they left some of Open Road’s
remains, until when they arrived in Britt, they had about 120 pounds of ashes
and other material in a plastic bag, which was interred in the hobo cemetery
there. Every year since his burial in Britt, his friends leave the exact amount
of change he was robbed and killed for on his headstone, and recognize him when
they remember all their friends who have caught that ride on the westbound.
Newspaper articles claim he always spoke in rhyme. “I’ve
been down the line, and I’m feeling fine. Yes sir, been dealing with the local
citizens but of course, they’re not really denizens of this sort of life.
Mainly, I’m disposed to suppose because they want to avoid the strife” (The Ottawa Journal, 28 July 1979). A
folk singer, Larry Penn, wrote a song about Lord Open Road, “A Ride on the
Westbound.”
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