Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride

July 30, 2011

The World English Dictionary defines a tramp as “a person who travels about on foot, usually with no permanent home, living by begging or doing casual work.” They can be easily distinguished from bums or hobos as a bum is “a disreputable loafer or idler” and a hobo is “a migratory worker, especially an unskilled laborer.” OK, maybe it isn’t that easy to distinguish them after all. I think if you find one hopping a train it is a tramp, walking along with all his possessions tied in a handkerchief on the end of a stick it is a hobo, and sleeping on a park bench it is a bum. It is kind of like Big Foot. Spot one in the Pacific Northwest and he’s called a Sasquatch, spot one in South and he’s a Skunk ape. But tramp, hobo, or Sasquatch, whatever you call them, they probably won’t smell very good.

Which brings us to Pete The Tramp.

Pete the Tramp was a comic strip by Clarence D. Russell. It began in 1932 and ran for more than three decades. Howard Eugene Wilson, in the Harvard Educational Review, described the strip’s title character as “a hobo with a gentleman’s instincts.”

Wait- Pete the Tramp was a hobo? I give up.

From the wonderful resource Toonopedia.com:

Pete was like most fictional tramps of the time in that he moved around a lot, was always looking for a handout, did an occasional odd job when he couldn’t avoid it, and was generally disreputable. But he didn’t resemble the worst of them, i.e., wasn’t violent or a sneak thief—except the latter, but not very often and never for anything of great value. Pete was often seen in the company of a small yellow dog of indeterminate breed, whom he addressed as Boy. Under the name Pete’s Pup, the dog was the star of the Sunday page’s topper during the first couple of years. Pete’s strip was popular during the Depression and still maintained reasonable circulation after that period’s end made his situation less excusable.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Pete the Tramp. 

Snorky was another Pete The Tramp Topper.

Before you go, this little nugget of information came from where most stinky little nuggets come from, wikipedia: The Further Adventures of Pete the Tramp (1944) was a live-action stag film which stole Russell’s character and put him in an erotic situation.

You can’t see me but I am shaking my head in disbelief.

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