DON LANGE wrote a wonderful song called "HERE'S TO YOU ROUNDERS"
(It was on my first LP -- Kicking Mule 150---I recorded it even before Don did it on Flying Fish.)

chorus) Here's to you rounders and here's to you railroad bums,
Here's hopin' you make it home soon,
And here's to the womwn who married for love,
And lived with the man in the moon.

1)I never knew my grandad--he was always on the bum,
Every September he'd grab him an southbound and he'd ride,
Then along about Christmas me and my brother--we'd get some coins in the mail,
But we couldn't spend 'em----it was all he could send from the Mexico City jail.

2) Back in the thirties, when the going got tough, my grandad, he hit the road,
Mother was young then and only remembers his name,
Granny got work in the old canning factory and she took in some wash on the side,
She promised herself that she'd never forgive him,
A promise she kept 'til she died.

3) One time near the end he rolled into town--he was riding on the greyhound line,
O guess he got old and those boxcars got harder to climb,
He dropped his last dime in a call to my granny but "NO" was her only reply,
She hung up the phone and she cussed him in German---but I saw the pain in her eyes.

4) I never knew my grandad--he was always on the bum,
The Salvation Army sent us a note when he died,
Now me and my brother, we carry the memory of a face that we never did see,
Like some foreign coin layin' cold in the pocket of a young boy's faded blue jeans.

Art Thieme