""A small brown beast, spry as a witch and ugly as a gargoyle, was perched on the top of a freight engine when it drew into the station of Greenfield, Mass. As the train stopped, several persons tried to grasp the gargoyle's tail. Annoyed and impudent, he snapped it out of reach and hopped away through the freight yard. When finally captured in the corner of a box car, he was discovered to be a ridiculous hobo monkey who had escaped from a circus and boarded the freight train several towns away."" Miscellany: Hobo, Time Magazine, Feb 11, 2011




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Monkey And The Engineer

Once upon a time there was an engineer.
Drove a locomotive both far and near.
Accompanied by a monkey that would sit on a stool
Watching everything the engineer would do
One day the engineer wanted a bite to eat,
He left the monkey sitting on the driver's seat,
The monkey pulled the throttle, the locomotive jumped the gun
And did 80 miles an hour down the mainline run.

Big locomotive right on time, big locomotive coming down the line.
Big locomotive No. 99, left the engineer with a worried mind.

The engineer called up the dispatcher on the phone,
To tell him all about his locomotive was gone.
Dispatcher got on the wire, switch operator to the right,
Cause the monkey's got the main line sewed up tight.
The switch operator got the message on time,
Said there's a Northbound livin' on the same main line,
Open up the switch I'm gonna let him through the hole,
Cause the monkey's got the locomotive under control.

Big locomotive right on time, big locomotive coming down the line.
Big locomotive No. 99, left the engineer with a worried mind.

Gratful Dead sang it, don't know who wrote it


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,731847,00.html