Riding the Rails with Emperor Trick
by Ron Greer
It was the spring of '89 and I had been going to state college, or trying anyway. I wanted to be a writer, but I wasn't coming up with much besides bad science fiction. Me and these other guys, (and I'm not forgetting Julie), we were all looking for something to do that summer, and none of our punk rock bands were quite working out.
After a drunken Sunday afternoon of attempting yet another zine, we all decided that what we needed to do was see the world and become hoboes or something. Then we could write about it, you understand; real cometbus like. So, after heartily handing out what little earthly possessions we had to friends and family, we actually jumped a train in Emeryville, which got us to Petaluma, then onto Sacramento, and we just kept going...
The ride worked out much better than any of us expected; we kept thinking we'd have to turn back, but then there was this whole hobo network we found that kept us afloat. They would let us make camp with them out in the weedy lots beyond the trainyards. Everyone would gather around the camp fire in the evening. The hoboes would play folk songs, and we'd play acoustic versions of Flipper and Dead Kennedys, and that's how we all got along... Eventually we got to know some of the regulars who had been tramping since before our time.
There was this one guy who was particularly witty and friendly who sort of became our mentor. He‘d strike you as being one of those crusty characters George Carlin would play, or maybe remind you of Woody Guthrie, if you know who he is. He looked to be in his seventies, but knowing the hobo community as we did, he could have been in his fifties, or even pushing ninety. "I'm always looking out for the younger generation" he would remark whenever he imparted some words of wisdom.
Anyway, this guy, any time he'd find some halfway decent cigar butt left behind in the gutter, he say "ah, that emperor sure does the trick!" and light it up. At first I thought it had something to do with Emperor Cigars (a brand popular in the Beltway), but it turned out he said it for just about anything he liked: a good spot on a ride, a mattress at a flophouse that wasn't lumpy, a half-eaten sandwich found outside a cafe; "boy that emperor really does the trick" and he’d smile and enjoy the hell out of himself. It was just some kind of silly thing he'd say when he really liked something, like it was the tops or some shit.
Because of this he was nickednamed Emperor Trick.
Emperor Trick was one of those fellows who felt it was his duty to look out for other folks. He couldn‘t rest until he knew you were taken care of. Some of these other guys on the rails, they really hoard whatever they find, but Emperor Trick was a little more generous. "I've found good things all my life, why is that going to stop now?"
The others would call us "road kids", but the Emperor simply called us adventurers, saying we were amassing knowledge and experience for when we "went back to college for the fall". We would nod, knowing full well we were going to miss the coming semester. He showed us how to fold a bedroll, eat cattails, and make a "connect" whenever we needed a few dollars. The other hoboes sometimes came down on him for "riding the cushions" every now and then, from some stash they claimed he kept hidden. However, he insisted it was his daughter, who worked at a newspaper in Denver, that sent him the money occasionally.
He had a few great stories about his life before the rails, how he joined the army to fight the war, but it was over before he finished boot camp, and how he saw Europe and almost had a Japanese wife, and how maybe his family was rich at one time. And then there were his hobo stories, brawling brags about outfoxing bulldogs and riding atop boxcars through thunderstorms, stories that must have been mostly true, since they had earned him a reverent position within his community. He had become more like a wise old monk towards these waning years of his life.
We stuck with him for about a month, learning whatever he wanted to teach, looking out for each other, sharing what stories about ourselves we could; but then the rest of us wanted to go to Chicago when he wanted to go to New Orleans, and we amicably parted ways. I did run into him one more time, almost by accident, outside a Waffle House in West Virginia. He look like he lost something. I yelled out to him, "Hey, Emperor Trick! Found a good one yet?" "I know it’s around here somewhere," he said, and went back to looking...
When autumn rolled around I kind of gave up on being a hobo. Just about everyone else had already dropped out, except for Julie, who had a cousin in Albany (yeah, that’s another story). The leaves were turning their much-lauded firework display of colors, which was something I had never seen before, so she and I kept going, wanting to see our epic journey through. I called my parents from Julie’s cousin's house, (I had been giving them dispatches throughout the trip), and they wired me some money and I took the Greyhound back.
I decided to go through Oregon, and got sidetracked in Ashland and almost ended up in an off-season Shakespeare play, but that's another one of those stories I'll leave for later, if I can get myself to writing them. I promised my folks I’d make it back for thanksgiving, honest, and rode back in van with a band, which could have been Nirvana for all I knew back then, and that was the end of my tramping days.
The crazy thing is, years later (did I think I'd ever write anything corny like that?) I was trawling the internet for "retro art" on this pointless project I had assigned myself, when I came across this ad for one of those old private railways from the late forties. There was one line called the Emperor, and there was this satisfied businessman riding coach, and in the ad the guy has this cartoon balloon over his head that says, "ah, that Emperor really does the trick!", and it struck me because I remembered that guy, Emperor Trick; not like I really forgot him, but I didn't think about it much. A lot of other things happened during that time, and that guy was just another character in the mosaic of my adventures.
But now I was hooked, and I kind of got into trying to find out what was up with that saying, and where it came from.
It turns out "ah, that Emperor really does the trick!" was one of those semi-popular advertising slogans that you just don't hear much anymore, like "where's the beef?" or "Boy Howdy!" It belonged to a company, l'Emperor Louisiana Emporium, that was around from after the Civil War up until the mid 50s. They were a family-owned "Manufacturing and Trading Concern" that made its fortune with borax soaps, and freight lines, which explains the train, along with shaving kits and radios and mattresses and foodstuffs... Anything they could get their hands on, actually.
They had developed a pretty good campaign with their " that emperor really does the trick" slogan and variations on it. Kind of like those Burma Shave signs that used to be on the side of the road. It usually underscored the particular product's effectiveness, like "that emperor (mattress) really does the trick", or "that emperor (soap) really does the trick". Othertimes it meant the company itself, and how everything the company produced was right on the money.
Because of this, company was nicknamed "Emperor Trick."
The name was sometimes used derisively by rivals, drawing attention to some sneaky business dealings or union-busting rumors. Most of the time, however, the name was used with pride, alluding to a hand in a card game called tarock, where the player rises from a low rank to the highest office. They even sponsored a dramatic radio program out of Kansas City or Chicago, I found.
When the Depression came along, I guess they got hit pretty hard, because they lost many of their offshoot companies. They managed to keep the soap and the radio show and the freight line going, and struggled along through the decade.
When world war II hit, they apparently came back around. "The Emperor Vs The Emperor" they called it, manufacturing radio tubes and parts for jeeps, and apparently, they landed a laundry soap contract with the Navy. After the War they used their newfound wealth to venture into the early television market, but that was bought out by Zenith or somebody.
The owner’s sons joined the service, one of them was killed as a paratrooper, the other was a supply officer that traveled the globe but never saw any action. When he returned from his tour of duty, he took a shot at running the company for a while, but I from what I could tell he was accused of being a communist sympathizer, like he had read Marx while in Germany or something, because he wanted to make the remaining companies partly owned by the workers themselves. One critic at the time remarked, "the emperor may do the trick, but communism doesn't." The son tried to defend himself his reply was lost to the hysterics of the era. I came across a stilted audio file that went "I am not a communist, I am an American, and this is a country that is for the people and by the people, and should allow the people to determine their own fate and be rewarded for their labors..."
According the rest of the story, under such public scrutiny, he ended up selling what remained of the Emperor companies and kind of dropped out. The railway freight line was the last to go. Some people accused him of actually defecting to Russia, taking his manufacturing expertise with him. But others, including some book from the seventies about robber-barons, claimed he took to traveling cross-country as an itinerant, trying to get in touch with the "this land is your land" crowd.
And the guy just kind of "dropped out"... that's the part I think about the most.
I remember this one time we had caught an empty cattle car going from Kansas to Missouri. The sun was drooping lazily into the west and had set off this incredible violet flare across the horizon. I’ll be goddamned if there weren’t amber waves of grain out there, too. The Emperor was sitting at the open door of the car, dangling his legs over the side. I sat down next to him, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody as happy. He nodded and smiled at me. Nothing else need to be said.
I don't believe he's around anymore, so I guess I'll never find out. But I do know those nights of riding the rails with the Emperor really did the trick.
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