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"Jeremiah The Amish Hobo is laying the foundation for a hobo's university along the banks of the Mississippi, just north of downtown Saint Louis." This is not the first sentence of a great American novel, but a caption underneath one of DJ Denim's Flickr photos. Jeremiah the Amish Hobo is a real man, with real plans for a hobo university (those are his hands, holding blueprints -- or maybe green-and-blackprints? -- above). Jeremiah has set up camp at the old Artica site, in the Cotton Building, on the near North Riverfront, "just north of First and O'Fallon Streets."
DJ Denim reports:
"From what I gathered in our exchange, Jeremiah wants to bring together the skills and knowledge of country folk, the Amish for example, with the resources of the city. He talked about living simply for the earth, that the hobo lifestyle has much to teach our society about how to utilize increasingly limited resources.
He wants to give a voice to homeless (but he does not like that word - he prefers Hobo, which apparently comes from the term "homeward bound". Bikes and bike trailers are an important piece of the university, as they will empower folks without the resources to own a car to be mobile and acquire the recyclable castoff stuff needed to build the university, while reaching out to a wider geographical area.
The plan also includes urban farming, and reintroducing basic human knowledge to a generation that may be the first in history to not know how to feed themselves without supermarkets and microwaves.
All of this is wrapped up in a rather lighthearted approach, with humor and art as the platform for spreading the word. When I spoke with him, Jeremiah seemed to be all there. He has chosen to come to Saint Louis (fairly recently) to establish this operation. I think he knows what he is doing, and I just want to lend what help I can by introducing Hobo University to those who might be curious via Flickr, etc. I have always found Saint Louisans to be a welcoming people, so if you are interested enough to still be reading this, go say Hi!"
Jeremiah is just the sort of fellow who would have attracted the attention of The New Yorker's Joseph Mitchell, who was famous for his meticulous, lyrical profiles of offbeat characters -- the bottle blonde in the movie ticket booth, the couple living in a cave in Central Park, the most colorful of the Bowery bums. Perhaps I'm manufacturing a memory, but I remember Mitchell saying that he was trying to record an older, more eccentric New York that was dispappearing under the radioactive glare of the TV set. Scratch down a point for civilization that the tube hasn't managed to completely erase such things from our culture.
I'm thinking I may have to don my Mitchellesque porkpie hat and go down to the river's shore to talk to Jeremiah myself; first of all, I want to know what attracted him to our city (DJ Denim notes that he has "chosen" St. Louis, not that he landed here like a piece of flotsam). And I'd like to hear his thoughts on urban farming, too; where does he see the plots going in? And how will he recruit his hobo professors, and what exactly will they teach? I also happen to have, oddly enough, extra green and black paint which I could donate to his cause -- perfectly color-coordinated with his schematic drawings! --Stefene Russell
