Susan Phillips’ anthropological studies were a recent vintage. Wallbangin’ sought to document the lives of Los Angeles gang members through the graffiti they left behind. It was a real-time cataloguing that sent her around the city, in an effort to decode the intentionally cryptic wall markings.
Beneath a century-old industrial bridge spanning a dry Los Angeles River, she stumbled across a series of scribblings from further back. The oldest had been left on the concrete walls of the river bank not long after bridge was built.
"There's an A-No. 1, dated 8/13/14," she told a reporter on a visit to the site some years later. She highlighted a series of small heart-like symbols accompanying the text. They were actually directions, she explained. "Putting those arrows that way means 'I'm going upriver. I was here on this date and I'm going upriver.'"
It wasn’t a humble nickname, so far as those things go. But A-No. 1 largely lived up to it. Of course, like so many rail travelers of his vintage, we know little of his early exploits beyond his own anecdotes.
Leon Ray Livingston was, thankfully, quite prolific, publishing a dozen books in his lifetime, including 1917’s From Coast to Coast with Jack London. Released a year after the death of the White Fang author, Livingston recounted his exploits with the 18-year-old future novelist, who had personally tracked the famed hobo down.
Before serving as a kind of mentor for a teenage London, Livingston learned the ways of rail life from New Orleans Frenchy, a veteran hobo in his own right, who bestowed the grandiose nickname upon his young apprentice.
“ ‘Every tramp gives his kid a nickname, a name that will distinguish him from all other members of the craft,” Livingston recounted Frenchy’s words in his 1910 debut, Life and Adventures of A-No.-1: America's Most Celebrated Tramp. “ ‘You have been a good lad while you have been with me, in fact been always 'A-No. 1' in everything you had to do, and, Kid, take my advice, if you have to be anything in life, even if a tramp, try to be 'A-No. 1' all the time and in everything you undertake.’”
According to that first memoir of many, Livingston’s life on the rails began on his 11th birthday, when the youth was kicked out school for poor behavior. Born to well-off parents in San Francisco, the youth stole some money from his mother, packed a .22 and some additional cash gifted to him from his uncle for his birthday, before making his way down south.
When he finally returned home, he says his parents had long since died “of a broken heart.”
An early journey found Livingston boarding a commercial ship in New Orleans, bound for Belize and feasting on "roasted baboon.” Over 30 years, he claims to have traveled some 500,000 miles, spending a mere $7.61 on fares. He taught himself to whittle wood, bartering carvings for food. In 1906, he won his freedom from jail over a vagrancy charge by carving a sculpture out of a potato for the chief of police.
Livingston amassed a number of nicknames in his travels. A-No.-1 was also The Rambler, King of the Hobos and The Gentleman Tramp. The latter nickname derived from his rather a-typical habits of refusing to drink, smoke or cuss. He managed to only be spotted recently bathed, freshly shaven and wearing a clean suit.
On his person, Livingston carried copies of his books and a scrapbook detailing his adventures. Laid inside were two $50 bills, mingled with a note from William Howard Taft and the signature of his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt. The souvenirs were on-hand as definite proof of his identity, as countless fellow hobos claimed to be A-No.-1.
Livingston is credited with preserving and popularizing the hobo code that punctuated the scribblings on the banks of the Los Angeles river. No one can say for certain, however, whether the words discovered a century later were actually written by the man himself.
In his final years, he lectured against the vagrant lifestyle he helped to popularize in the American imagination. “[I]t does not pay to lead an idle life of wandering around, bumming one's living,” he explained while still partaking himself.
Livingston eventually swore off life on the road, getting married and helping raise a daughter and son. A grave at Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania notes his legacy with the words, "A-No.1 At rest at last.” Fittingly, the stone does not mark the final resting place of The Rambler, buried beneath a different stone, near his final home in Eerie.
Sources:
Anthropologist Discovers 100-Year-Old Graffiti By 'America's Most Famous Hobo https://www.npr.org/2016/06/11/481695146/anthropologist-discovers-100-year-old-graffiti-by-americas-most-famous-hobo
Anthropologist follows trail of century-old hobo graffiti in LA https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/found-rare-100yearold-hobo-graffiti-etched-into-an-la-bridge
Found: Rare, 100-Year-Old Hobo Graffiti, Etched into an L.A. Bridge https://www.scpr.org/news/2016/05/30/61141/anthropologist-follows-trail-of-century-old-hobo-g/
Erie's King of the Hoboes https://www.eriereader.com/article/eries-king-of-the-hoboes