A Poetic Hobo

In American though the notion of the loner, the rambling man is as ingrained in our culture as that notion of the American Dream. Melville "Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and brining up the rear of every funeral I meet...the I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can" to Kerouac "I'd often dreamed of going West to see the country, always planning and never tkaing off" to Dennis Hopper's line in Easy Rider "What the hell is wrong with freedom? That's what it's all about", Americans long for the expanse before them. To no longer be trapped in cubicles and subway commutes but rather to see the open road. Yet this open road is nothing more than a collection of corporate America. I quote the musicain Guy Forsyth "I remember hearing songs about trains and feeling the rush of wonder that the world was both infinite and accessible all at the same time. Then is was songs about highways and born to be wild and little red corvette and the road went on forever in my mind. But not its clogged with stinking SUVs and two story pickup trucks that can climb over anything but the two story pickup truck right in front of it. Now even the Highways look the same, Starbucks and 7-11s and Wal-Mart’s line the feeder roads" It is against this backdrop that we find our young hero, Kenneth Flannery, who, burdened with debts from student loans from a college that promised him the world and credit card debt came about through the speculative excesses that accompany both wall street and online poker. He is the embodiment of the "Get Rich Quick" ethos that is the hallmark of our generation. Now embittered by corporate America's rigid structure he sets forth to conquer the world one couch at a time, hoping to prove that one can, as Thoreau so eloquently wrote so many years ago "When he has obtained those things which are the necessary to life, there is another alternative to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now...I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them"