Mississippi Bones is an entertaining mashup of a train-hopping adventure, time travel, psychedelia, and the quest archetype, told in the guise of fourth grader Jimmy Jameson’s English assignment in small-town Central Texas. The town, Brownwood, is a real place, as is the school, East Elementary, still in use today. I know, because I live just a few blocks away!
When Jimmy decides to hop a freight train one Saturday morning in 1965, he knows the dangers. But he’s just planning a short ride, so what are the chances he’ll run into Mississippi Bones, “the dark godfather king of hobos,” who’s been rumored to haunt the rails with grisly violence for the past century?
Well, you guessed it, Jimmy soon encounters the notorious hobo, who is a man on a mission. Their fateful meeting begins a journey that goes far beyond Jimmy’s, or the reader’s expectations. Before long, Jimmy is initiated into an ancient cult, preparing him for his role as a witness, disciple, and sidekick in Bones’ mission: to rescue and reunite with Bones’ long lost true love, Lucretia.
I can relate. I too was entranced by the passing freight trains out in back of my childhood playground, the run-down Hayes Estate, in 1965 North Hollywood, California. But I didn’t have the nerve to actually climb onto one till I was twice Jimmy’s age. I can vouch for the mind-altering and addictive nature of freighthopping, though I never met a hobo who was an immortal time-traveler, like Mississippi Bones!
At the start of the book, a “Note to Reader” is there to alert you that Jimmy’s language is decidedly NOT woke or politically correct. Some may take offense at words no longer in accepted usage, or object to stereotypical racial speech or portrayals. Taken in their historical and geographical context, these shouldn’t overshadow the story. Jimmy pays equal attention to the mystical and the mundane, physics and metaphysics.
The author describes himself as a “bad kid at large who never really grew up…and doesn’t care,” and also says he’s a behavioral scientist and international self-defense/counter-terrorism consultant. He promises there are more Jimmy Jameson books, or rather “English assignments,” to come.
As previously mentioned, the locales described, in and around Brownwood, are real places and little changed from the 1960’s. The freight trains still roll on by, through Bangs, Santa Anna, and beyond, on the BNSF Houston-Barstow main line. The hobos are mostly gone now, but you can still find the old hobo jungle, just west of the freight yard, where they would wait for trains, on long cool shelves of sandstone, along the shady banks of Adams Branch. Reviewed by Daniel Graham