Executive Hobo: Riding the American Dream - Paperback

by Bo Keeley (Author)

Hobos are America's historic backbone. Reams of books describe how townspeople, and even RR bulls during the Great Depression, helped them get to the fields and orchards to get the crops to market and feed the citizens. The definition of a hobo is a train rider who rides from jobs to kind words and helping hands. He knocks apples in Washington and plucks oranges in California but no longer cuts ice from lakes in Wisconsin. The RR bull turns a blind eye during harvest seasons if the hobo doesn't spend his wages on alcohol and can speak polysyllables on the way to the boxcar. A King of the Road by wit, guile, and grace doesn't lose a finger or end up in jail after decades on the rails. Pretenders seat him in the warmest spot near the campfire to prove himself with stories of the fast freight. An Executive climbs in the business world by making the fastest decisions that are usually right. He comes packed with the hobo traits of intellect, humor, humility, alert drive, brinksmanship, and good cheer in a storm. The meeting place of the King of the Road and the Executive is the American Dream. The King wishes dearly to pursue the financial American dream and the Exec asks himself, "Do I dare to live the American Dream of independent travel?" Executive Hobo proves that reality is sometimes more exciting and inspiring than the best fiction. It is a true story of a King of the Road with a coterie of worldwide entrepreneurial executives--and a few free spirits from other walks of life--along for the rides of their lives.

Author Biography

Steven 'Bo' Keeley is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, former national racquet champion, and has traveled the world... on a wing and a shoestring. "My life has followed the vicissitudes of Buck the Dog in Jack London's Call of the Wild: from comfortable back yards across America; boxcars on every major railroad; 100+ countries under a backpack; hiking the lengths of Florida, Colorado, Vermont, California, Death Valley, and Baja; to retirement in a desert burrow with Sir the Rattlesnake as a doorkeep... and a solar computer to write essays and memoirs." In 2007, he became the first California substitute teacher-most requested by students and faculty-to be fired surrounding a 'playground war.' He left to ride the rails, and then became an itinerant expatriate writing from selective global Shangri-Las including Iquitos, Peru, San Felipe, Baja, and, lately, unspoiled Lake Toba, Sumatra.