Hoboes remember A No. 1 in Venango from The Meadville Tribune on Vimeo.

By Ryan Smith

MEADVILLE TRIBUNE

VENANGO TOWNSHIP — Leon Ray Livingston, better known by history as A No. 1, once said he became a hobo out of necessity, and continued because it was the only life he grew to know and love.

In the process, he became King of the Hoboes, traveling and gaining followings throughout the United States. His Depression-era travels with a young Jack London even became the basis for the 1973 film “Emperor of the North.”

Despite all the adventures a hobo’s life may bring, it’s said Livingston never promoted the lifestyle. Instead, he often bought one-way-home tickets for the wayward youngsters — including London — who he met on the rails.

And the Cambridge Springs area was always the one place he called home.

That’s why Kerrick Caldwell decided to host the first-ever A No. 1 Memorial Festival on Saturday at Double D’s Venango Hotel. A Titusville city police officer, Caldwell said it was a midnight-shift conversation about A No. 1 with a colleague that sparked the idea.

Livingston “was a very interesting character from a very difficult time” in American history,” Caldwell said Saturday. “Literally nobody has done anything for him here, and they should.”

During the course of his research into A. No 1 and hobo history, Caldwell said he happened across what is a devoted national community. He met and became friends with Mama Jo (Jo LeCount), a Missouri-based homeless outreach worker who’s been officially dubbed as a Queen of the Hoboes.

Mama Jo and her husband, Hobo Santa, were on hand at the festival, visiting and explaining the history of hobo culture.

The couple is also a common fixture at hobo events around the country, including the yearly National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa. It’s at events like that and Saturday’s festival in Venango, she said, where the public can learn the truth — good and bad — about what’s become one of the country’s most iconic cultures.

While the hobo’s image as a lazy, downtrodden ne’er-do-well has been solidified by popular culture, the truth of the matter, according to Mama Jo, is that a hobo is typically a person who is more than willing to work for a living, but has to travel dangerously far from the comforts of home in order to do so.

Some hoboes, she said, define themselves like this: “A hobo travels and works. A tramp travels but won’t work. A bum neither travels nor works.”