A Grown-Up Huck Finn: Roger Miller’s Ode to Great Depression I (Photos, Video)

By Nicholas Stix

A work of art can seemingly be set in one generation or place, but actually have a mentality set in a very different one, or even have a floating location.

Aaron Copland and Martha Graham’s ballet, Appalachian Spring (1944), was set, variously, in Pennsylvania, New England, and the Appalachians.

The movie, Suddenly, was set in 1954 in the American Midwest, but its mentality was in Hitler’s Vienna before Word War I.

The narrator of “King of the Road” (Miller) is a grown-up Huck Finn at large, but not riding a river raft on the Mississippi, nor in the 19th century. Instead, he’s bummin’ it in boxcars during the Great Depression. However, Miller never makes that clear, in large part because, had he done that, instead of becoming a gold record and an American standard, the song would have bombed.

It opens with a contemporary phrase, “Trailers for sale or rent,” but immediately departs for a time closer to 1934. The market for trailers was nascent in 1964, but in 1934, it was hardly a thing.

“Rooms to let, 50 cents….” This price wasn’t even realistic in 1964, so why did Miller give it? Because 50 cents was the same as “four bits.” That still doesn’t sound like much, to ears under 60, but the real significance is “two bits.” During Roger Miller’s (1936-1992) childhood in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the phrase “two bits” had a mythic status. It was thrown around in B-Westerns all the time, and was part of the famous song, “Shave and a haircut, two bits!”

According to Reiser, “two bits” derived from the relation between the new U.S. dollar (1792) and Mexican “pieces of eight.”


“Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits! History of ‘Bit’! Spanish Reale! RTHE’s Minutia Minute!” (Reiser’s Treasure Hunting Emporium)



No phone, no pool, no pets,
I ain’t got no cigarettes.

Ah, but, two hours of pushin’ broom,
Buys an eight-by-twelve, four-bit room
I’m a man of means by no means,

King of the road.

Miller’s zinger, “I’m a man of means by no means, King of the road,” was what remained in everyone’s memory, even little kids like me, whose family owned no Victrola, and who only heard Miller on our living room radio, and off of radios in people’s cars and apartments, and stores.

The story proper begins in the third verse, and continues for another two.

Third boxcar, midnight train,
Destination Bangor, Maine,
Old, worn-out suit and shoes,
I don’t pay no union dues.

Third boxcar—this is both a classic reference to hoboing looking for work, and an example of Miller’s mischievous sense of humor. He makes a boxcar sound like a reserved berth.

“Old, worn-out suit and shoes….”

There are thousands of photographs of White men in Depression-era “hobo jungles” dressed that exact way. They surely started out with neckties, but they either wore out, or the men tossed them, in order to protect against a robber strangling them in their sleep, in order to take whatever change was in their pockets, or simply for the pleasure murdering gives some men.

(In early December, 2019, while riding a packed subway train—packed with black supremacists, coming home from the last VDARE Christmas party held, to my knowledge, in New York City, a young black man who thought I didn’t have a right to sit on the train, feigned sleep, shoved an elbow in my ribs, tried to sucker punch me—I watched him closely and blocked his punch—shoved me onto the floor, tried to stomp me to death—I held onto his leg for dear life, and then sought to strangle me with my own necktie—I only realized this when I later tried to take it off, but couldn’t. A tall, attractive, young black women saved my life by wrestling away my would-be killer, who immediately jumped off the train.)

I smoke old stogies I have found,
Short, but not too big around,
I’m a man of means by no means,
King of the road.

I know every engineer on every train,
All of their children, and all of their names,
And every handout in every town,
Every lock that ain’t locked, when no one’s around.

Although in high art—Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and Sturges’ Sullavan’s Travels, the world of hobos riding the rails was was often depicted in nightmarish terms, in American popular culture, that world was romanticized. And to my knowledge, it was never the engineers who were depicted as the bad guys.

“All of their children” has a familiar feel to it. It’s a gift to Christian listeners: “All of God’s children…”

“And every handout in every town,” is a reference to the soup kitchens which were ubiquitous during Great Depression I. By 1964, said institution had almost completely disappeared, and so Miller had to come up with yet another euphemism.

“Every lock” is another instance of Miller’s puckish humor. During Great Depression I, that would have been a harmless, White sneak thief. By 1964, it would be a very dangerous black criminal, capable of anything.

I sing, trailers for sale or rent,
Rooms to let, 50 cents,
No phone, no pool, no pets,
I ain’t got no cigarettes.

“No phone, no pool, no pets” is a rare contemporary reference. During Great Depression I, nobody would have expected a room with a phone, or a motel pool, or pets being permitted. (See Capra and Riskin’s It Happened One Night (1934), which wrung often hilarious humor out of being very realistic in that, as in so many other matters.)

Ah, but, two hours of pushin’ broom,
Buys an eight-by-twelve four-bit room,
I’m a man of means by no means,
King of the road.

Trailers for sale or rent,
Rooms to let, 50 cents,
No phone, no pool, no pets, I ain’t got no cigarettes
Ah, but, two hours of pushin’ broom buys…

“an eight-by-twelve four-bit room”: I spent two years (1976-1978) of splendid misery in a room that size, in Loch Sheldrake, N.Y., while attending Sullivan County Community College, by far the finest educational institution to which I was ever confined. However, I paid $100 a month rent, which comes out to three dollars and change per night. But as I said, Miller wasn’t striving for accuracy; he just wanted to smuggle in that beautiful, American phrase of coinage, “bits.” Besides which, two hours pushin’ broom might just have covered a room like mine.

Thank you, Huck. Thanks, Roger. And thank you, Mr. Clemens.


“King of the Road” (1964): Live Performance