The Myth
that inspired Ramblin’ Hobo comes from the book, How The Hippies Ruint Hillbilly Music by St. “Wish” Wishnevsky, published in 2007.
In his author’s note, Wish writes:
“All these are true names and stories…Other people’s histories have been midly sanitized to protect their reputations. Mine have not been. Either I had a wilder time than most, or else have no reputation to protect. It makes little difference.
Contributor’s words are in italics and mine are in regualr type. I have not retained the transparency of an historian, because I was involved in the Revival from about 1970 or even earlier and this is as close to a memoir as I am ever liable to write.”
The story goes:
“There were a lots of great bands then, a few of which have survived. I remember “Plank Road”, “The Swamp Cats”, “Hot Mud Family”, “red Clay Ramblers”, “Fast Flying Vestibule” in particular. And of course, the sun center of all that hippie as craziness was “The Green Grass Cloggers”.
What a group! They seemed to exist in a stomping storm of sawdust flying up and perspiation falling down, lots of big smiles and exuberance, and a certain about of healthy substance abuse…
I did see a similar, if not identical, group put twenty hits of acid in a half gallon of Jack Daniels and suck it down and dance it off and be sober again after a half-hour set. A certain old timer, Willard Watson, jealous at being left out of the bottle circle, managed to snag the jug when there was an inch of sludge at the bottom, and made away with it. I saw him a month later, and asked him where he had vanished to. He allowed that he had come over feeling a mite peculiar and had walked home. That was from Fiddler’s Grove to Deep Gap, a distance of some 54 miles, more or less."
Chapter 4 The Dawn of the Hippie, page 35
