The following is excerpted from Jack Albertson’s out-of-print 1975 memoir, Not Your Average Grandpa Joe.
Time was you could kill a drifter and nobody’d bother you. From the years 1925 to 1927, when I was living on the IRT in winter and Central Park in the summer, I subsisted entirely on hobo meat. We had a saying: “Nothing’s as sweet as hobo meat.” And that’s the God’s honest truth. Even when I was flush later on, in those Dancing Verselle Sisters days, I would still occasionally steal off to Central Park and under the cloak of darkness I’d kill and flambé some baseborn hobo.
Reader, I’ll let you in on a little Hollywood gossip—and this should really tickle the bobby soxers out there! How many of you know that Martin Sheen, leading man of screen and stage, is not only a xenophobic, pugnacious tippler, but he also induldges in the hobo meat? That’s right! I could hardly believe it myself. During rehearsals for The Subject Was Roses, Mr. Sheen came up to me and whispered in my ear, “Sally Boy”—for reasons unknown, that’s what he took to calling me—”Sally Boy, I hear you flambé a mean hobo.” I told him those days were behind me, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and one Friday night we set off to the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. When we encountered a hobo we chloroformed him, dragged him behind a bush, and slit his neck. Then Mr. Sheen fired up a portable grill and produced a bottle of cognac. Reader, we dined like kings.
Ah, the salad days!
Tags: flambe, grandpa joe, hobos, jack albertson, martin sheen, the subject was roses, willy wonka
