"Steamtrain Maury" Graham, five-time King of all the Hoboes, has gone on his final journey.

The 89-year-old vagabond, whose longtime home was Toledo, died Nov. 18. And if you care to believe in one hobo legend, Steamtrain has hitched a ride through the starry sky on a fiery, streaking comet.

The day he told me about the comet, he was recovering from a stroke. He had moved to Napoleon, a few miles from Toledo, the city he always came back to after being seized by his periodic lust to wander. "I'm sitting on the siding until I get well again," he said in his gravely voice.

Steamtrain told me he was waiting for the comet. He said that when the comet flashes across the sky, "I'll hop aboard and ride across the universe, as all hoboes do."

But not then. There was

still another campfire to sit by, another town to visit for Steamtrain, perhaps the best-loved and best-known of all the hoboes who ever jumped on a moving boxcar.

A cement mason by trade, Steamtrain rode the rails for years, mostly in the 1970s. He crossed the land, hopping on and off freight trains and hunkering down with other hoboes around a thousand campfires.

In Toledo, he would climb onto a freight train to Chicago. Or to St. Louis, to Denver, Phoenix, Kansas City. Always, he said, he could count on running into old friends.

In the '90s, beset by strokes and arthritis, he traveled conventionally. Friends helped him get to railroad festivals and hobo "conventions" like the big one in Britt, an Iowa town where hoboes gather.

Five times, he was elected the national King of the Hoboes. Then he was named Hobo King

of the East for life.

When Steamtrain was first elected King in 1973, he took the honor seriously and traveled to veterans hospitals all over America.

"I promised the 'bos I would do that if elected. I visited 34,000 veterans. I went to the hospitals for those poor broken soldiers. I wore what I wear on the road, when I'm riding the trains.

"I was ushered around the hospitals like a dignitary. Those boys might have saw the king come to visit but I didn't try to be anything but a hobo.

"I did not just walk through hospitals. I sat down and I talked to the veterans personally. To get to those cities, I rode the rails, I hitchhiked, and I walked. When I left a hospital, they'd say, 'Can we take you to the airport?' I'd tell 'em, 'No, just drop me off at the rail yards.'•"

Hoboing changed with the times. It still had its characters, just not as many of them, said Steamtrain. "A fellow in the East, named New York Ron, still rides a lot. Another well-known hobo is named Train Doc."

I asked him: A real doctor? "Well, let's say he's well-trained in medicine," Steamtrain said, leaving me to wonder what that meant.

"The guys I rode with are old men now. Or they're gone. But there will always be vagabonds."

Why? I asked. What did you really like best about climbing into a freight car, riding on a wooden floor, eating what food you found, sleeping on the ground in strange places?

"Freedom," he said.

"It was for the freedom to get up in the morning when you feel like it, to go to sleep when you want, to do just what you want to do to go to places you dream about.

"Seeing the country the way I did was a great, great adventure. You know, you could travel America all of your life and never see it all."

That's when I said: Tell me about the comet.

"Well " said Steamtrain. "What happens is, hoboes die, and then they sit by the fire to wait for the comet to come across the sky. When it comes, they jump on and they ride it, before they go on to hell. Or to heaven. Either place.

"In the early 1900s, hoboes talked a lot about Halley's Comet. They knew it would come around in 1910. Some old fellows would say they hoped they could ride it then, before they actually died.

"In hobo legend, 'bos who die can ride that comet up there among the planets. See, all hoboes love the sky because they have slept under the stars so many times. So they dream that they'll get to visit the sky itself before they leave life."

Steamtrain was more than a man who satisfied his wanderlust. He was an articulate spokesman and philosopher of the rails.

"Old hoboes had tough experiences so it's no wonder they liked to spend long peaceful hours by a campfire," he said.

And: "Remember, hoboes are men who left home to wander; they were not homeless men."

And: "The woods is the best healing place. Many men, weighed down by a heavy burden of life and stress of a city, have found peace and healing around a campfire by the side of a river."

It is a good thought to believe that Steamtrain is with his old traveling friends. Now, perhaps he can sit around some great campfire and sip a cup of Joe and tell those old stories of days gone by.

Now, Steamtrain Maury has grabbed his bindle and climbed aboard. As sure as there are hobo legends, he is riding the comet.

Mike Tressler is a former staff writer at The Blade.

First Published November 25, 2006, 5:20 p.m.