May 6, 1999
Irving Stevens, 88, Ex-Hobo,
Inventor of Fly Dope
By Nick Ravo - courtesy of The New York Times
Irving "Fishbones" Stevens, who became a folk hero in
Maine for his tales of hobo life in the 1930s and his
success developing a foul-smelling insect repellent called
Irving's Fly Dope, died at the home of his sister, Dorothy
Glazier, in Pittsfield, Maine, last Tuesday. He was 88
years old.
Stevens, who was born on June 21, 1910, in Surry,
Maine, and lived in Corinna, Maine, picked up the
nickname "Fishbones" as a youth, when he was poor and
hungry.
"He was as thin as a rail," Ms. Glazier said. "So,
everyone called him 'Fishbones.' You could see every
bone in his body."
As many down-and-out men did during the Great
Depression, Stevens hit the road, becoming what was
then known as a hobo. When World War II started, he
joined the Air Force and served as a private. After the
war, he never returned to the hobo life. Instead, he
became a machinist in Maine and Connecticut.
In the early '60s, Stevens, always a tinkerer, developed
Irving's Fly Dope by heating pine tar and adding a few
secret ingredients. The concoction, which he bottled
himself and sold throughout New England, from a car,
was as effective as it was rank, and it remained a staple
of campers and fishermen during black-fly season until
1991, when environmental licensing fees made it too
expensive to produce.
For some men, being the creator of Irving's Fly Dope
might have been enough fame for one life, but in the
1980s, Stevens self-published "Fishbones: Hoboing in the
1930s," a collection of stories about his hobo years. The
book became something of a local sensation.
Stevens wrote two more books, "Mandy's Washtub and
Other Stories" in 1992 and "National King of the Hobos"
in 1997. He was given the ceremonial title King of the
Hobos in 1988, at the annual National Hobo Convention
in Britt, Iowa. Five years later, he crowned one of his
daughters, Constance Hall of Dexter, Maine, as Queen of
the Hobos.
In addition to Ms. Glazier and Ms. Hall, Stevens is
survived by another sister, Sidney Hanscom of West
Palm Beach, Fla.; three sons, James Stevens of Stetons,
Maine, Richard Russell of Worcester, Mass., and Philip
Batchelder of Abbot, Maine; two other daughters,
Brenda Hall of St. Albans, Maine, and Marybeth Cribbs
of Waterville, Maine, and 13 grandchildren.
King of the Hobos, a high-school dropout who became a doctor. He ended
up beaten and left naked in the desert by a murderous mob in collusion
with the police in San Diego while accompanying Emma Goldman on one of
her tours.
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