Thomas Michael Kromer was an American writer, mostly known for his Waiting for Nothing, a semi-autobiographical novel of vagrant or hobo life during the Great Depression.
11 Facts About Tom Kromer
1.
2.
Tom Kromer was born and raised in Huntington, West Virginia, the oldest of five brothers, and he had at least two sisters.
3.
Tom Kromer's mother was Grace Thornburg, and his father was Michael Albert Kromer, an immigrant from Russia who worked as a coal miner and glass blower.
4.
Tom Kromer wrote his novel after five years of living as a hobo, riding trains and traveling across the United States.
5.
Tom Kromer spent time at Camp Skull Creek, Camp Murpheys, Fort MacArther, and Camp Halls Flat.
6.
Tom Kromer published short stories in Pacific Weekly, founded and edited by Lincoln Steffens, and an unfinished novel about coal mining and glass blowing, Michael Kohler, a section of which he adapted as a short story for the American Spectator.
7.
Tom Kromer married Jeannette Smith in 1936 while he was being treated for tuberculosis and she for rheumatic heart disease in Albuquerque.
8.
Tom Kromer stopped writing in the 1940s, became a recluse, and lived as an invalid in Albuquerque.
9.
Tom Kromer died there in 1969 and was buried at Spring Hill Cemetery in Huntington in a family plot.
10.
Except for a few stories, Tom Kromer said the incidents in the novel were autobiographical.
11.
Structurally, streaks of Tom Kromer's Waiting for Nothing are evident in the short stories of Pancake.