It's a slang word for a hick, a bumpkin, a person from the country who is unsophisticated in city ways. It is American slang, early twentieth century. It may possibly derive from the name Ruben.
''Reuben Lucius Goldberg'' was a Jewish American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor. Goldberg is best known for a series of popular cartoons he created depicting complex devices...
Rube Goldberg was a man who did drawings of things like dominoes that knocks over each other and after dominoes you might put a marble that rolls that ends up pushing a car so on and so forth but do...