HOBOIntroduction by Andy HoboTraveler.com
Hoboes is a name coined
for men and women, but almost exclusive men that travel as migrant workers or
left their friends and family in the depression or after wars when there was no
work for them in their home cities. They either in many ways left to go look for
a job or just to avoid the stress and strains of life in a family where they
could no support their families because there was no jobs. They would maybe jump
on a train, and ride in a boxcar to the next city to find a temporary job where
they was building a large building, or some other temporary job like picking
strawberries for the season.
Hoboes do not like to be
labeled or to have people talk for them, they are an independent lot and they
really do not fit into an categories. The ones that actually call themselves
Hoboes have a sort of code of the road that they adhere to or are aware of, and
this code is some ways enforced or not enforced. The Hobo is penniless and poor,
and lives by his or her wits from a day to day existence and the future is not
important because they have to normally make the cheap choice, and not the best
choice. They are pragmatic and accept the reality that they are not rich and
they must accept the way they must travel from place to place.
There is a love of Hoboes
for the trains. Train hopping is almost synonymous with being a Hobo and
although there is no hard cored connection that says a Hobo must travel by
train, it is the customary or common way for a Hobo to travel. In the early
years of transportation in the USA the easiest, quickest, and most convenient
way to travel was by rail so there became a Hobo culture that had its community
centered around the trains and living close to the railway. They would set up
camps close to train tracks and live in these camps waiting for the next train,
or working at a local job, and ready to leave whenever they heard the sound of
the train whistle.
Life for the Hobo was
harsh, and brutal in many ways, it was not the life for the weak of will, or the
person that could not tolerate some bad conditions. They did what they had to do
to survive and this was not always the best of ways. A Hobo was in many ways a
good family man that ran astray and did not know how to compete in the world of
normal jobs, and especially when the ravages of war or the depression took away
their jobs, and threw them into the road. So there is a resourcefulness to the
idea of being a Hobo that says you will survive by doing what you have to do.
Hoboes were both loved
and hated by people. Maybe there is the "but for the grace of God, there goes I"
mentality, and back to the basic idea of human nature. People take care of each
other in the end. If the time really get bad, and there is a common bound of
misery, or poverty people can share, but they can also be cruel and mean. Life
is not always so good for the Hobo, you do not just fit in like the rest of the
people, and how do you ever get up to normal standards of the community by
getting a good shower, a clean bed and cloths when you are living in boxcars or
traveling for days, and the last meal you had was not remembered clearly.
Hobo is almost
exclusively used by the American culture and small amounts by the British,
Australian, or New Zealand cultures. Basically it is an American originated word
and adopted or utilized by other English speaking countries. It is part of
Americana and the world of being a rag muffin immigrant land where people had
traveled to for the dream of golden streets, and land of plenty, but there was
not always a way to live. The American dream although not achieved by the Hobo,
was still professed, and understood at it more essential end. Being a Hobo in
America was about the ability to claim the American dream in the end by saying,
I be Hobo, I be FREE
So the love of freedom
and the wonder or wanderlust of the Hobo as led them to explore the places the
rest of the world did not go and often did not want to go, but also help them to
understand real freedom.
I did no justice to the
Hobo, and I am just 