Hobo definition series#

The reasoning behind some of the signs can easily be deciphered, such as a top hat denoting the home of a gentleman, or a crude skull and bones to mean “doctor.” A dipper, inverted or upright, was a temperance symbol - up for acceptance and down and sobriety.Ī simple encircled “X” was the high sign pointing the way to a sure handout.īut the origin of other signs by 1963 had been lost in the chalk-dust of time. Often they also would chalk down a symbol that showed a community’s attitude toward strong drink. They also would pass on advice on campsites and expected conduct.

Hobo definition series#

And a bum is a non-migratory non-worker.”Ĭharlie didn’t work, and he stayed in New Orleans.īut for traveling members of the fraternity, life could hold a series of crises that could be particularly challenging.Īs a result, fellow wanderers developed a way to tip off comrades to things such as the presence of mean dogs, kindly ladies and the law. Years earlier, he provided a definition of the difference between a tramp, a hobo and a bum. More than a year earlier, one of the nation’s better-known bums, “Charlie the Mole,” died in New Orleans. “During hard times, there were considerably more transients, just travelers who’d accept a job now and then to make ends meet and who didn’t particularly care where they went.” The story quoted Tampa Police Chief Neil Brown as saying there were few true hobos left in 1963. But in the language of the national economy, it could mean that hard times are here again.īack in the difficult 1930s, signs of that nature were so commonplace in some small towns that youngsters could describe several of them. In the language of the person who put it there, it means that a kind-hearted woman lives in your house. That article suggests to the reader: Suppose you step out of the house some morning and discover, chalked on your doorstep, a drawing that looks like a cross between a benign tabby-cat and a sausage.

The Herald noted that most of the markings described by Johnson could then still be seen along the east side of Plainview. That article, published on March 28, 1963, relied heavily on a story by Ed Johnson in the Tampa Tribune. In 1963, the Herald offered a look at the fading “hi” signs of hoboism, which once could be seen in close proximity to railroads. To help out fellow travelers on their journey, hobos often would leave behind taletell markings to point the way to homes which had a reputation for generosity, as well as places where vagabonds should give a wide berth. “That’s because the man of the house would usually answer the front door, but the woman of the house would answer the back, and be more likely to have something to feed them.” “They always would come to the back instead of the front,” she recalls. She remembers hobos and vagabonds coming to their house from time to time, asking for a sandwich or other morsel of food. La cultura hobo, soprattutto in una seconda fase, trova però molti praticanti anche tra i giovani irrequieti spinti non dalla necessità quanto da un'istanza libertaria, da un'insofferenza verso la cultura mainstream e da uno spirito ribelle e tardo romantico espresso, ad esempio, da scrittori hobo come Jack London e come il padre della Beat Generation Jack Kerouac che renderanno mitica questa cultura.My mother, Barbara Mickey McDonough, grew up across the street from The Groves during the worst part of the Depression - first in the 100 block of Date Street and later at 201 Cedar. La cultura hobo nasce negli Stati Uniti, alla fine dell'800, coinvolgendo soprattutto disoccupati ed orfani che viaggiano per gli Stati Uniti svolgendo lavori stagionali ed imbarcandosi clandestinamente sui treni merci alla ricerca di avventura. Un Hobo è un vagabondo che adotta in maniera tendenzialmente volontaria uno stile di vita senzatetto improntato alla semplicità, al viaggio, all'avventura, alla ricerca interiore, alla marginalità, svolgendo talvolta lavori occasionali.

Hobo culture, especially in a second phase, finds many practitioners even among the restless youths driven not by necessity but by a libertarian instance, by an insight into mainstream culture and a rebellious and late romantic spirit expressed, for example, hobo writers such as Jack London and Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation father who will make this culture mythical. Hobo culture was born in the United States at the end of the eighteenth century, involving mostly unemployed and orphans traveling to the United States doing seasonal jobs and embarking clandestinely on freight trains in search of adventure. Hobo A Hobo is a vagabond who tends to voluntarily adopt a homeless lifestyle characterized by simplicity, travel, adventure, inner search, marginality, sometimes occasional work.