Home of the HomelessRemembering the American Hoboby Wendel James PotterOctober 22, 2006
A couple of weeks ago, I read a newspaper article about the plight of the homeless in the United States. It defined the current state of affairs and focused personally on two chosen subjects and how they are surviving in the face of their extreme conditions.
Then the writer went on to briefly examine the history of the homeless in this country. Among the prime examples noted was the American Hobo.
This is where I part company with the author of that piece. Technically, the Hobo was homeless and, in many cases such as during the Depression, the wanderer was illegally riding the rails in search of a pocket in the jacket of this country where he could dig around and find a job so he could eat and afford living quarters and eventually send money back home that his family might join him in his newfound Paradise.
But the true American Hobo was never necessarily a victim of the System. He - as well as she - hopped a freight and headed in the direction they chose because an inner voice, a spirt of wanderlust, spoke to their hearts.
I came to know and envy the Hobo when I was a youngster, back in Iowa in the 1950s. Back then, both freight and passenger trains whistled constantly along the network of tracks that had been laid out across the state by the toil and sweat of immigrants. As a matter of fact, it was the building of the Milwaukee Road, the East to West railroad that ran across northern Iowa, that drew many of my Irish ancestors to America and eventually to the Midwest.
In Emmetsburg, Iowa, where I was born and lived until I was 10 years old, hoboes were commonplace. The Milwaukee Road intersected with the Rock Island Line on the south side of town so the hobo - or "bum" as we unfairly called these vagabond spirits - had a clear choice of destiny.
At the point of this intersection were four ditches. One ditch was a cattail swamp and two were littered with brush. The fourth, on the southwest corner of the tracks, was thick with weeds and served as a perfect campsite for these roving rail-riders who actually built fires and ate and drank from tin cans (as well as a pint bottle).
It truly was just like in the movies.
In the summer, a bunch of us kids would often wander down the tracks and on more than a few occasions, "Bums' Camp" was occupied. We were small fry and so we would pass the ditch with some trepidation, our mothers' warnings about vicious child-eating tramps ringing in our heads.
One hot afternoon several of my playmates and I spotted a hobo tending a fire and heating a can of beans. He was old and raggedy and appeared innocent enough, so we worked up ample courage to join the old man at his fire.
Fortunately the hobo was as docile as we predicted and we had a fine chat, listening to his open road stories, romantic and adventurous as they whistled through the spaces between his yellow, rotting teeth.
As I recall, there were no lamentations. It was obvious this was a lifestyle he had chosen and had never come to regret.
Forty miles east of Emmetsburg and along what was then the Milwaukee Road is a small town called Britt. Britt, Iowa was then and is to this day the home of the annual Hobo Convention. There is a dramatic pageantry to the occasion that continues to draw visitors - as well as Hoboes - to Britt every August.
The Convention culminates in the yearly crowning of the Hobo King and Queen. While a newer and less hearty breed of American Roamer has infiltrated the Convention over the years, the Britt festival still attracts the surviving Hoboes from yesteryear, those that hopped the boxcars and walked the tracks along the Iowa backdrop nearly fifty years ago.
I don't think of those people as ever having been homeless. In my early days, the economy was good and there were jobs to be had and a college degree was not typically in demand.
These people could have settled down. Some did take on temporary work, just for food or a few bucks. But the urge to wander and have an admiring look at this part of God's world that we call America was too great.
Some men just have to move on. It has nothing to do with laziness or being irresponsible.
Putting the shoe leather to the tracks or catching a midnight freight when it happened to slow down was the Hobo's choice. It was his life.
The Hobo was never homeless as long as he kept to the lay of the tracks. Under the dome of the sun and the moon and the stars the American Hobo couldn't have been more at home.
Copyright 2006 Wendel James Potter
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