Tramps and other characters

[BlueTrain]

Today we have so-called homeless people who live under bridges or in the woods. But when I was little, in the 1950s, there were real tramps or hobos as well as local characters who drifted around town, scaring horses and little kids like me. I never heard anyone called homeless.

One person in particular wore a suit--he probably had just one--and a necktie and cap, so he was fully dressed, if not exactly decently dressed. His name was Claude Long, which became a local synonym for someone wearing ragged and dirty clothes. He wore a dozen pins on his jacket, meaning campaign buttons, and was never cleanly shaved. I do not know how he made a living but he would collect "pop" bottles for the deposit. I suspect that such a character would not be tolerated where I live now.

We were a railroad town and I believe there were woods near the tracks where men traveling the rails would stop over for a while. We also had people going door to door asking for a handout, sometimes displaying a little dog-eared card that said they were deaf and dumb or something like that. Nowadays, the only people going door to door are either Mormons, home remodeling people or people from outside of town selling "far wood." Times change.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We have a lot of homeless people here -- there's a camp down on the waterfront, near a steel-fabrication factory, made of tents, shacks, and lean-tos. In the Era this would've been called a "Hooverville" or a "jungle." Homelessness in the Depression was a very real thing -- there were New York city schoolteachers in 1932 who lived in a hole in the ground covered with a tarp. Hooverville would've been a step up for such people.

Hobo culture during the Era, however, was a very different thing from homelessness. Hobos were itinerant laborers who'd ride the rails from town to town looking for work, and would move on to the next town on the line when the job was completed. They had a coherent, distinctive culture and language, and even published their own nationally-distributed newspaper, "The Hobo News," to keep up with developments of interest to the Traveling Fraternity, as they called themselves. Some hobos maintained "winter quarters" in the South where they'd live during the cold months before hitting the rails again before the spring.

Tramps weren't hobos -- they didn't travel by rail, and they were more inclined to begging than hobos, who never asked for handouts unless they absolutely couldn't find work. Tramps weren't bums, either -- a "bum" was a vagrant who was usually unable or unwilling to work, often as a result of chronic alcoholism or "shell shock" picked up during the First World War.

"Bum" was also used affectionately to refer to the Brooklyn National League Baseball Club, as represented in cartoon form by Williard Mullin.

The most memorable "street person" of my own youth was a fellow who everybody called "Donny Toot Toot." He was a jolly alcoholic who stumbled around town in an old yellow raincoat panhandling downtown shoppers and rummaging thru trash cans for deposit bottles. After several years of this he'd accumulated enough to buy an old rust-bucket of a car which he drove -- or swerved -- thru town yelling TOOT TOOT out the window. Apparently the horn didn't work.

Donny came to a sad end -- he was found dead in the woods one cold fall day -- and nobody ever knew his real story. He was in his 60s or 70s when he died in the early 1980s, but beyond that he was an enigma.

 

[BlueTrain]

Things like this are part of our memory but never quite make it up to the nostalgia level. I imagine people like this existed everywhere on the fringes of society, at least in this country. To a young boy like myself, there was never anything romantic or appealing about them. They didn't look exactly threatening but not exactly non-threatening, either. But then, we did have carnivals and one-ring circuses come to town and I never wanted to run away with them, either. A circus person would take offense at being mentioned in the same sentence as a carny, no doubt.

There were also a couple of drunks I saw frequently, passing by the front of the house as I sat on the porch swing. There were really only two and they did not drive to their favorite taverns. Neither did they apparently patronize the same "beer joint" either because they routinely went a different way. There was a steep hill across the street from where I lived, which was technically a street but much too steep to be paved. One would come home that way and stumble and fall and roll all the way down the hill. The other, who was a power company linesman and typically dressed in breeches and high climbing boots, merely staggered down the street going the other way, toddlin' hame.

These were some of the sights I saw while I was still in high school.

 

[emigran]

Thanks Lizzie for the Hobo Era distinctions... Had a fake uncle who would ride the rails and was quite a chef with one pan. There was one fellow named Charlie in the neighborhood of my youth (early to mid fifties). we were told he was harmless and poor fellow... seem to remember his always wearing green fatigue like baggy pants... he would always "play" with us briefly while making a "gun" shape his hand and shouting POW at us as we passed... wouldn't see him all the time and wondered where he went but he always came back...

Lots of GE movies abut the Hoboes... My Man Godfrey comes to mind as a Hollywood glamorization with a Hobo City complete with makeshift shacks and smoking chimneys and hanging laundry lines...and depiction of the pervasive simple integrity of Hobo Culture.

Today it's See Something... Say Something.

 

[BlueTrain]

The best movie I can recall that involved a hobo was "A hobo's Christmas," which was a TV movie but I think it's available on DVD now. It's nearly 30 years old now. It did not in any way glamorize or romanticize the life of a hobo. Instead it was rather sad and touching. Basically it's about a man who abandoned his family and takes to the rails, then shows up one Christmas many years later to visit his son and his family. One of the memorable lines in the movie is, "I was a hotel man in a motel world."

I see a few panhandlers hanging around street corners near where I work with their pathetic hand-lettered cardboard signs. I believe it was Thoreau who said the poor are not so much hungry, cold and naked so much as they are dirty, ragged and gross.

 

[Stearmen]

Sadly, we get a lot of homeless people here when ever the economy goes down hill in the old rust belt. They have all been told our roads are lined with gold. Truth is, our roads are paved with low grade asphalt, with lots of pot holes!

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

When I was a boy in Kalamazoo, MI, one year the town hosted a convocation of the Knights of the Road, i.e. hobos. The president of the convocation was interviewed and he explained some definitions. "Hobos" were migratory workers. "Tramps" were migratory nonworkers. "Bums"were stationary nonworkers. Hobos of course considered themselves the elite.

In the Depression there were many thousands of hobos, mostly just good men looking for work. My mother told me about her uncle, a prosperous man in my little ancestral town of Kenedy, TX., who rejoiced in the wonderful name of Boyleston McGoldrick. Throughout the hard years men would appear looking for food. He always accommodated them, but they always had to do some chore. My mother said that house had the best-mowed lawn and the biggest stacks of chopped firewood in town. My great-aunt Leona told him they should just feed the poor souls, they didn't need all that wood or yard work. Uncle B. said, "You have to leave a man his pride."

Incidentally, during Prohibition Uncle B. was the town bootlegger. I wish I could have known him better, but he died when I was about 5.

 

[GHT]

The best movie I can recall that involved a hobo was "A hobo's Christmas," which was a TV movie but I think it's available on DVD now. It's nearly 30 years old now. It did not in any way glamorize or romanticize the life of a hobo. Instead it was rather sad and touching. Basically it's about a man who abandoned his family and takes to the rails, then shows up one Christmas many years later to visit his son and his family. One of the memorable lines in the movie is, "I was a hotel man in a motel world."

Emperor of the North is a 1973 film directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine and Keith Carradine. The film is about hobos during the 1930s and is set in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is based loosely, on the books: The Road, by Jack London.

We had tramps in the UK, most predominantly in the 50's, my father told me that they were war damaged and to treat them respectfully. They would do work in agriculture, like harvesting potatoes before mechanisation, or hedging, the cutting back and securing hedgerows to prevent livestock from escaping. We had a local tramp who pushed a pram everywhere. it was his 'home.' He kept his tools and clothing in it. I've no idea where these men slept, probably The Salvation Army hostel. Despite my father's instructions about respect, those tramps always spooked me.

 

[BlueTrain]

There is such a thing as migrant workers and I doubt they consider themselves hobos. Some of them have families. They seem to be essential in certain seasonal occupations in agriculture. I suppose there is considerable precedent in herding or ranching for work to be seasonal. Likewise, some kinds of work involved working in one location until the work ran out, then moving on to another location. That was typical for logging and ultimately true for various kinds of mining. Miners and loggers would live in camps, too, and stay there as long as there were trees to be logged or something in the ground to be dug out and carried away. I can think of several places where I'm from that were at one time bustling mining camps and now scarcely a trace remains that they ever existed.

 

[BlueTrain]

I forgot to mention Gypsies. I barely recall some camped just outside of town. I was told they were Gypsies, anyway.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Migrant workers are still very common here -- the majority of hired farm laborers in Maine are migrants. if you eat Maine blueberries, there's a pretty good chance they were raked by migrants, and migrant labor is also heavily used on potato and broccoli farms up north. Quite a large number are brought in from Haiti or other Carribbean countries, and some come from the American South.

There is also an extensive history of labor abuse connected with these migrants. Maine's former "Egg King" Jack DeCoster had a very long rap sheet of labor violations dating back decades involving migrant laborers forced to work under slave-like conditions. He finally went to prison -- not for his labor abuses, but for knowingly selling tainted eggs.

 

[tonyb]

...

There is also an extensive history of labor abuse connected with these migrants. Maine's former "Egg King" Jack DeCoster had a very long rap sheet of labor violations dating back decades involving migrant laborers forced to work under slave-like conditions. He finally went to prison -- not for his labor abuses, but for knowingly selling tainted eggs.

At least he had some consistency of character.

 

[LizzieMaine]

At least he had some consistency of character.

I don't bandy the word "evil," but having followed his career since the 1970s, there is no other appropriate word to describe the man.

 

[BlueTrain]

I spent a summer working on a tobacco farm just outside of Amherst, Mass., just after I finished high school. It was shade-grown tobacco used for cigar wrappers. The farm hired high school kids for a couple of month's work back then. I doubt they do that anymore. The pay was low but it was otherwise an interesting experience. It was entirely manual work for us, picking tobacco. That kind was picked leaf by leaf.

 

[EngProf]

When I was a boy in Kalamazoo, MI, one year the town hosted a convocation of the Knights of the Road, i.e. hobos. The president of the convocation was interviewed and he explained some definitions. "Hobos" were migratory workers. "Tramps" were migratory nonworkers. "Bums"were stationary nonworkers. Hobos of course considered themselves the elite.

In the Depression there were many thousands of hobos, mostly just good men looking for work. My mother told me about her uncle, a prosperous man in my little ancestral town of Kenedy, TX., who rejoiced in the wonderful name of Boyleston McGoldrick. Throughout the hard years men would appear looking for food. He always accommodated them, but they always had to do some chore. My mother said that house had the best-mowed lawn and the biggest stacks of chopped firewood in town. My great-aunt Leona told him they should just feed the poor souls, they didn't need all that wood or yard work. Uncle B. said, "You have to leave a man his pride."

Incidentally, during Prohibition Uncle B. was the town bootlegger. I wish I could have known him better, but he died when I was about 5.

No matter how sympathetic you might be to a hobo's plight, it wouldn't be wise to hire one to cut your grass or chop wood in the modern world. If they cut off a toe they would sue you for a million bucks...

 

[sheeplady]

My grandfather was homeless at 12. My great-grandfather was an alcoholic and threatened to kill my grandfather if he ever came back. My grandfather eventually found a mechanic who took my him in. My grandfather got a meal everyday but Sunday, learned a trade, and was allowed to sleep on the shop floor in return for working 6 days a week. He was also responsible for procuring coal to heat the shop.

My grandfather joined a gang that helped him to steal coal. The rival gangs would go into the coal yard and throw "coal fights" where most of the coal went over the fence. The kids would then end the fight before the police got there and go pick up the coal.

Later my grandfather signed up for the CCC. His parents still got the money that was sent home. I think my grandfather thought it would help his siblings and mother he left behind.

For my grandfather, learning to be a mechanic helped him immensely in adulthood. When he was drafted, he worked as a mechanic, avoiding the infantry. It helped him stateside to advance to foreman at the mill and he ran his own shop nights and weekends.

But being homeless, in part, led him to perpetuate the cycle of abuse on my mother.

 

[sheeplady]

There is also an extensive history of labor abuse connected with these migrants. Maine's former "Egg King" Jack DeCoster had a very long rap sheet of labor violations dating back decades involving migrant laborers forced to work under slave-like conditions. He finally went to prison -- not for his labor abuses, but for knowingly selling tainted eggs.

My paternal grandparents owned a farm near lake Ontario, in "fruit country" (mostly cherries) in the 1930s through 1959. They used migrant labor, who were largely African Americans who worked from sun up to sun down. My grandfather found out that the 25 cents he paid per worker, only 10 cents went to the worker, 15 went to the foreman/ company. I have no idea what decade that was, but they stopped using migrants after that.*

My grandmother taught many former and some current migrant children in school. She taught special ed. Most were placed there because it turns out that children who are constantly uprooted have difficulty learning material and/ or developmental and behavioral issues.

*(I am pretty sure the story is told as 25 cents per day, but this is all second hand to me)

 

[Stearmen]

There is such a thing as migrant workers and I doubt they consider themselves hobos. Some of them have families. They seem to be essential in certain seasonal occupations in agriculture. I suppose there is considerable precedent in herding or ranching for work to be seasonal. Likewise, some kinds of work involved working in one location until the work ran out, then moving on to another location. That was typical for logging and ultimately true for various kinds of mining. Miners and loggers would live in camps, too, and stay there as long as there were trees to be logged or something in the ground to be dug out and carried away. I can think of several places where I'm from that were at one time bustling mining camps and now scarcely a trace remains that they ever existed.

There are other types of migrant workers, those that fallow the sun. One of my neighbors is in, what they call the plaster business, that's stucco to you and me. They work here during the Summer, then head South in the winter, leaving the family at home. Nice people. On a funny note, the house they bought was the worst on the street, after they got through plying their trade, two tone stucco and real veneer stone, they now have a house that is probably to nice for the neighborhood!

 

[AmateisGal]

There are other types of migrant workers, those that fallow the sun. One of my neighbors is in, what they call the plaster business, that's stucco to you and me. They work here during the Summer, then head South in the winter, leaving the family at home. Nice people. On a funny note, the house they bought was the worst on the street, after they got through plying their trade, two tone stucco and real veneer stone, they now have a house that is probably to nice for the neighborhood!

Growing up in western Nebraska, we had migrant workers from Mexico who came up every summer to hoe the beet fields. I remember we stored a few things for one family one summer - and they gave my dad a bottle of tequila with the worm. Funny I still remember that. A lot of those migrant families stayed and there is a large Hispanic population in western Nebraska today because of it.

RE: the homelesss...I work downtown and there are three or four guys who panhandle at the four corners of an intersection literally every single day. They hold up their cardboard signs and just stare at you as you walk past. It's unnerving.

 

[tonyb]

I don't bandy the word "evil," but having followed his career since the 1970s, there is no other appropriate word to describe the man.

Looks like the sort to give free enterprise a bad name.

I have the misfortune of knowing a similar personality. Knowing him as I do, I am convinced that about the only thing keeping him from stooping as low as your Mr. DeCoster is the knowledge that he couldn't get away with it.

We'd all prefer a world where people didn't need the prospect of penalty to do right by their fellows. But that world scarcely resembles the world I know.