Decide Your Own Life

[00:00] Now is the time of the week where we get to put our collective brains together and solve
[00:10] a problem that one of us is having, or answer a question maybe that one of us is having.
[00:15] Coalson, you this week have an under-googable for us, is that correct?
[00:21] I've got, I constantly have problems, thanks for setting me up that way.
[00:28] You and me both, brother.
[00:41] We're doing under-googables.
[00:42] That was the play of super excited, told us we had to, so we signed up for it.
[00:52] In the end, it's going to be better and more true than Google can give you.
[00:56] So I went to my friend, and I said, how many homeless people do you see a day?
[01:04] And he said zero.
[01:05] And I said, my over-under is like eight and a half.
[01:09] Okay.
[01:10] And he said, what's the half?
[01:13] So that's a good question.
[01:16] I was setting a betting line, but it was, but what's, I don't know what half a hobo is.
[01:20] Oh wait.
[01:20] So that's the question.
[01:22] Where did we get the term hobo?
[01:24] What is that coming?
[01:24] Is it short for something?
[01:26] Um, am I allowed to say it anymore because I'm not allowed to say bum.
[01:30] I'm not allowed to say, uh, um, you know, um, most things, apparently, um, this is,
[01:38] this is why the liberals eat themselves alive, but hey, um, it is a person
[01:44] experiencing homelessness, having a fight instead of a bum fight.
[01:48] Um, and a hobo is somebody who is from Hoboken.
[01:54] I don't know.
[01:54] Look, man, you're talking about liberals this way is making
[01:56] me feel really uncomfortable.
[01:58] Uh, if I could just give you a walk back a little bit.
[02:03] So no, I'd like to know, like, where do we come up with this term?
[02:07] Is it a shortening for something?
[02:08] I have no idea.
[02:09] Sure.
[02:09] Yeah.
[02:10] I mean, so hobo to me, it seems much more old timey than, uh, like it's
[02:17] not a term that we use in the regular parlance these days.
[02:20] Right.
[02:21] Um, and my immediate, uh, sort of impression is it's associated with
[02:30] trains, like people hopping trains and, and either getting out of
[02:36] Dodge or trying to get back to some place.
[02:40] It can imply homeless, but that's not the primary thing.
[02:46] Right.
[02:46] Exactly.
[02:47] Yeah.
[02:48] It's like somebody that is almost like a stowaway, but on trains and like,
[02:55] do they have, uh, all of their possessions in a, uh, sack on a pole?
[03:01] There's a name.
[03:01] Yeah.
[03:01] So that is the, that is the artist, uh, rendition.
[03:05] Yeah.
[03:05] What does that thing call them?
[03:06] I forget.
[03:06] Do you?
[03:07] Don't I want to go so bad though.
[03:10] You can't Google it till it's over loud.
[03:13] It's time to Google.
[03:14] Yeah.
[03:14] Like this sack, it's not even sack on a stick.
[03:16] It's like you have your stuff in a bandana around a stick.
[03:24] So what is it called?
[03:25] Uh, anyway, um, hobo, I don't know.
[03:30] Hobo seems like a term that is a shortening.
[03:32] Right.
[03:32] This is my question.
[03:33] I feel like it's a shortening of something and homeward bound home, homeward bound.
[03:39] I mean, potentially hobo just as much sense for me.
[03:43] Yeah.
[03:43] Hobo can make just as much sense.
[03:45] Yeah.
[03:46] Homeward bound is actually, well, I think we've already figured it out.
[03:50] I don't know if we have at all.
[03:53] They got on a train cause they're homeward bound, but why would they
[03:56] have a home if they're a hobo?
[03:58] Well, again, I don't think that homelessness is the defining
[04:01] characteristic characteristic of a hobo.
[04:05] I think it's secondary.
[04:07] I think that being on the rails and like maybe going from job to job or like,
[04:13] right, trying, trying to seek out opportunity is like the primary thing.
[04:20] I mean, I think of this as like, yeah, very like depression era nomenclature.
[04:27] I'm curious whether it was something.
[04:30] Sure.
[04:31] Yeah.
[04:31] 20s, 30s.
[04:33] My question is whether it was something that, you know, you said it's something
[04:37] that, you know, when did we start saying this?
[04:39] Well, did we, or they, right?
[04:41] Or who decided that this was the term, right?
[04:45] Was it, you know, the people who were actually living this lifestyle,
[04:48] or is it like, you know, the people trying to outlaw.
[04:54] Well, I mean, I think what we've learned over the era is that someone
[04:58] usually puts a name on someone in a derogatory way.
[05:03] And then the, that group tends to reclaim it.
[05:07] Yeah.
[05:07] Yeah.
[05:07] That's probably, um, so I would assume that, yeah, I would assume that this
[05:12] group reclaimed it and is fine with hobo as a term, um, but I don't know.
[05:18] But that's my guess.
[05:20] It's a solid guess.
[05:21] I, if I'm making this up or is there, is there a connection between
[05:25] hobos and clowns, like, is that a thing?
[05:27] Hobo, the clown is definitely a thing.
[05:30] No, no, no, no, no.
[05:31] It's not hobo, the clown.
[05:33] It's Bobo, the clown, Bilbo, the clown, uh, ho ho ho, the clown.
[05:40] Okay.
[05:40] Ha ha.
[05:41] The clown.
[05:42] Let me say all the things that are like hobo, the clown.
[05:45] I don't think hobo, the clown is a thing.
[05:48] Could it be something that like derived or came out of like the circus culture?
[05:53] Like, is that a carney?
[05:55] Um, yeah, like going from town to town and yeah, carneys are never, they're
[05:59] like sort of transients, uh, by nature and then like a subset of them are, I
[06:05] don't know, try to make it legit instead of working for their circuses or
[06:11] something and go from town to town, washing dishes or something.
[06:16] Well, so when's the, when's the, uh, circus moving around?
[06:20] It's that's, that's a turn of the century, right?
[06:22] It's early 18 or late 1800s.
[06:25] Yeah.
[06:26] Late 1800s.
[06:27] I mean, bottom of the day, it was like sixties or seventies.
[06:31] Right.
[06:31] 18.
[06:31] But I mean, there were traveling shows like going back to, you know,
[06:36] medieval Europe probably.
[06:39] Right.
[06:39] Oh yeah.
[06:40] But did we talk about them as hobos also?
[06:42] No, no, no.
[06:43] I think, I think hobo is a strictly American.
[06:45] I think hobos as having like a knife.
[06:51] Yeah.
[06:52] From like hobo fights and like not, okay.
[06:56] I think I mean, we're homeward bound is a really good shortening of it.
[07:01] I like that.
[07:01] I like that very much, but like, what's our era though?
[07:04] You were saying 20, I think it's, if this is a group that coined
[07:08] their own denim, them, that is a great thing.
[07:12] I just, I suspect like Coalson that probably someone else named it
[07:15] and they got reclaimed later.
[07:17] Right.
[07:17] So it's probably something that has to do with like trains
[07:20] or is mean or something.
[07:22] It's probably mean and they reclaimed it.
[07:24] Yeah.
[07:25] Yeah.
[07:25] Okay.
[07:26] So we're thinking it's a, a depression era thing that, um, was a derogatory term
[07:33] used to describe these people that were either coming in and selling
[07:37] and stealing jobs or taking away resources.
[07:40] Super high correlation with trains.
[07:42] Okay.
[07:42] Very high correlation with trains.
[07:44] Yeah.
[07:45] That's the only thing we got, uh, according to vocabulary.com.
[07:50] Let's see the end of the 19th century, about the start of the word
[07:53] hobo in the Western United States.
[07:57] No one is certain where the word came from.
[08:00] Although there are a couple of educated guesses.
[08:02] One possible origin is the English word habok, which means country bumpkin.
[08:10] While another is the common working man's greeting or call during the
[08:14] building of the railroads in the West.
[08:16] Hoboy.
[08:19] Oh, you're a hobo.
[08:21] Here is Wikipedia's first paragraph.
[08:25] A hobo is a migrant worker in Northwestern parts of the United States.
[08:30] Train tracks.
[08:31] The term originated in the Western, probably Northwestern
[08:34] US around 1890 hobos, tramps, and bums are generally regarded
[08:40] as related, but distinct.
[08:43] And here's the kicker.
[08:44] This is on Wiki.
[08:45] I swear a hobo travels and is willing to work and a tramp travels,
[08:50] but avoid his work if possible and a bum neither travels nor works.
[08:54] Oh, wow.
[08:58] So that's that tramps and hobos are commonly lumped together, but
[09:04] their own, uh, site, they say are sharply differentiated.
[09:09] A hobo or bow is simply a migratory laborer.
[09:14] He may take some longish holidays.
[09:17] And later returns to work.
[09:21] Dude, Jason, here we go, buddy.
[09:23] Bill Bryson suggested made in America, written in 1998 that the term itself,
[09:29] uh, could have either come from the railroad greeting, Hey, bow B A U or
[09:34] the syllabic abbreviation of homeward bound.
[09:38] Wow.
[09:40] Way to win for the win.
[09:44] According to H L Minkin, though, it could also have come from homeless
[09:47] boy or homeless boat, maybe potentially the, but what I've got is this,
[09:53] this is a, that we know that the tramp comes from the German trampine.
[09:58] Also the same derivation of trample, um, which is to walk with heavy steps.
[10:06] Um, and that the bum is also from the German, uh, from the
[10:14] bum Lynn from stroll or wanderer.
[10:20] So, so tramp and bum come from German and hobo comes from English.
[10:26] It sounds like.
[10:29] Okay.
[10:30] The, uh, collection of belongings wrapped in cloth and tied around a stick.
[10:35] The bindle, the bindle, the old bindle.
[10:39] This is interesting.
[10:40] So the estimate that I'm looking at here, like 20,000 people were living the
[10:45] hobo life in North America for how pervasive a trope it is.
[10:50] That seems like a wildly small number by today's standards.
[10:54] Very small, right?
[10:57] But I, I mean, I guess they got around so much that they
[11:00] interacted with so many people maybe, right?
[11:03] Since they're like constantly on the move and constantly like engaging
[11:08] and trying to get work.
[11:09] Like that legitimately had like their own language.
[11:12] There was like, this is a crazy symbology that they had.
[11:16] Yeah.
[11:16] Yeah.
[11:16] Like leave on fence posts.
[11:19] Yeah, exactly.
[11:20] So I'm looking at a few of these.
[11:23] So a triangle with hands, uh, signifying the homeowner has a gun,
[11:29] horizontal zigzag, signifying a barking dog circle with two parallel
[11:35] arrows, meaning get out fast as hobers are not welcome in the area.
[11:43] And a cat signifying that a kind lady lives here.
[11:48] All right.
[11:48] Well, I don't know if we completely answered your question, Coalson, but.
[11:51] No, um, uh, one of the things I'm seeing on the internet is is hobo offensive.
[11:59] And it looks like the internet is kind of deciding that it's not, which,
[12:03] which even according to Wikipedia, like they differentiate themselves
[12:08] from people who are like, they're trying.
[12:10] That's the, yeah, exactly.
[12:12] They're not tramps.
[12:13] They're not.
[12:14] Yeah.
[12:14] Destitutes.
[12:15] They're there.
[12:16] They have an ethical code, uh, that was created by Taurus
[12:19] union number 63, which is the hobo union.
[12:22] Nice.
[12:23] They did in the mid 1800s, uh, during its 1889 national hobo convention.
[12:29] What?
[12:31] Yes.
[12:33] Uh, number one, decide your own life.
[12:35] Don't let another person run or rule you.
[12:38] Okay.
[12:39] Cool with that.
[12:40] Uh, number five, when no employment is available, make your own work by using
[12:45] your added talents and craft at crafts.
[12:48] Sure.
[12:49] Yeah.
[12:51] Number seven, when jungling in town, respect handouts and do not wear them out.
[12:58] Okay.
[12:58] Another hobo will be coming along who will need them as badly.
[13:01] If not worse than you.
[13:03] Oh, nice.
[13:04] Okay.
[13:07] Jungling must be a term for like, uh, begging.
[13:12] I don't know.
[13:13] I don't know begging.
[13:14] Yeah, I guess.
[13:16] Or like deploying some sort of, uh, uh, trade to get my job asking her.
[13:23] Yeah.
[13:23] Or playing a violin or whatever.
[13:25] Yeah.
[13:26] Yeah.
[13:27] But don't just definitely establish that part of the code is
[13:29] like always doing something.
[13:31] Right.
[13:32] Number 14, help all runaway children and try to induce
[13:36] them to return home.
[13:37] Uh, I mean, that's shouldn't have to be written down, but I'm, I guess.
[13:41] I love the hobo code.
[13:43] Uh, yeah, hobo code.
[13:47] All right.
[13:47] Well, thank you for listening.
[13:49] Uh, give us some feedback on our hobo talk.
[13:51] If you're a hobo, reach out, let us know what we got wrong.