Hobo Jungle

[Tramp]

San, thank you. If I over-drink your gesture, please let me know.

[Del Mar]

From wikipedia, of all things:

Hobo ethical code

An ethical code was created by Tourist Union #63 during its 1889 National Hobo Convention in St. Louis Missouri.[4] This code was voted upon as a concrete set of laws to govern the Nation-wide Hobo Body, it reads this way;

1. Decide your own life, don't let another person run or rule you.
2. When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times.
3. Don't take advantage of someone who is in a vulnerable situation, locals or other hobos.
4. Always try to find work, even if temporary, and always seek out jobs nobody wants. By doing so you not only help a business along, but ensure employment should you return to that town again.
5. When no employment is available, make your own work by using your added talents at crafts.
6. Do not allow yourself to become a stupid drunk and set a bad example for locals treatment of other hobos.
7. When jungling in town, respect handouts, do not wear them out, another hobo will be coming along who will need them as bad, if not worse than you.
8. Always respect nature, do not leave garbage where you are jungling.
9. If in a community jungle, always pitch in and help.
10. Try to stay clean, and boil up wherever possible.
11. When traveling, ride your train respectfully, take no personal chances, cause no problems with the operating crew or host railroad, act like an extra crew member.
12. Do not cause problems in a train yard, another hobo will be coming along who will need passage through that yard.
13. Do not allow other hobos to molest children, expose to authorities all molesters, they are the worst garbage to infest any society.
14. Help all runaway children, and try to induce them to return home.
15. Help your fellow hobos whenever and wherever needed, you may need their help someday.

San

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Del Mar, The "Hobos Ethical Code" you posted sounds like some of the best rules for personal conduct I ever heard - works for me! Thanks for the perspective.

By the way, I heard, years ago, that hobos had a secret way of marking the charitable houses in a neighbrhood, so that other hobos would know where to go for a handout. That interested me, when I heard about that legend as an adult, because when I was a boy, homeless men frequently stopped at our home, one of a whole line of houses in my suburb in Duquesne, PA. My mother would make them a sandwich and invite them to sit at the table on our back porch until they had finished eating; she even brought a bucket of water and handsoap out to them so they could wash their hands and faces before eating. She used to wonder how they managed to pick our home so often to ask for alms, but she never complained, and certainly not to the visitors. It seemed to make her happy, actually, because I can still see the smile on her face when she greeted them and bid them farewell.

When I was single, some years ago, I used to hand out dollar bills, blankets, and clean clothes in NYC when I would come across a person walking by or leaning on a building, who really looked out of luck. And once I became married, my wife would join me in that effort and drive the car with me to the Bowery, in Manhattan, on bright sunny Sundays, and we'd distribute clothing, by size, out of the trunk, to those who came up to the car in response to our greeting. However, none of that had the same feeling of hospitality that welcomed the visitors to my childhood home in Duquesne, so many decades earlier. But I tried my best.

[MartyE]

Great story Murph. Thanks for sharing.

[Daisy]

Andre! I'm sorry I missed your birthday. Here's a poem for you, written by an old friend of mine who just died, so from a poet to a poet. I suppose it's the wrong time of year for it but kind of nice to read it in March instead of November actually. Anyway, I thought you might like it.

November Sunday Morning

And the light, a wakened heyday of air
Tuned low and clear and wide,
A radiance now that would emblaze
And veil the most golden horn
Or any entering of a sudden clearing
To a standing, astonished, revealed…

That the actual streets I loitered in
Lay lit like fields, or narrow channels
About to open to a burning river;
All brick and window vivid and calm
As though composed in a rigid water
No random traffic would dispel…

As now through the park, and across
The chill nailed colors of the roofs,
And on near trees stripped bare,
Corrected in the scant remaining leaf
To their severe essential elegance,
Light is the all-exacting good,

That dry, forever virile stream
That wipes each thing to what it is,
The whole, collage and stone, cleansed
To its proper pastoral…
I sit
And smoke, and linger out desire.

[Daisy]

San, thanks for the hobo rules, very cool to read. I'll have to keep them in mind to improve my behavior.

and thanks for the story too, nice.

[Daisy]

I keep reading this in our local police blotter. What does it mean anyway?

Angie Soucy, 30, of Unity, was summoned for negotiating a worthless instrument.

[rogruth]

Murph,

There are publications that show the "hobo marks"I don't remember where I have seen themTry the internet.

I lived with my grand parents and we had the same situation.They would always feed and help out a hobo but would run off the "bums".I always wondered if my grandfather had been a hobo because he could read the signs.

[rogruth]

Daisy,

Bad check,I think.

[GP]

I keep reading this in our local police blotter. What does it mean anyway?

Angie Soucy, 30, of Unity, was summoned for negotiating a worthless instrument.

Daisy,

As Roger said, she was probably guilty of writing bad checks. "Instrument" is used in place of the words document or agreement.

GP

[GP]

Murph,

There are publications that show the "hobo marks"I don't remember where I have seen themTry the internet.

I lived with my grand parents and we had the same situation.They would always feed and help out a hobo but would run off the "bums".I always wondered if my grandfather had been a hobo because he could read the signs.

Roger,

This is one list of hobo signs :

http://cyberhobo.com/signs/hobosigns.html

I'm sure there are others too.

GP

[The Dirt]

Jon, !!

I couldn't get on Mapquest fast enough...

You folks survive without any damage?

[JIM2223]

My wife and I were sitting in the living room watching the Boob Tube when all of a sudden a noisy neighbor looked in the room from our storm door. Check out the noisy neighbor.







Jim

[rogruth]

Jim,

Cool.


Dirt,

No word from Jon?

[The Dirt]

Roger, nothing yet.
Looks like maybe 25 miles away as the crow flies.
Still like to hear from him, however.