Has anyone actually met a REAL Hobo???

[JEDIpartner]

My partner works with the homeless as he is a mental health centre intake manager. He was just talking about those fingerless gloves that hobos supposedly wear and said, "I don't even know anyone who who has MET a hobo!!"

So... have you???!!!

[Kidhuman]

Kind of.....In nyC there was a hopmeless man you hung out on the same corner by my job. We would say hello everyday and a few times I bought him breakfast.

[JEDIpartner]

Don't you actualy have to be a traveler to be a hobo? I've definitely met a ton of homeless people but none of them hopped on trains and rode from town to town. LOL

[Rebo's_Guitarist]

Yeah..........do carnies count?

[kool-aid killer]

I dont know if he was a hobo, but my buddies and i ran into a guy one night while we were on our way to a club downtown who was asking for money. He was kind of a mean hobo, since he became upset when we didnt give him much (i think he got $2 and some change) money. Luckily for him no one wanted to get dirty before going to the club, or else he would have probably been jumped for being a jerk. But aside from that time, ive seen guys but never interacted with them. Every now and then the local paper runs stories (usually in the winter) about their plight and that of the places that assist them.

[Phantom-like Menace]

I don't think you can be in Tallahassee for more than a few minutes without meeting a homeless person.

I once had one ask me the answer to life the universe and everything. Before I could come to the realization that a homeless guy just made a Hitch Hiker's reference, he asked me for money and I voided my pockets of change for him.

Of course, it's odd that so many of them ask college students for money. Half of us are nearly homeless ourselves.

[Jargo]

'Travellers' do they count? See I wouldn't call a beaten up VW camper a home. I've known a few travellers. gypsy nomads. The sort of person who only stops by for a few days and then is off, spirited away into the wilds of some other place and some other timezone. most of the travellers I've known or become aquainted with have been pretty sharp and cool.
Bums on the other hand I have no time for. I never give a bum money. It only goes on alcohol. Once had a bum ask me to go buy his alcohol for him because he was barred from the store. turns out they were selling cheap cheap aftershave in a drugstore and that was what he chose to drink to get his alcohol.
I've never met a hobo per se though. the kind that fits the folklore stereotype and writes and reads those weird sidgils. and fingerless gloves are cool. highly practical. used to wear them all the time as a younger person.

[starwarsfan1]

I work in a soup kitchen at least once a month and I have met and seen a variety of homeless people. It is actually pretty sad to see these people. They dont really fit the stereotypical bums who try to get money for alcohol and drugs. These are the people that America has forgtton or as I like to call them Bush's blind spot.

[JediTricks]

Hobos are homeless and travel (by rail technically) and work. I don't think I've met a hobo, most homeless people I've met don't travel or don't work when they travel (which technically makes them a "tramp").

[Bel-Cam Jos]

I've had a few conversations with homeless persons, but I didn't ask them if they choose trains as their modus operandi, as it never came up in the discussion. Nice people, in the brief times I met them. I have also been swindled, as the dude who gave me the long, sob story came walking out of a liquor store, with bag in hand, instead of fueling up his car to do blah-blah-blah whatever. :mad: And had a woman shake down my friend asking for 50 pence in the 'tube in London once. :eek:

But no "hobo" as the accepted definition here says; no pack on a stick, either.

[Kidhuman]

Don't you actualy have to be a traveler to be a hobo? I've definitely met a ton of homeless people but none of them hopped on trains and rode from town to town. LOL


They traveled via subway

[JEDIpartner]

Mmmmmm... that might count to a certain extent! LOL

[James Boba Fettfield]

I can't say I have.

All the homeless I know stay in one spot, sleep on the same benches night after night, and get upset when you don't acknowledge their shaking cup or throw them money for their sob story.

[Blue2th]

I met a real Hobo. My Dad. He hopped trains during the 1930's. There were alot of Hobos then. Everybody trying to get to an area of the country that had work. Hopping trains was the logical choice of transportation. They weren't the panhandling sort you see now. Though then, alot of people were out of work, homeless, and in soup lines. It's probably the time the word "Hobo" was coined.

[LTBasker]

I've only met one possible homeless/hobo guy. It was kinda creepy, I was in the car alone while everyone else went into the gas station. I rolled my window down for some air and this guy immediately came up to the door asking for change to buy something inside.

[El Chuxter]

I met a hobo once. He was hiding in an abandoned refrigerator.

[Rogue II]

Some friends and I were going to a bar in downtown Colorado Springs. A couple of them had to stop at an ATM, so a couple of us stayed near the street while the others went up to the bank. Anyway, while we were standing there, some guy walks up to us and asks where he can get a drink. We tell him we're on our way to a place, and he could follow us there if he wants. On the way, the guy mentions that he just got off of a freight train from Seattle. My first thought was, "hmmm, people just don't travel as much on trains as they used to." Then I thought about what he said...a freight train. As we got closer to the bar, he said he was looking something more like a liquor store. We didn't know where one was, and he ended up wandering off.

"Taking a freight train to Seattle" was quickly worked into our inside joke routine.

[jjreason]

I've met destitute folks of pretty much every description: hookers, junkies, winos, bums, crazy wanderers.... you name it. The closest thing to an archetypal hobo though would be the homeless folks that really do show up from somewhere else (usually somewhere cold) for a few months in the winter then disappear again - only to return the next fall. We get that lots in BC. One guy who went by the name "Spyder" claimed to be from NYC - and he was actually wearing the fingerless gloves. No hanky on a stick though.

[InsaneJediGirl]

I've meet a number of homeless people,but I'm not sure about hobos. Then again,I didnt stop to ask if they traveled from city to city. I imagine some travel once and awhile like everyone else

[Luuuuuuke]

I work just a few blocks from "Skid Row" in L.A. , but if you define a hobo as a homeless guy who carries a polka-dot knapsack on a stick, wears a bowler hat and has gloves with the fingers cut out--and oh yeah, sports a closely cropped five o'clock shadow and half a cigar between his chompers--then no I for one have never seen the "hobo" genus of the homeless species.

[Banthaholic]

I used to work for the City and we oftern had to work in an area underneath a bridge right by the railyards. There used to be a makeshift camp set up with chairs, cooking stuff, and empty alcohol containers. First instinct was it was highschoolers, until we saw a hobo bathing in the nearby river. Needless to say it was always interesting when we had to work back there.