So we are out visiting my family yesterday. Some paperwork for my mother, a little Sunday dinner...you know the drill. I'm in the dining room doing her taxes while the rest of the family is in the living room chatting about whatever. I'm doing my best to block it all out and finish up so we can have dinner.
That's when I hear my mother say that the public beach down the street from her house has become dangerous because of "hobos living there at night." Hobos. She used the word hobos. Probably to refer to the maybe one homeless person who has actually spent a night or two down there. The cops are by all the time, so I doubt they can take up permanent residence there.
I was just jazzed at the thought of hobos living on the beach, though. Railroad-riding, eating beans out of a can, red bandana tied to the end of a stick to carry their valuables, grilling hot dogs over a fire, real-live hobos!
I'm sure I'll refer to that little beach as Hobo Beach in the foreseeable future.
 |
| image credit |
10 comments:
Gilda and her friends call homeless people hobos. I don't know where they initially heard the word, but it's going on years now and they all still use it. I thought it was weird then, but now it's normal. So funny, though!
safe camp?
Sybil - Yeah, really weird that kids would use it.
Slyde - There's a story behind that. Apparently the hobo network uses a bunch of rudimentary yet complex markings to denote certain things. "Man with a gun", "Dogs", "Fresh water", etc... Safe camp, and the marking above is one of them. Pretty cool, huh?
for some reason this spring the word hobo has been heard a lot. more than any year in recent history. wonder why?
We say "hobos" up here in MN. :-) Every now and then, someone shows up in the park across the street from me and in the morning I find the world's dirtiest socks and an empty bottle of generic mouthwash... Ack.
Pearl
My great Aunt once told my son how we had a relative that was a hobo in the 20's and my son was SO excited. He starting cracking up and saying, "YES!!!!"
Becky - it's a hobo mystery. My favorite kind!
Pearl - Hobos in the park! Look for their signs.
Zibbs - Did he have a cool hobo name? I hope he had a cool hobo name.
Hobii...isn't that the correct terminology ?
Don't forget the chalk kitty outside your door to signify the presence of a kind person. My grandmother used to have one outside her house! She let the "hobos" rake her yard and then would feed them fried chicken at her picnic table. Other than that, though, she was a bit of a pill.
Other kids dress up as princesses or knights... my kids dress up as hobos and go play in the forest. In their house. Their hobo house that they've built.
I might have done something wrong in the raising part.
Post a Comment