HOME, HOME ON THE HOBO RANGE

He was obviously homeless. He walked slowly, pack and bedroll on his back, his long hair in tangles, on a path that seemed to lead to ground-level water tanks, hidden by trees, that stand only a few paces from Route 1. There must be a campsite used by the homeless there. Until shut down, such a camp was in a wooded area about a quarter-mile north. The sheltering undergrowth was removed there, and a small green space emerged. That was good for the neighborhood, bad for those who’d rather not go to shelters. Those refuges are shunned by some derelicts for fear of other derelicts.

Okay, so it is politically incorrect to refer that way to the unfortunate human beings who can claim no shelter similar to those fortunate people with incomes. Speculation about the living conditions of that man, called a hobo back in the thirties when men wandered the country looking for work may be fruitless. Back then, those men, usually wearing suit coats and beat-up fedoras, would knock on the back doors of middle class houses and asked for a bite to eat, sometime offering to do chores in return for the sustenance. Housewives, alone and doing their own housekeeping, would often not hesitate to give the poor souls some of the soup being prepared for supper. Some would pour boiling water on the plates and utensils the hobo used. But there was sympathy for the guy who, “there for the grace of God go I.” Some of the homeless families found community (a progressive usage now) in slapped-together shacks collectively termed “Hoovervilles” (a term coined for the habitats erected by World War I who marched on Washington to demand pensions.)

Despite the high unemployment rate today, the homeless differ from those that rode the rails and gathered at “hobo jungles” and ate slumgullion. Today most unemployed get federal money. Actual homeless folks do not appear “down and out” as did those itinerant unemployed during the Great Depression seen in stark, black and white photos of bread lines taken by WPA workers. Now, their dishevelment bespeaks more of mental disability, with which some are burdened, or drug and alcohol addiction.

Our contemporary example of homelessness may have discovered the haven he was approaching from others like him. He may have met them high up the slope of riprap under some viaduct or bridge. New structures, such as one carrying I-95, barricade sleeping spots. Also, strings of lights illuminate the roadway for traffic and disrupt rest for anyone foolish enough to seek sanctuary beneath viaducts.

Back in the eighties during a spate of unemployment, churches of various faiths in a Virginia suburban area, worked together in providing a moving shelter week by week. The U.S. Army loaned cots and churchgoers staffed the shelters overnight and supplied breakfast and take-out sandwiches for lunch. County health officials were not happy, but saw the need and so increased the supply of governmental beds.

Clients of the church-run shelters back then could not be tagged with a single description. Few even came close to resembling the man strolling down the path toward the water tanks, or the so-called bag ladies. There were single mothers with a child or two, an underemployed woman who dressed well and had some sort of sales job in a department store, men who did look like street people. Having seen those homeless, one can only imagine the day-to-day existence of the contemporary guy with the bedroll.

Perhaps it would be unfair for someone who has not walked in his moccasins to guess how he manages to keep living, not to mention trying to get into his head. Recalling over and over, perhaps, the mistakes, or the misfortune, that put him in this fix might be his cross. Might it be the economic downturn with job loss, or unrestrained spending, or gambling, or divorce, or depression, or mental illness, or just plain orneriness? Being a school dropout? Maybe his life is just looking for his next meal, like some stray animal. Maybe it’s a continuous stewing over fate. Hard to know.

How can concerned citizens help homeless people like our guy? A lot of us might say, let the government handle him and others like him. Some of us say it is up to the churches and other charities. Others say that little can be done for those who appear to have dropped out of society voluntarily, or because of mental illness. Asylums (isn’t strange that such a caring word has become a PC bugaboo?) don’t exist in the numbers seen before the time when state governments discovered that mood-changing drugs were cheaper than big, brick buildings with locked wards.

There may be but little hope for our modern hobo. But for the great mass of homeless, perhaps more jobs would turn the trick.