Hobos used to be sort of like leprechauns in downtown Norman. We talked about them a lot, but nobody ever saw one.
One time a guy told me that the awful smell at the annual Lion’s Club Carnival, held on the southwest corner of Main Street and the railroad tracks, was a Hobo who’d been run over by a train. And that the police couldn’t move him until the carnival was over.
Despite that big fat lie, and nobody ever having seen one, I had it on good authority that Hobos really did exist. Cops talked to firemen like my Dad about them a lot.
Hobos weren’t bums, who never worked. They were poor transients who “travelled to work and worked to travel” aboard the super-long freight trains, especially at planting and harvesting times.
They had no money, so when freight trains stopped, slowly backed up, then chugged forward again as cars were added or uncoupled, some would hop off for a while.
That’s what bothered Norman policemen. Because some Hobos would walk into unlocked houses, help themselves to a sandwich, and steal an item or two before jumping back on the trains...
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