THE first thing you should know about hobos, Irving Stevens would say, is that they are not tramps. If you are a tramp you are content to live by begging, with perhaps a bit of stealing to help things along. Hobos are wandering workers, prepared to go anywhere in search of a job, and when that job runs out to move on to somewhere else more promising. Being a hobo, self-sufficient, despising welfare, is thus acceptably American, and probably more than that.
When Mr Stevens was elected king of the hobos at the hobos' convention in Iowa in 1988 he became nationally famous. His homely wisdom dispensed on television programmes formed the subject of numerous newspaper articles extolling the merits of the hobo philosophy. Perhaps only a country as rich and secure as America could get irrepressibly sentimental about what is, in essence, casual labour. If there are hobos in Japan, they keep quiet about it. In Europe, the remaining gypsies have largely lost what romance they had and are mostly regarded as a nuisance.
American hobos, though, are associated with two powerful sources of myth: freight trains and cowboys. The great ranches of the west were a reliable source of seasonal work, either herding cattle or, less glamorously, doing farm work: hobo is probably a corruption of “hoe boy”. Some hobos carried their personal hoes from job to job, like old-time shepherds with their crooks.
The railroads got you there. Many hobos were known by names derived from their prowess at riding the rails. Steamtrain Maury and Choo-Choo Johnson were two of the most famous. Mr Stevens already had a nickname, Fishbones. “Everyone called him that, he was so thin,'' his sister recalled this week. “You could see his bones through his skin.” It wasn't so much the romance that sent Fishbones in his early 20s on his travels from his home in Maine. He was simply poor and hungry and America was in depression. The story-telling came later.
His secret formula
Irving Stevens wrote two books about his experiences, “Dear Fishbones” and “Hoboing in the 1930s”. His stories have charm, and usually end with a moral point. Kind reviewers have said that they are a bit like Aesop's fables. But distance may have lent enchantment to what must have been a life of hardship. Other hobos who have put their memories into words tell of the “bulls”, the railway police who would beat up the boxcar riders, or shoot them; and of life in the “jungle”, the name given to a community of hobos who had pooled their resources.
Mr Stevens was most famous for inventing a fly repellent that he refined, and seemingly perfected, over many years. It smelt abominably, but it kept the biting things away. “Well, I thought, if the stuff works so well, I can probably sell it.” Mr Stevens enhanced his American credentials by becoming an entrepreneur, if in a small way. Irving's Fly Dope, bought by grateful fishermen and campers, provided Mr Stevens with a regular income in his later life, when he had given up hoboing. He kept the formula as secret as Coca-Cola's.
The second world war (in which Mr Stevens served in the air force) ended America's Great Depression, and ended the need to look far and wide for work. There was plenty nearer home. Mr Stevens settled down, got married and had six children. There were now fewer hobos trailing across America but the breed was not extinct. There was still casual work to be had, the amount influenced by the booms and busts of the American economy.
Even now, with the economy roaring ahead and seemingly unstoppable, some hobos still feel a need to roam. “Hoboing gives you an absolute peace and freedom,” recalled one addict. “There's nothing better than riding the rails in a clean boxcar and watching the world go by.” This idyllic picture has helped to give birth to a new type of American hobo: young, often well-educated but not poor, not in need of work, unlikely to carry a hoe, and only a phone call away from anxious, supportive parents. The Hobo Times is full of fatherly advice to the innocent: don't travel alone; keep a supply of one dollar bills handy so you are not seen changing a big one; best to light a fire only in the daytime because at night it might attract unwelcome strangers; remember that there are serial murderers roaming the “high iron”.
The railway companies have put up posters aimed to deter hobos and others from riding freight trains. In 1997, 529 people died as a result of trespassing on the railways. Even experienced rail-riders find it difficult to get aboard modern trains driven by diesel engines which gather speed more rapidly than the steam trains of the old days.
The history of hoboing, ancient and modern, has become a respectable academic discipline. As his fame grew, Mr Stevens saw himself as the head of American hobos' first family. In 1993 he crowned one of his daughters, Connie Hall, queen of the hobos. They are together in our picture. More than 30,000 people watched the ceremony. Yes, Mr Stevens said, there were female hobos, like Boxcar Bertha of Iowa, who died about five years ago. They were treated as equals by the men and never harmed. Irving Stevens thought they might be called early feminists. But that's another story.