THE HISTORY OF HOBOS. I once looked through my mother’s high school yearbook with her. It was clear that at the time (it would have been in the early 1920’s) hobos were glamorous, and “hobo” was a buzzword used by what would now be called the “cool” kids. Most of the quotations under the senior pictures mentioned hobos. The Economist (August 17) has an article on 2013 National Hobo Convention that mentions that hobos have played a role in American society for a long time. A hobo union was begun in the late 1800’s.
The article gives some hobo vocabulary: a hobo camp is a “jungle”; living in a car is “rubber tramping”; and dying is “catching the Westbound”.