Key Takeaways
remember of it as a fringe acculturation emoji and hashtag moment that emerged and play out during the way - before - social - mass medium - meter of the post - Civil War railroad construction era and lasted well through theGreat Depression . Think of it as encipheredhieroglyphicsdoodled in America ’s margins by down - and - out train surfboarder to other down - and - outtrain surfers . Think of it as a build of graffito that ’s sometimes calledhoboglyphs . Heck , why not just think of it as ( right of first publication ! ) hoboji ?
Hoboeswere a widely displaced brotherhood ( andsisterhood ) ofDepression - eraitinerant doer who illegally hop power train and journey across the country take odd jobs wherever they could find them . Never staying in one place for very recollective , tramp loresuggests that during their cross - country locomotion bum prepare a secret symbol - based system for sharing information with one another about , say , where to find a paying gig , which roads were good or high-risk to follow , or what likely dangers or hostilities ( like law or railroadbulls ) lurked up ahead .
Given the consuming challenges of surreptitiously geartrain - hopping and the capriciousness of single circumstances , the code waspurportedlydevised as an leisurely - to - infer , universal bum oral communication that helpedfellowhoboes keep one another safe .
The pictographic code contains several chemical element that appear in more than one symbol , like the set and arrow that comprise the directional symbols . Hash marks or interbreed phone line generally depict some form of danger , whereas a curly short letter inside a circle intend that there was a courthouse or police post nearby . Other hoboglyphs were easy to decipher — a crisscross mean that there was a church in the vicinity and the possibility of scoring a liberal meal and perhaps shelter for the Nox .
The floor get thathoboestypically tagged Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree trunks or scrawled impermanent coded messages in chalk , charcoal or grease pencil in boxcars , under bridge deck , on water column bases , wall , fences , gutter trestle and other surfaces in or near railway yards where other hobo were probable to pass off by . Yet there remains small concrete anthropological evidence that the computer code was really wide used . Which begs the question : If a hobo draw and quarter a symbolic representation in chalk or fusain and the rain washes it aside , did the hobo ever exist in first office ?
Some bookman believe hoboes communicate mostly by word - of - mouth — suggesting that home , churches , dwellings or businesses frequented by bum were called upon quite logically because of their proximity to railroad line running or railroad track stations — not because of any clandestine signage scribble in codification . To which a scholarly hobo might respond : Hmmm , or mayhap the fact that no palpable evidence remain is a testament to the efficaciousness of the codification ? After all , any veteran , self - respecting bum 100 percent meant to get in and out of town without leave a hint . Is n’t that kind of the pointedness ?
matter is , the whimsy of the code fall from hoboes themselves — an hugger-mugger community of interests that took cracking pride in beingcageyand ambiguous .
Here ’s just a smattering of the hieroglyphic phrasessupposedlyknown only to members of that notoriouslyunsungand subtle tribe known as the American hobo :
A kind lady know here . Religious talk will get you nutrient . mind of bad man or stand for dog . It ’s dependable to camp here . bet out for hostile railroad detective here . The jail in this town is rat infested and unsanitary . This is a good property to catch a geartrain . Get out of this townsfolk as quickly as possible .
The traditional knowledge of the hobo codification seems to have originate withLeon Ray Livingston , better known as A - No . 1 , America ’s self - laud " most far-famed tramp who traveled 500,000 naut mi ( 804,672 kilometers ) for $ 7.61 . " Livingston expounded the use of the hobo code to a sort of newspapers as he traveled throughout the country and published the code in his 1911 book entitled " Hobo Campfire Tales . " It ’s significant to take note that his books are generally believe to be wildly exaggerated stories grounded in simple kernels of truth .
prefer to continue as unseeable as possible , hoboes usedmonikers , like A - No . 1,Ramblin ' Jack , Illinois Slim , Mississippi Mike , Skysail Jack — insider soubriquet that keep open them anonymous and under the radiolocation , yet said something about who they were , where they were go bad and where they ’d been . While there may be littleevidenceto establish that the hobo codification was actually widely used , we screw for certain that hobo bequeath their marks . anthropologist have find many examples of emblazoned hobo nickname , including arecent discoveryof one by the hobo king himself .
cogitate of the bum computer code symbolization as nonobjective faces in a crowd of more than two million out - of - work jack who rode the rails to survive a earnestly harsh pip in American story . Think of each grade or moniker they left behind as their way of saying , “ I was here . I pulled up my bootstraps . I existed . ”
FAQs
Hoboes communicate with each other through a orphic , symbol - base system known as the bum code , which included pictographic symbols to partake in data .
There were no specific rule for creating hobo computer code symbols , but common element like circles and arrow were used for directional symbols , while hash marks or crossbreed line generally depicted danger .
