Timeline

Based on Luther the Jet's hobo history and bibliography from the Spring 1998 issue of the Hobo Times.

1999The Life of a Hobo, Frog, Edited by Hobo Press. Riding the Rails, by Errol Lincoln Uys, book sequel to his son's
movie by the same name. HV4505.U97. See details below, dated 1996.

1998August, Smithsonian "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum," by James R. Chiles. Good personal perspective of the hobo
history by a journalist. August, Spin, "The New Hobo Mafia Killers or Fuzzy Buddies," by Lucius Shepard. Account of
the FTRA.

1997"Hobo Perspective on the 1997 Britt-Hobo Community Controversy (Response Letters to Adman's Query Letter
to the Hobo Community)." Adman's Query letter hand-responded to by Songbird is located on pages 24-26

1996The National Hobo Association (NHA) produces Compass In The Blood, a film documentary of the American
Hobo and a history of the NHA. The documentary features narration by Ernest Borgnine, music by Whitey Symmonds,
Banjo Fred, Spider John, Luther The Jet and Merl Haggard. It also includes the last live interview with late NHA member
James A. Michener. 1996Lexy Lovell and Michael Uys, Directors. Riding the Rails, a movie set in the depression era,
"starring" Guitar Whitey, Peggy DeHart, Charlie Bull. Sunshine Pearson, James San Jule, Tiny Boland, John Fawcet,
Rene Champion, John Mitchell, Clarence Lee, others. Not very professional. 72 minutes. See details above, dated 1999.
Done & Been, Steel Rail Chronicles of American Hoboes, by Gypsy Moon.

1995Hobo Tales of the Open Road, by Semaphor Sal, Hobo Press

1993Ed C. 'Buzz' Potter becomes President of the National Hobo Association; Santa Fe Bo (Bob Hopkins) is Board
Chairman. Potter also becomes editor and publisher of the Hobo Times magazine. Hopping Freight Trains in America, by
Duffy Littlejohn, ISBN: 0-944627-34-X.

Reefer Charlie Fox. Tales of an American Hobo, HV4505.F68. A fond look back and some final words on the subject by
one of the last of the great old-timers. "I would not recommend a life on the road as a panacea for all your worldly
problems, but I will say this, if you are a good person at heart and conduct yourself properly, this life will be conducive to
achieving a state of mental peace that is seldom possible in the ranks of conventional society."

1989Brian Duffy's June article in Harper's "Catching a Westbound Freight." Chronicle by a middle-class journalist
who never found his soul, and of the journalist's perspective on the rift and misunderstanding between the haves and the
have-nots.

1988Captain Cook and Santa Fe Bo, two of the new "yuppie hoboes" from California, establish the Hobo Times, a
magazine dedicated to preserving hobo lore and talking about the call of the mad today. Hoboes from Hell, a sparsely
done magazine for the punk and anarchist riders of the West, also begins sporadic publication about this time.1988The
movie Housekeeping, directed by Bill Forsyth. The movie follows Marilyn Robinson's book by the same name faithfully.
See details below, dated 1980.

1985Steamtrain Maury's "Patches: About Britt, Iowa, and Its Hoboes." A mythical, romantic, and wonderful essay
by a six-time King of the Hoboes. Partial to the noble side of the hobo.

1984Ted Conover. Rolling Nowhere. An innocent takes to the road and comes back with some surprisingly good
interviews and observations, somewhat tinctured with alcohol. 1984Eric Monkkonen (editor). Walking to Work.
Tramps in America 1790-1935. This set of articles by seven different scholars puts the tramp and hobo phenomenon in a
larger perspective. 1983William Kennedy's Ironweed details the life of Francis Phelan, a local bum and ne'er-do-well in
Albany, New York, who sometimes goes on the road. Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep starred in the movie (1987).1982
Douglas Harper. Good Company. Hands-on sociology by a professor who journeyed west by freight and met one of the
last of the old-time 'boes. March, Geo, "The Hobo Life: Travels with Lonesome Walt," by Frank Smith.

1980Roger Bruns, Knights of the Road, HV4504.B78. Another excellent hobo history, with more careful
documentation than Allsop.

1980Marilyn Robinson's Housekeeping. Depiction of a vagabond woman inheriting the responsibility of raising two
girls. Her spirit infects those around her and sets off a spectrum of reactions. The townsfolk eventually run her and her
niece out of town. Several passing observations of trains and hoboes. See details above, dated 1988.

1979A Hobo Lives Again, by Ramblin' Rudy.

1977Nov., Smithsonian, "Hoboes Told All to 1890s Scholar," by Roger Bruns. Brief hobo history detailing the
chronicling of the pre- and turn-of-the-century hobo history by John McCook (c. 1844-1927). McCook's document is
entitled The Social Reform Papers of John James Cook. Available on microfilm through the Antiquarian and Landworks
Society, Inc., Hardford

1973Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin star in the Hollywood hobo epic Emperor of the North. Riding the Rails, by
Michael Mathers, 1973, HV4505.M37, LOC#: 73-80844, ISBN: 0-87645-078-8. 1972The film version of Boxcar
Bertha, directed by Martin Scorsese, is criticized for sensationalism and gratuitous violence.1972Supreme Court finally
strikes down vagrancy laws as unconstitutional, in an eloquent decision written by William O. Douglas, who had hoboed
himself as a young man and was a strong admirer of the Wobblies. Douglas' autobiography Go East, Young Man was
published in 1974.1967Kenneth Allsop, an Englishman. Hard Travellin'. Excellent history of hoboing in
America.1967The National Hobo Convention of 1967. 1965Myrtle Knows the Answers, The Story of Iowa's
Best Friend, by Myrtle I. French.

1964Frederick Feied. No Pie in the Sky. The Hobo as American Cultural Hero in the Works of Jack London, John Dos
Passos and Jack Kerouac, PS3523.O46. A long title for an explication of the changing role of the hobo as a literary figure.

John Updike publishes, in the New Yorker for Feb. 21, a none-too-gentle parody of On the Road entitled "On the
Sidewalk," which spoofs Kerouac's ingenuous style, sophomoric philosophies and lifelong attachment to his mother.

1957Jack Kerouac. On the Road. The Beat Generation weighs in with its own version of the search for enlightenment,
written by a sometime brakeman on the Southern Pacific. The Dharma Bums follows in 1958.1953John Greenway.
American Folksongs of Protest. Excellent academic study of the hobo in folksong. Greenway also recorded hobo songs.

1953Carl Sandburg publishes Always the Young Strangers, an account of his growing up in Galesburg, IL. which
includes a long chapter of adventures on the road in the summer and fall of 1897. This book was redacted by Sandburg
into an excellent children's volume called Prairie Town Boy. A Treasury of Railroad Folklore, The Stories, Tall Tales,
Traditions, Ballads, and Songs by the American Railroad Man, edited by B. A. Botkin and Alvin F. Harlow.

1950sEnd of steam on most railroads causes many old-timers to leave the road. Conditions for riding change
dramatically with introduction of diesel power. Old railroad culture begins to disappear under onslaught of
superhighways and jet planes.

1941Woodie Guthrie. Bound for Glory. Woodie's own story of his wanderings and rise to fame, with drawings by the
author. A movie based on this book was made in 1976Preston Sturges directs Sullivan's Travels, the improbable tale of a
Hollywood director who decides to find out at first hand what it's like to be a hobo.

1939John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath. Okies flee the Dust Bowl to California. The movie was directed by John
Ford in 1940.

1937Ben Reitman. Sister of the Road. Reitman's "autobiography" of Boxcar Bertha reads more like a novel, but is a
well written, if sensationalized, view of life on the road by the old activist, reformer, hobo and VD doctor. John Dos
Passos. U.S.A. The trilogy contains portraits of two hobo characters: Ben Compton and Mac, the itinerant worker.

1936Woodie Guthrie, the greatest American balladeer, hops a freight for California, beginning his life as a wandering
singer. In the migrant camps he found people ."..living as close to nature, and as far away from anything natural, as
human beings Can."

1933Innertubes Come Clean, by Hairbreath Harry.

1930Charles P. Brown. Brownie the Boomer. Brownie went on the road in 1898, got a railroad job in 1900, and worked
on many different lines until disabled by an accident in 1913. He has wonderful stories to tell, in a good colloquial style.

1930George Milbum. The Hobo's Hornbook. Best collection of the old hobo poems. Stock market crash ushers in the
Great Depression, which will put hundreds of thousands on the road, virtually submerging the old tramp and hobo world.

1927William Edge. The Main Stem. A pair of well-educated young stiffs take a freight train tour of Eastern cities in
1918, looking for jobs at the height of American involvement in World War I. Jimmie Rodgers, the "singing brakeman,"
cuts his first record, an event that is commonly seen as the beginning of big-time commercial "country" music. His short
career will be ended by tuberculosis in 1933.

1926Farmers in the mid-western wheat belt begin to mechanize their operations, sharply reducing the demand for
seasonal labor in the grain harvest.

1925Jim Tully. Beggars of Life, HV4505.T8. Tully, a longtime man of the road (and a consultant for Chaplin's Tramp
films), takes a look at the dark, sordid underside of tramp life. Openly homosexual, his oft-repeated motto was: "Boys for
pleasure, women for breeding!"

1923Nels Anderson. The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man, by U of Chi, HV4505.A6. Major study by a
sociologist of the "Chicago School," which emphasized extensive interviews and concrete remedies for problems.
Anderson also wrote a novel about his experiences on the road called The Milk and Honey Route.

1922Emmett Kelly creates the figure of Weary Willie, the circus clown. See Emmett Kelly. Clown.

1917A No. 1 (Leon Ray Livingston). From Coast to Coast with Jack London. Entirely fictitious as regards the author's
association with London (who died in 1916), this book is still a good example of the pulp tramp novel, at which Livingston
was a master. Wobblies oppose U.S. entry into World War I and lose much of their membership in a wave of patriotic
feeling and government crackdowns. Ethel Lynn. The Adventures of a Woman Hobo. First full-length book by a woman
who was actually on the road (in 1908).

1916Vachel Lindsay publishes A Handy Guide for Beggars, a work he later renounced because of its "overstrain at
humility." Lindsay had ridden many a freight, but he vehemently preferred walking, by himself.1915IWW organizer and
songwriter Joe Hill executed by a Utah Firing squad on trumped-up charges of murdering a shopkeeper. He became the
most famous martyr of the American labor movement

1914Massacre of striking miners and their families at Ludlow, Colo., by agents of the Colo. Fuel & Iron Co., a
Rockefeller interest. Hop pickers at the Durst Ranch in California go on strike against oppressive conditionsW. C. Handy
publishes the "Yellow Dog Blues," which he first worked on in 1903. This song, along with Handy's "St. Louis Blues,"
also published in 1914, stands as a great monument at the very beginnings of American jazz. It was recorded by the
immortal Bessie Smith in 1924

1914Henry Herbert Knibbs. Songs of the Outlands. Original hobo poems by a little-known author.1914Charlie
Chaplin creates the figure of the Little Tramp for a Mack Sennet comedy. The Tramp will have a long run in silent films.
See Theodore Huff. Charlie Chaplin.

1911Hobo Campfire Tales, by A No. 1, 12th Edition, 1911.

1908Jeff Davis founds the Hoboes of America and proclaims himself the King of the Hoboes, a title he held for life-
there were numerous such claimants. Davis published the Hobo News Review. In a conversation with Ben Reitman, Jacob
S. Coxey remarks that he has been hearing the word hobo for 40 years (since 1868), and to him it has always meant "a
good-for-nothing fellow who would rather beg or steal or even starve than work." Reitman replies that this definition is
more applicable to the tramp.

1907Jack London publishes The Road, a record of his macho and white supremacist times on the freights. London is
one of the first writers to define the hobo as distinct from the tramp and the bum, and this work is commonly taken to be
the first hobo novel, setting the form for many later efforts. Dr. Ben Reitman establishes the Chicago Hobo College, the
most famous of these institutions, which offered lectures by noted authorities along with practical advice from men of the
road. Reitman himself had gone on the mad in 1892 as a twelve year-old kid.

1906"Haywire Mac" McClintock composes "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum." McClintock, a tramp entertainer, railroad boomer
and organizer for the Wobblies, also wrote "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" around this time. James Eads How, the
"millionaire hobo," begins the International Brotherhood Welfare Association (IBWA), for the education and mutual
support of the hobo and tramp. The IBWA founded various Hobo Colleges and published the Hobo News. By the time of
How's death in 1930 he had spent his entire fortune on this effort.

1905Founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The Wobblies were the first union to recruit
extensively among migrants, tramps and hoboes. For years, many riders carried the "Little Red Card" of the IWW, and the
"Little Red Songbook," first issued in 1907.

1900Frederick Opper begins the Happy Hooligan cartoon strip for Hearst Newspapers, a series about a peripatetic
tramp and his two brothers, Montmorency and Gloomy Gus. The strip will last until 1932.First Hobo Convention in Britt,
IA. Hoboes had been discouraged from meeting in Chicago because of labor unrest there.1899Josiah Flynt Willard.
Tramping with Tramps. Authoritative book on tramping by a turncoat who later became a railroad detective. First
extensive treatment of tramp and hobo jargon, and of homosexuality on the road.

1895With large-scale migration of blacks to northern cities, many by freight, the blues begins to emerge as a distinct
style.

1894Jacob S. Coxey's army of the unemployed marches on Washington, demanding jobs. Jack London travels east
from Oakland by freight to catch up with Kelly's Army, the California contingent of Coxey's movement. Many tramps and
hoboes involved.Pullman Strike in Chicago. Pres. Cleveland sends Federal troops to restore order in a strike that began at
the Pullman Sleeping Car Works and spread to many railroad lines. After failure of the strike, labor leader Eugene V. Debs
becomes a socialist, inaugurating a long period of leftist influence on the American labor movement.

1893John J. McCook begins his tramp survey, studies, photos, lectures, and his lengthy correspondence with
Roving Bill Aspinwall, an itinerant umbrella mender. These activities eventually lead to a huge collection, now housed at
the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society of Hartford, Connecticut. After a decade of prosperity, another financial panic
puts thousands out of work and on the road.

1889First known use of the word hobo in print, in the Ellensburg, WA. Capital of November 28: The tramp has
changed his name, or rather had it changed for him, and now he is a "Hobo"

1888Denman Thompson writes The Old Homestead, a Victorian melodrama that includes the borrowed tone "Oh,
Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight?" The song was composed in 1877 by the Rev. Robert Lowry, a writer of popular
hymns.

1880sVast expansion of the rail network, which reaches its maximum of 264,000 miles in 1917.

1878Alan Pinkerton. Strikers, Communists, Tramps and Detectives. The father of American gumshoes excoriates the
tramp as a social menace, while at the same time singing the pleasures of tramp life-the beginning of a long national
schizophrenia on the subject. The term hobo is not yet in wide currency, and is not used by Pinkerton.

1877Big strikes in East and Midwest in protest of wage cuts and layoffs. Tramp scares. Tough vagrancy laws passed
in many states, essentially making unemployment a crime.1877Bret Harte publishes "My Friend the Tramp," the first
story to idealize the wanderers of newly industrializing America, as opposed to the rural and agricultural tramps of earlier
times. There is a small flood of such works in the following decades.

1873Failure of Jay Cooke & Co. begins a financial panic that lasts most of the decade. Many unemployed workers
and tradespeople go on the road.

1869CP & UP completion of first transcontinental railroad, in Utah.

1865Civil war ends. Many discharged soldiers, used to military life and unable to fit in back home, take to the road.