HONOR AMONG HOBOS

When Patsy Johnson talks about the hoboes who used to visit her parents' home on Huntington Street in Jonesboro, Ark., she hunkers down and renders an awe-inspiring tale of hard luck, hard times and compassion.

"Hoboes were nothing like tramps," said Johnson, a retired Jackson High School teacher. "Hoboes were always looking for work, but tramps were looking for a handout."

Another sharp distinction is that hoboes were generally polite and almost always sober. Tramps? "I remember we used to get the hose out in the front yard when the tramps got sick from too much drinking and let them clean themselves up," Johnson said. When hoboes detected a marking on a tree or on a house that showed they were welcome, they knocked on the door and asked if there was any work.

At various times, hoboes were given the task of ridding a yard of sweet gum balls that fell from trees. "You couldn't mow the yard with those sweet gum balls in the way," Johnson said.

Thus the hoboes went to work and the tramps went to the local church for a free meal or a place to sleep.

Johnson, 67, will provide plenty of information about hoboes and how they lived during the Depression when she participates in the St. Louis Iron Mountain Railway's Hobo Weekend Oct. 15-16.

The train will depart from the Jackson depot on Oct. 15 at 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. The 6 p.m. train ride will include a dinner. On Oct. 16, the train departs at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Passengers who dress as hoboes will receive a $1 discount. There will be a hobo camp and those who wish can compete for the top prize as "King of the Hoboes."

Johnson will spin a few yarns about the hoboes who showed her pictures of their children and the wives they left to find work. She will show passengers on the Iron Mountain Railway how to build a hobo shack and she might even sprinkle a little humor over the entire package.

Like the hoboes her mother used to feed during the 1930s, Johnson will come as a volunteer prepared to sing for her supper. The former educator can gather momentum during her storytelling in much the same fashion as a locomotive with a full head of steam.

Hoboes would get on and off trains by her house at the Wye, which is where the trains switch tracks. "We lived about a mile from the depot, which was about how far the hoboes would walk to avoid being caught by the cinder dicks." Cinder dicks were men hired by railroads to rid depots and train cars of hoboes.

Hoboes would ask for work in exchange for a meal. But most never asked to enter the house of their benefactor. Johnson remembers taking a pie plate filled with sausage, peas, beans and corn to hoboes who would wait on the front porch.

"Mamma even put some Irish potatoes on the plate if that's what she was making for supper that night," Johnson said.

Once a hobo had something to eat, he would usually talk about the family he left to find work. Her parents wanted to know about the lives of the hoboes. But Patsy just wanted to see pictures of the hoboes' kids. She wanted to know what kind of games these kids played and what schools they went to.

Johnson said many hoboes appeared educated. "I remember one man said he could type. Another one asked momma if there was any need for a bookkeeper."

There was usually a mystique about hoboes that piqued Johnson's curiosity. "You never knew if these people left their families because they didn't have enough money or because they just wanted to get away and live somewhere else," Johnson said.

When public works programs were established in the mid-1930s, hoboes found the jobs they were looking for and disbanded as a fraternal organization.

"I remember that hoboes used to carry blue cards," Johnson said. "I never knew what those cards meant or where they got them, but they looked important when they showed them. It was kind of sad not to see hoboes around anymore."