Hoboes did leave marks, but instead of code, they were monikers: markings with the hobo’s nickname, the date, and an indication of direction of travel. That includes the detailed accounts written by Jack London about his time on the rails. Other contemporary firsthand narratives never mentioned hobo signs or a secret code. One of Livingston’s books contained a homemade chart of “signs used by tramps,” and such stories increased his notoriety. 1 wrote 12 books packed with wildly entertaining but exaggerated stories that established the mythology of hoboes. 1,” arguably the most famous hobo in the late 19th century.
#Stobe the hobo code#
The lore of hobo code seems to stem from Leon Ray Livingston, better known as “A-No. 1 wrote books packed with wildly entertaining but exaggerated stories. “Modern Americans are convinced that hobo signs are authentic history, but the evidence against it definitely outweighs the evidence for it,” Wray says. And while there are photographs of hobo signs taken in the early 1900s, Wray adds, those were staged by newspapers. The symbols said to be used by hoboes are often contradictory. Wray says decades-old claims in newspaper articles are unsubstantiated. Yet the Historic Graffiti Society has found no concrete evidence that hobo code existed. Louis Star-Times reported that Cincinnati police officers chalked the symbol for “unwelcome” throughout the city in an effort to scare away hoboes. Newspaper articles as far back as 1870 mentioned the possibility of “tramp signs” and “hobo hieroglyphics.” As the code gained popularity, it popped up in comic strips and advertisements-and was even used in anti-hobo campaigns. “People like to fantasize about the freedom that comes with it.” For more than a century, millions of people have sought opportunity-and freedom-on the railroads crisscrossing the United States. “There’s always been an American fascination with hoboes,” Charlie Wray says. For the past several years, they’ve documented original markings across the United States in abandoned train stations, under bridges, and inside tunnels.
![stobe the hobo stobe the hobo](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cUi5RL7soz8/maxresdefault.jpg)
Wray, along with his father Mike, founded the Historic Graffiti Society, an organization that preserves and records historical markings with a focus on those from the hobo era. It’s a question Charlie Wray of Salt Lake City has also been trying to answer. But did hoboes actually leave secret messages like these? In these family stories, hobo code was established as fact. I grew up hearing stories about the drawings that led hoboes to my grandparents’ house, which was a safe spot to get a sandwich or a slice of pie. My grandfather shoveled coal for steam engines on the B&O Railroad in Indiana from the 1930s until 1950, a time when it was common for hoboes to hop onto boxcars and ride the rails from one town to the next. But more often the code was impermanent, scrawled with chalk or coal, even etched into the dirt. It’s the kind of thing one might find drawn on wooden posts, written under bridges, or carved into tree trunks. Illustrations of alleged hobo code symbols and a key to understanding them, from Hobo-Camp-Fire-Tales. Three lines might mean a good place to camp an upside-down triangle signaled a spoiled road a cat was code for a kind woman.
![stobe the hobo stobe the hobo](https://i.redd.it/6r90dmg9rau31.jpg)
They alerted other transient workers to trouble, such as an aggressive dog or hostile police force, but could also point the way to clean water or a hot meal. Popularized in the late 1800s and early 1900s, hobo code supposedly consisted of distinctive symbols to communicate vital information.
![stobe the hobo stobe the hobo](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JidZQULrcKM/maxresdefault.jpg)
“This way other rail riders who might want to locate them would have an idea when they passed through and where they were headed,” she says.īut those messages might not be the hobo code you’ve heard about. One thing Shorty already knew was that hoboes left distinctive messages for each other in code. Her great-uncle Louis was another steam-era hobo who hopped from town to town, looking for work and opportunity. Her father, a legendary hobo known as Connecticut Slim, rode steam engines for 44 years. Shorty, diminutive in stature but enormous in charisma, was eager to experience the freedom and intensity of the hobo lifestyle for herself, even though she was already familiar with the culture. He was a hobo, part of an American tradition that emerged after the Civil War: transient laborers who rode the rails and found short-term work along the way.
#Stobe the hobo how to#
It was 1993, and Shorty, then 51, was learning how to hop freight trains from a man known as Road Hog USA. Connecticut Shorty caught her first ride in the porch of a grainer-the slender, metal cutout on a grain-filled train car-traveling about 200 miles across Northern California, from Dunsmuir to Roseville.