The archives of the old hometown newspaper coughed this story up one time when I was poking around. This was how the editor's creative writing described the fact that hobos passed through town and hung around the stockyards because of its proximity to the train rails.
"The Southwestern Stockyards Cafe is serving excellent meals a la carte to transients of the hobo genus. The vicinity of the stockyards is a favorite rendezvous for tourists of the side door Pullman class and when the pangs of hunger begin to afflict them they repair hither for the purpose of replenishing the inner man. Every man is his own cook and furnishes his own eats."
The old folk singer Jimmie Rodgers, nicknamed The Singing Brakeman, sang this song about hobos, "All around the water tank/ waiting for a train/ a thousand miles away from home/ sleeping in the rain! . . .
Unless they've been living under a rock, everyone knows of John Steinbeck's stories of the hard life causes from drouth in the 1930's. In the very first paragraph of The Grapes of Wrath he wrote, "The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in awhile they did not try anymore." This drouth set in motion a great migration to the west.
The well-regarded writer of rural life in Texas Elmer Kelton wrote in his novel The Time It Never Rained about the hungry wetbacks from Mexico who, coming north across the ranch of his story's protagonist, gladly accepted food from the rancher's wife. Just like today they were looking for something better.
The point to be made here is that it is happening again today. The so-called "Housing Bubble" burst and caused people to become homeless, too. The carrots held out by the real estate industry in cahoots with the bankers made houses too easy to buy. Some people bought too big, expecting inflation to increase the value of their homes, some treated their house like it was a piggy bank and dropped most of their money into the slot in its back. I find it heartbreaking whenever I see stories of homeless families forced to live in their cars, motels, with relatives, whatever. Anyone who reads history knows the displacement of people has occurred throughout history, but just knowing it doesn't make it any more pleasant.
"The Southwestern Stockyards Cafe is serving excellent meals a la carte to transients of the hobo genus. The vicinity of the stockyards is a favorite rendezvous for tourists of the side door Pullman class and when the pangs of hunger begin to afflict them they repair hither for the purpose of replenishing the inner man. Every man is his own cook and furnishes his own eats."
The old folk singer Jimmie Rodgers, nicknamed The Singing Brakeman, sang this song about hobos, "All around the water tank/ waiting for a train/ a thousand miles away from home/ sleeping in the rain! . . .
Unless they've been living under a rock, everyone knows of John Steinbeck's stories of the hard life causes from drouth in the 1930's. In the very first paragraph of The Grapes of Wrath he wrote, "The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in awhile they did not try anymore." This drouth set in motion a great migration to the west.
The well-regarded writer of rural life in Texas Elmer Kelton wrote in his novel The Time It Never Rained about the hungry wetbacks from Mexico who, coming north across the ranch of his story's protagonist, gladly accepted food from the rancher's wife. Just like today they were looking for something better.
The point to be made here is that it is happening again today. The so-called "Housing Bubble" burst and caused people to become homeless, too. The carrots held out by the real estate industry in cahoots with the bankers made houses too easy to buy. Some people bought too big, expecting inflation to increase the value of their homes, some treated their house like it was a piggy bank and dropped most of their money into the slot in its back. I find it heartbreaking whenever I see stories of homeless families forced to live in their cars, motels, with relatives, whatever. Anyone who reads history knows the displacement of people has occurred throughout history, but just knowing it doesn't make it any more pleasant.
