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Short Stuff: Hobo Signs · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck. What are you gonna do about it? Short stuff?
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is called outdated names for people.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Addition, I guess so i'd love so. A lot of
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: this came from the NSA, the National Security Agency, Yeah,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: the one that's been spying on Americans for decades now, okay,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: and they basically hid behind hoboes when they were talking
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: about tramps and bumbs, which I assume is what you're
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: talking about. But they're like, according to hoboes, this is
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: what this means.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, these are old terms used back then. So
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: just know we're not suggesting that anyone call an unhoused
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: person a bum or a tramp.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: No, But specifically, the NSA says that hobos. Say specifically
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: that a hobo is a traveling itinerant worker who wants
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: to work, who also loves to travel. And the way
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: that they put it is a hobo travels to work
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: and works to travel frequently. They're working so they can
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: save up enough to tide them over through the winter,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: which they'll take off then they'll get back on the road.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: They travel by train, by car, however they can we
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: talked about them in the hitchhiking episode, if I remember correctly. Yeah,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: and then according to the NSA, According to hoboes, the
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: difference between a tramp and a hobo and a bum
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and a hobo is that a tramp is also a traveler,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: but they don't like to work. It don't work. And
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: then a bum again according to hoboes, according to the NSA,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: neither travels nor works. So there you go. Thanks for
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: putting that all on me.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean you're the one that put this one together.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: We got to talk about it.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: You can't get around.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Hoboes is what we're going to concentrate on specifically, as
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: you'll see in a minute here, hobo signs. But the
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: word hobo itself, no one's really sure where that comes from.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: There are a bunch of ideas, as always as to
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: its origin. Some you know, as usual, make more sense
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: than others. For real, one is h oe ho boy. Like,
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: if you were traveling around working, you might have some
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: farming tools like a hoe, so you might have been
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: a hoe boy, which could have become hobo. I say
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: that this may be not so great.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Oh you're crazy. That's my number one. Oh yeah mm hmm,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: all right, what's what Okay, what's your let me hear
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: your pick. Then what's the what's the Where the word
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: hobo come from?
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if I was picking just from this list,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: I would go with because this did start after the
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Civil War, when there were soldiers who either wanted to
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: go home and would hop a train or didn't want
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: to go home and would hop a train in the
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: other direction. But homeward bound h o bo makes a
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: little more sense to me.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Sure, No, I would put that one at second.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: That's number two.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: We have to at least name check the other one
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: real quick.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: So there's one that says that it was basically a
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: shortened version of Hello Boy, just a friendly greeting, and
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: that that came to low boy and then low bo
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: and then hobo.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I think that's a terrible idea as well. But it's
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: hilarious to just say those different words in progression.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I would also say it's probably not a Latin
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: thing in origin, but there are some people who say
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: it's from the Latin homo bonus, meaning a good man.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's that one.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't. So when somebody's saying like bonus in
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: the nineties, they were saying like good, I guess it
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: never occurred to me that they were speaking Latin.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Sure, I'm sure that's what was going on.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: So well, let's just set up what we're really talking
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: about here today, Chuck. We're talking about hobo signs, as
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: I believe you said. And so one thing that hobo's
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: have in common is that they like to travel. They
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: very frequently prefer solitude, and yet they have a camaraderie
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: with one another. So when you're traveling as you're a
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: hobo and you're going from like town to town and
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: you're saying, like, hey, where can I get work? Where
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: can I get a free meal or something like that,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: you're met varyingly with different kinds of attitudes. Yeah, and
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: those attitudes are probably going to stay roughly the same
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: over you know, shortish spans of time at least. So,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: because you care about other hoboes and because you don't
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: really meet up with them very frequently, you would leave
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: a sign. And this is what became hobo signs. There
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: were signs that a hobo left for another hobo basically
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: saying like this is a great place to get a
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: free meal, stay away from this house because this is
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: where the local cop lives. All sorts of really useful
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: information and over time, essentially a codified system developed.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Fantastic, What a great setup.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Thank you. I appreciate that.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: All Right, we'll take a break and we'll be right
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: back to talk about what was on these signs right
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: after this.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, so we talked about hobo signs, and we're going
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: to start talking about that again beginning now.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like you mentioned, you know, hobo's lived a very early,
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: fairly solitary life. I guess they would hook up with
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: friends every now and then. But the fact that you're
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: traveling around and you're not all congregating in a big
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: group to tell one another like hey, this next town
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: you're coming upon, X, Y and Z, you should know
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: they would leave these signs. They were temporary on purpose. Basically,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: they were like chark or charcoal, because, like you said,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: some certain people might have certain attitudes about someone coming
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: through town looking for work. There are changes in attitudes.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm not going to do it, thank you,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: all right.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Pjmy Buffett and the person who lived in that farmhouse
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: last year may have been super helpful and need some help,
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: but maybe a year later they didn't, so that sign
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: would need to be changed. So that's just sort of
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: a clumsy way of saying, Hey, let's not make these
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: signs permanent because they need to change to convey the
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: most recent information exactly.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: And so the signs, some of the signs that they
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: developed just make intuitive sense. Like there's a top hat
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: that was the sign that a wealthy person lived there. Yeah,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: a train engine would be a good spot to mark
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: a train. And this one I'm kind of puzzled by
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: because you wouldn't actually find out if it was a
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: good spot until you were successful or not. If you
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: were unsuccessful, you wouldn't go back and leave that sign
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: that it was a good spot. If you were successful,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't be there anymore to leave the sign that
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: it was a good spot. I just find that a
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: head scratcher. But more often than not, Oh, there was
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: another one across said that if you you know, gin
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: up some religious talk with people who live here, they'll
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: give you a free meal.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: I love that one more often.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Than not, though they they didn't really have any intuitive
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: connection to what they were conveying. The symbols.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that cross one is really great, because at some
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: point some hobo was not having much luck with the
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: lady of the house, and then they started talking about
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Jesus and she was like, would you like a slice
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: of pie?
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: The guy's like, oh, okay, I got you.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Apparently George Washington was like that, but with horses instead
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: of religious talk.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to believe anything you ever say anymore, So.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: That one is true. That's a story from Gilbert Stewart,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: the famous portraitist, who couldn't get him to become at all, like,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: like to smile at all, And apparently his horse walked by,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, George Washington just started beaming
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: and talking about his horse and horses in general. So
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Gilbert Stewart knew that for the rest of the sitting
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: he would just bring up horses, and George Washington would
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: just be up and chipper.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he said, let me flash a smile, let me
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: see those pearly brown waters. So all right, so you
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: mentioned a few things that made sense, like the top
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: the top hat and stuff like that, but there were
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: also a lot of symbols in this code that you know.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: It was sort of the symbol of the hobo that
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: if you just look at it, it's not intuitive. For instance,
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: a picture of a chicken that someone has drawn, you
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: might think, hey, this might be a place where I
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: could get some chicken. Yeah no, no, no, that means
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: you can use the telephone for free.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Right, boxy you is a good camping spot. Some are
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: just like where did you get this? The sideways cross
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: cross on its side on a circle in one of
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the quadrants, the top quadrant, and then and the circle
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: has three dots inside, and that means that there's a
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: doctor that lives there, and you won't charge for medical attention.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I like, where would you possibly come up with that?
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I tried to make sense. I'm sure
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: you did two of a lot of these, And I
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: wonder if some of them did make sense to the
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: creator or if it was just literally like, hey we
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: need something.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I get Maybe they just kept adding to it.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: They were like, well, this one will be a sideways cross.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: They're like, no, that's already means there's a Satanist that
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: lives there. Okay, Well what about a sideways cross top
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: of the circle. That's a Satanist who loves to talk
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: too much?
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Right?
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  Speaker 1: What about one with three dots, and they're like, okay,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: doctor who doesn't charge for medical advice.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, that's a good one. That's a real one,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: right that.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the one.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: I was Oh that sideways cross right right right, Okay.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: So there's also a circle next to a square. Each
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: of them has a dot in the middle, and that
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: means that the man of the house has a bad temper.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: M h pretty, steer clear, pretty good words.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: A lot of these were like steer clear or go here.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: They had like an extra little layer of information too. Yeah.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: The only one that made any sense was the three
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: perpendicular diagonal lines.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, that made sense.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Was unsafe. I just thought it might mean like three
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: strikes is usually a bad thing, Okay, but I don't know.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: That's just a guess. Okay, that made more sense than
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: any of the rest of them. I think.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: So where these signs came from is just completely lost
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: to history. Although some people are like, I can tell
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: you exactly where it came from, we should probably say
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: at this point there are some people who don't believe
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: that there ever actually was a codified roughly fifty signs
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: that hobo's used to leave to one another. There's a
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: group called the Historical Graffiti Society that Atlas Obscure profiled
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: some years back. And these people search for those things
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: and they're like, I wish this would I would be
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: proven wrong because I want to find them. I've never
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: found anything like that. They think that it's possible that
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: the whole thing was generated by early twentieth century media
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: fascination with hobo and the hobo lifestyle.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Oh that is I mean, I thought that reading of
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: it was right, but they're just saying that it was
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: just a creation of media.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So they trace it back even further to there
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: was a famous hobo I can't remember his name, but
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: he wrote a series of like fantastic books that were
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: really popular, and they think that the signs were introduced
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: in there. To me, that doesn't mean that the whole
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: thing was made up right, right.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I think that that like possibly it wasn't nearly as codified.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: But they're like, we've never found a single one. And
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: we found like they found some in chalk that are
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: one hundred years old, but they don't bear a resemblance
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: to this. Instead, it's usually the first letter of whatever
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: direction they were traveling. Yeah, their nickname and then maybe
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: the year or the date that's a genuine, documented, verified
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: hobo signs. Hobo's definitely used those one hundred plus years ago.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Well, speaking of nicknames, we kind of have to mention
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: one thing, right, yeah, yeah, so yeah. John Hodgman, a
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: writer of books and podcaster of the Judge John Hodgman podcast,
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: very famously created eight hundred hobo names in one of
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: his books. And I figured we could just go through
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: a couple of these. Do you have a list by
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: any chance? No? I have them all memorized, Okay, Chili mixed,
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Wilma Benson, that's not bad, flea stick, uh, Tommy Lyce Combey,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: let me see. Let me do one more, how about
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: prostate davy. So Hodgman came up with eight hundred names.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: That was I've never talked to him about that. I
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: imagine that was arduous, and I'm sure he never wanted
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: to do that again because I think he also had
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: people for years saying to create a hobo name for
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: them and stuff like that.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and you'd be like, no, I'm not
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: doing that. Yeah.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Fun stuff.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Though, Just to wrap it up, there was an actual like,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: there was documented hobo signs. That seem to have generated organically,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: and that it was called war chalking, And essentially it
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: came about in a very specific period of time in
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: the early two thousands, when Wi Fi started to become ubiquitous,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: but free Wi Fi was very hard to find, and
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: so a hobo would find some place where somebody had
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: like a Wi Fi router that didn't understand how to
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: add like a security key to it, and so there
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: was just free Wi Fi. So they would leave a
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: little mark for other hobos to say, like, you can
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: get free Wi Fi here. And then as people started
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: to get savvier and added security to their routers, that
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: kind of went away, but simultaneously, free Wi Fi zones
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: like in some cities now are just completely wired up
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: with free Wi Fi. Like that kind of grew in
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: its place. So the whole premise of war chalking lives
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: in a very very small window of time. I just
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: find that fascinating interesting.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: I love it to chuck and I love the short stuff,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: and the short stuff is out. Stuff you should Know
• 14:20
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