We now continue our several-part series, On Hobos, already in progress, in the past.
As billions of folk across the United States lost their jobs following the successive blows of Black Thursday, Black Monday, Black Tuesday, and Hawaiian Shirt Friday, those without means to support themselves turned to Hoboism. An adventurous way to spend a few years in poverty, Hoboism (or Hobotics) proved to be a popular choice for many middle-class citizens who were thrust into the sty of economic downturn, where the pigs of inflation ate out of the troughs of gilded prosperity, filled with the slop of apple cores and vegetable compost.
The number of Hobos in America doubled almost overnight, but it took a few hours in the morning for this multiplication to complete. Consequently, the liquor and trashcan scrap consumption skyrocketed, and whole trains were soon taken over by drunken, deranged bands of Hobo wanderers, who, upon seizing control of the railcars, oftentimes declared the series of boxcars a nation unto itself, sovereign and ever-moving. This led President Herbert “A Chicken In Every Garage” Hoover to enact the Anti-Hobo Usurpation Tax, which clearly stated that, unless the Hobos had gained control of all four major railroads, they could not charge exorbitant rates on those who were unfortunate enough to land upon them. Two notable Hobos, George “Colonel Mustard” Parker and his brother, Charles “Milton-Bradley” Parker later applied this rule to their well-known land acquisition board game, Scrabble.
And thus, the golden days of the Hobo were born. So began the days of The Glorious Rail-Riders, the years where everyone and their grandmother could up and hock their most prized possessions, gather their least prized possessions, throw a Hobo bindle (or Hobindle) over their shoulders and get t'roamin' alongside hundreds of billions of other wayfaring souls just tryin' to make a livin'. And steal jewelry for liquor money.
That was, until America's first mechanical president, Franklin “Marco Polio” Delano “No-Leg-Ums” Roosevelt set out to, once and for all, strengthen the United States economy, and once and for all, quell the Hobo uprising once and for all.
Stay tuned for the 27th and last installment of The Tyler Effect's On Hobos, to be written entirely in Sanskrit, on the face(s) of Mt. Rushmore.