Voices: Wearier Than Willie

Enter the archetypal hobo, looking like Emmett Kelly with his sad, black-rimmed eyes, weathered hat and thread-bare suit. The stick slung lazily over his shoulder is tied at the tip with a sack of cloth that carries every belonging he has in the world.

Everyone has a concept of the historic railroad-hitching vagabond, but unless you've lived among his ranks you're bound to underestimate him. I'm willing to bet there's even a lesson to be learned from these free spirits that, believe it or not, still exist.

Not to be confused with your randomly dispersed bums, beggars or vagrants, hobos are, for lack of a better word, organized. They hold annual conventions and live by a code. I'm not kidding - read it at hobo.com. The rules are simple but admirable: always try to find work and when there is none, create your own work by making crafts, be a gentleman and don't be a "stupid drunk," respect local laws and enforcement officers, respect nature, don't take advantage of vulnerable people, stay as clean as possible, don't cause problems, help runaways return home and always, always help other hobos.

You may find it hard to imagine why anyone would prefer to be homeless but consider the most essential tenant of the hobo code - "Decide your own life. Don't let another person run or rule you." Hobos don't understand why you might prefer to work a job you don't like for a boss that doesn't like you, just so you can own a big car and a big house filled with big piles of trendy stuff. Need I mention taxes, licenses, insurance, or utility and repair bills?

When a person gives up the illusion of security and sets out to live the hobo way, he also gives up abstract stress. The voluntary simplicity movement (see www.simpleliving.net or www.simpleliving.com) proposes we get as close as possible to the spiritual freedoms embodied by the hobo without cutting our formal ties. Mainstream society has been indulging itself in the fleeting pleasure of reckless consumption for long enough now that even those advocating such compromise are taken for extremists.

At the recent open house for the proposed passenger train between Scranton and Hoboken, I spoke with a New Jersey Transit representative who remembered riding on the old Phoebe Snow line. The most startling information he shared was despite New Jersey's hope of eliminating traffic congestion on Route 80, the situation would probably get worse and worse until fossil fuels become so expensive and air pollution reaches such toxic levels that private automobile travel will finally be scandalous if not outright prohibited.

That's right commuters (and yes, I'm one, too) - it's more likely that not that one day you will have to use public transportation. Enjoy your own private bubble while you can, but you may as well give up the delusion that only pitiful pariahs ride the bus. Tomorrow you too will be in line for an economy pass. Go ahead and start slow with a trendier option (like the electric city shuttle) if that helps to ease the pain, but why waste time? The hobos are already way ahead of all of us.

Why not start to redefine your standards of comfort today according to your own values instead of waiting for the law to force you, frowning, into sacrifice? Not easing yourself into a sustainable standard of living now is like eating whatever you want, whenever you want until you get so obesely unhealthy that the doctor makes you go on an extreme diet.

It's a little cliche, but I like to imagine that somewhere a hobo is bouncing along the rails in a freight car. He's gazing out at a pristine landscape remembering a time when he couldn't call in sick one day without the whole laborious tower of cards he'd erected collapsing in a pile of failure on his cubicle desk.

And then he says a prayer for all of the wage slaves who spend their days with eyes affixed to the computer screen, ears glued to the telephone and hands stuck on the steering wheel. Hoping that they, too,will one day be brave enough to wake up and smell the smokestack.

--alicia grega-pikul, 17 July 2004

Send e-mail to: apikul@timesshamrock.com.