It’s been about five years since I debuted my theories about hobo tropes in pop music in this space. Dare I quote myself? I dare:

I was born in the late ‘50s, at which point the Depression was still fresh enough in the popular imagination that many of its tropes were fairly widespread. (I should say here that this post is not about the stock market or economic collapse. It’s about pop music.) Among them was the hobo — the man who rambled from town to town, riding the rails, carrying his belongings in a bandanna on a stick. While they were seen as down on their luck, often drunk, just as often they were portrayed as free spirits that society never got its claws into. …All of which is the long way around to notice that every so often a song will pop up in an oldies mix to remind me of how hard this archetype was sold, especially with regards to women.

The songs I cited in support of my argument were Glen Campbell’s “Gentle on My Mind” and Brook Benton’s “Rainy Night in Georgia.” To a lesser extent, the Allman Brothers’ “Ramblin’ Man” and Roger Miller’s “King of the Road.” And this week I listened to another oldie, and realized there’s another one out there, the Marshall Tucker Band’s “Heard it in a Love Song.” To wit:

I’m the kind of man who likes to get away
Like to start dreaming about tomorrow, today
Never said that I love you, even though it’s so
Where’s that duffle bag of mine? It’s time to go

…I’m gonna be leaving at the break of dawn
Wish you could come, but I don’t need no woman tagging along
Always something greener on the other side of that hill
I was born a wrangler and a rounder, and I guess I always will

As we used to say in the features department, three makes a trend. I am now ready to write my masters thesis, “Hobo Tropes in Pop Music and Their Role in Early Third-Wave Feminism.”

Hobos. You never hear about them much anymore. Someone presents with no fixed address and no desire for one, and we think: Fentanyl. Untreated mental illness. Trafficking. Addiction. Supportive housing. SERIAL KILLER. And yet, when I was a kid, the raggedy man who picks up cigar butts to grab a few more puffs out of them (Roger Miller: I smoke old stogies I have found / Short, but not too big around) was almost a comic figure. Kids dressed as hobos for Halloween, with fake dirt rubbed into their cheeks and that aforementioned bandanna on a stick. They must have been commonplace, although I can’t remember ever seeing one, except maybe loitering around an SRO in Columbus way, way back in the day.

Times change.

How was everyone’s weekend? Mine has been amazingly unproductive, and that is fine. Blew most of Saturday on an extended lunch with friends, with drinks, that concluded close to sundown. As we left our last stop, TWO different and unrelated parties of barflies hailed us to praise our jukebox choices. What can I say? Sometimes barroom golf TVs just need a Fleetwood Mac soundtrack.

Today? I’m a teensy bit hungover, and should at least sweep and dust at some point, which I probably should do now. Let’s have a good week, shall we?