re: I thought hobos and quicksand would be bigger adult problems than they turned out to be

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I always thought a tarantula would do me in

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swimming less than an hour after eating lunch should have nailed you long before a tarantula

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I remember asking people for years what the stick with the bandana was called. Nobody ever knew.

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It's a bindle, on a bindle-stick, carried by a bindlestiff.

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I think it's just a bastardization of "bundle".

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It's cognate with bundle, yes.

I haven’t encountered quicksand a single time.

I was ready for it after watching Gilligan’s Island reruns.

Family/friends die off way more then I thought they would.

I think I would have risked quicksand to get a glimpse of a stray blasting cap in the neighborhood

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hobo

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now referred to as "Unhoused Individuals"

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we still don't have x-ray glasses that actually work

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oh I'd go broke

The hobos all made it to California and are shitting on the sidewalks.


When I lived in Baton Rouge they had gutter punks. Which are hobos with piercings and tattoos. The hobos are just called different things now.



Actually, maybe I'm wrong. I thought hobo was just a bum that traveled. But I guess it's someone who traveled for work. So, your travel nurses are like hobos. The gutter punks are more like tramps, travelers who avoid work.

For many years I lived in fear of being devoured in seconds by piranha anytime I swan in a lake or river.

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I was watching a civil war doc on history channel. Apparently the term hobo comes from the end of the civil war. After the war was over, there was no way set up to get all these soldiers back home, so many just wondered and walked back. They were Homeward Bound, which was shortened to hobo.

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That's not entirely correct. After the surrender at Appomattox Court House, the Union offered to transport the Confederates south via train if they would sign a fealty oath to the Union and turn in their weapons. Until the trains were going, they pledged to house (in tents) and feed them.

Some signed the oath and waited for the trains to get going -- and no doubt ate better than they had been eating. I believe they got shoes and other things too. The North was very well provisioned.

Many Confederates decided they weren't taking orders anymore and wanted to keep their weapons. So they just took off and made their way home on foot. They'd been walking and sleeping outdoors for, in some cases, four years. They could shoot game and take care of themselves and that's what some did, including my wife's great-grandfather who walked back to south Alabama after following Lee for four years.