Once, when I was about 11 or 12, I came home from mass one summer morning to find a hobo sitting on our back steps having a sandwich and a cup of coffee. I was so surprised I stopped a few feet in front of him, not knowing what to do or say. This was in the 60's, long after the depression was over, but my neighborhood was riddled with train tracks heading east and west and with spurs leading to the locomotive, radiator, lingerie and canning factories that gave jobs to the men and women in the entire town. But in spite of the changed economy there were those who still rode the rails, homeless and jobless, and they became a real point of interest among us kids. We played at being hobo all the time: marching along the railroad tracks, a long stick with a knotted bundle at the end slung over our shoulders; making chalk marks on the sidewalk and on trees pointing to houses. We didn't know exactly what kind of marks to make to indicate that this house was friendly but someone told us this was what the hoboes did, so that's what we did. We took cans of pork and beans from the cupboard and made "camp" by cooking them over an open fire in the woods and ate the beans sitting around the fire. Nobody told us that we couldn't do any of this stuff and truly, nobody seemed to care what we did during those long summer days as long as we came home for supper and before dark. There were supposed to be certain locales along the tracks where the hoboes set up their camps. My brothers, who got a lot more freedom than I did, say they saw them there all the time. One of them even asked my brother for an aspirin because he had a toothache but the one time I saw a gang sitting under a tree along the tracks, I ran away in fright. And here was one sitting on our back steps - thick set, gray haired, unkempt, wearing a baggy suit coat and pants. He had on what I later came to know as a pork pie hat. I stared, rooted to the sidewalk, but he was pretty much unflapped by my appearance and kept munching on what looked like a ham sandwich, a few crumbs caught up in his black and gray mustache. I was so tongue-tied, to this day I don't know whether I even said hello to the man and walked past him up the steps that led into our kitchen. As I came in my mother was going out with the yellow enamel coffeepot in her hand to refill his cup. I watched from the safety of the kitchen window as she poured him another cup and he accepted. There was no dialogue between them. Only after he was gone, the empty cup left on the steps, did my mother tell me that he had knocked on the door. She had understood the words "food" and "give." She had pointed to the steps and he understood that he was to sit. "Mama, weren't you afraid?" I asked, a result of all the ghoulish hobo stories we kids told each other. "Nie (no), I wasn't. During the war, everybody was hungry, every day, all day," she tells me, "with people begging for food, doing what they had to do to stay alive, to live through the war." I knew she was talking about herself and the years she spent in Germany as a forced laborer during World War II. That's the way it was at our house. A person, an incident, a word, sometimes even silence, would ignite memories of growing up in Poland or her memories of the war. It's how I learned history. It's how I learned of what happened to my mother before she was my mother and that she understood people who traveled in cattle cars and had nothing to eat. At one time, she had been one of them. When we broke up my mother's home, I took that yellow enamel coffee pot. I kept it because at one time she had her hand on that handle and I can put my hand where hers had once been, to connect, to remember that lesson, on that summer day.
18 Comments
7/10/2017 02:59:36 pm
Great story. We lived next to the tracks & my mom also fed the "hobos". There were a lot of kind people than. I am also wise enough to remember , and experienced, the various form of prejudice that existed than. 😢
Reply
Sophie Knab
7/11/2017 06:27:52 pm
Thanks for reading, Dave. If I recall correctly you lived on Roberts Road, too, your house backing up to New York-Penn Central. You must have experienced your fair share of migrant people. And you are right - they weren't the only ones to experience prejudice. When I think of it....(sigh)
Reply
Michael Abrams
7/10/2017 03:53:35 pm
I never had an encounter with any hoboes but I do remember hearing stories about them. And gypsies too. In the spirit of your story however, I do remember hearing my mother talk about the different friends and family who, for one reason or another, had no home and how my mother and father would take them in. When I was about six years old a friend of hers, Mae Novak, came to stay with us. My mother didn't charge her to stay with us. I am sure she had no income but she would help out around the house and I am sure she was companionship for my mother. You don't hear of people doing that anymore; helping someone to get back on their feet.
Reply
Sophie Knab
7/11/2017 06:33:18 pm
Hi Michael! Your mother had a good heart. I personally know that and not just talking out of my ....I can see her giving someone a roof over their head. I may be wrong but I think it comes from understanding, from experiencing hardship themselves. It gives you perspective...empathy. There was a saying when I grew up...she was "good people."
Reply
Ellie Jordan
7/10/2017 06:18:48 pm
This is very touching. The statement you made about the coffee pot and that your Mother's hand had held it, caused a lump in my throat. I like to believe that people are still willing to help the downtrodden. Maybe fear keeps some from getting involved.
Reply
Sophie Knab
7/11/2017 06:38:10 pm
Hello Ellie! I value your comments so much! Thank you. The lesson I learned from my mother is to be kind where you can and not to be afraid of those who are poor/different. Even a cup of coffee can make a difference.
Reply
Bonnie
7/10/2017 10:20:49 pm
Hii Sweetie, What a walk down memory lane. I too remember my folks feeding the hobos that stopped by The Steak House. I too hid in the kitchen from them. Beautiful memories, I haven't visited in so many years. Thank you, hugs 💕
Reply
Sophie Knab
7/11/2017 06:45:47 pm
Bonnie! Thanks for reading! I have always felt that my growing up years in our home town was in some aspects somewhat magical. Maybe it was the times where you could run the streets and never come to harm. Maybe it was that you knew everyone was kind of keeping an eye on you(I know that railroad watchman had nothing else to do but watch for trains). Maybe it was just childhood.
Reply
Elliott Hutten
7/11/2017 12:59:58 pm
Sophie, this is such a meaningful story especially after having read your book, Wearing the Letter P.
Reply
Sophie Knab
7/11/2017 06:49:08 pm
Thanks for reading, Elliott! I was shaped by many things but I often feel that the largest influence was my mother's experiences.
Reply
Carla Tomaszewski
7/11/2017 04:25:47 pm
Beautifully written story, Sophie! I have a similar story my mother told me of her life growing up at her parents' house-front bakery and how the hobos would migrate up the hill from the railroad tracks, looking for a handout of my grandparents stale bread and donuts. Mom said they were directed to the bakery by the little symbols they drew indicating a good place to go for food. There weren't just hobos, though, there were simply just very poor, down-and-out persons, victims of the depression. Luckily, the government provided added rations to the bakery so it was less of a hardship for my grandparents to help out so many people.
Reply
Sophie Knab
7/11/2017 06:54:54 pm
Hi Carla! Thanks so much for reading and sharing your memories. It's so good to remember our people in these acts of kindness and to try and live up to their example: do good where we can.
Reply
John Zientowski
7/11/2017 08:33:26 pm
Hi Sophie,
Reply
Sophie Knab
7/11/2017 08:59:57 pm
Hi Johnny Z!
Reply
Barb
7/11/2017 11:15:55 pm
Thanks for sharing your memories. Through your words, I can 'see' him myself.
Reply
Colleen Quast
7/12/2017 10:45:05 am
Sophie, So well written. My Dad told me that my Grandmother would send him down to the hobo camp in Birchcliff, Ontario with a loaf of bread and black currant jelly back in WW 1.
Reply
Jackie Clona
8/3/2017 10:17:03 am
Sophie, I am trying to copy your installments to send to Marcia.......is this the start of a new topic? I see archives?
Reply
Jackie Clona
8/3/2017 02:01:31 pm
Hi Jackie! Thanks for the kind words! The archives/previous publications are things I've written in the past about Poland for anyone who may be interested. The blog is about growing up Polish American and I'll just be adding things that come from my writer's journal, things that have interested me. I usually post each blog to Facebook and she could read it (in the future)via Facebook. with her Kindle Fire. Also I can send her the Hobo story as document via email or she can log on to my web site on a computer in the library. Hope this helps!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
One of the biggest moments in my life was being able to sign for my very own library card. When I'm not reading, researching and writing I'm riding my bike, sewing or gardening. I love flea markets, folk art, and traveling to Poland.
Archives
October 2024
|