Who is the Hobohemian?
I have been fascinated with hobos ever since I was a kid growing up in New Mexico. We often visited a restaurant called Hobo Joe's - a southwestern knock-off of Bob's Big Boy. Perched outside the entrance to the joint was a giant, stylized hobo with every accouterment we have come to associate with these mythologized creatures - bedroll, bandana, ragged dungarees, and equally rugged features punctuated with the marks of a rootless, peripatetic existence.
The bindlestiff of popular lore writ large on a restaurant menu. Just the thing to capture the imagination of a pre-teen who longed to ride the rails to wherever for who knows what purpose on a romantic, journey far from home. The siren call of rock and roll would soon be heard.
Later still, in the pre-graduate school era of my continuous childhood, a harmonizing influence would resonate with the so-called beat generation bohemians, scruffy literary types lighting out into and lighting up the American wilderness on their own journey, both into the heart of America and into the heart of hearts - their own.