Topic: Strange...

[lilyjean]

Wow! Thank you lincsyokel2 for that interesting little tale. I love learning the origins to our vocabulary....fascinating!  :) How amazing is this site; everybody has a tale, story, information to share......Brilliant!   :)

[GrannieAnnie]

Wow! Thank you lincsyokel2 for that interesting little tale. I love learning the origins to our vocabulary....fascinating!  :) How amazing is this site; everybody has a tale, story, information to share......Brilliant!   :)

Interesting that we wandered from  berries to definitions of tramps. Probably someone will bring us full circle.

[plainleaf]

well in my grandfathers day hobo's where not above stealing the odd fruit off of trees or stealing the odd chicken. Hence my reference. In USA hobos' where also known for riding freight trains. A good example of this can be seen in the Lee Marvin movie  :Emperor of the North,

[Digeroo]

I don't expect anyone would mind the 'odd' apple diappearing from a well laden tree but chickens sounds more serious.  I had one apple on a very younger tree last year and it disappeared just as it ripened  I was very upset.  I had waited two years for that single fruit.  It was supposed to be a bramley so not only was it not that variety but it vanished.  Wasps and birds are a pain but in neither case does the fruit completely go without a trace.

I thought a hobo was a migrant worker.   I think the expression here is also 'of no fixed abode'. 

We also have travellers (formally known as gipsies) who camp out on the highways and byways and graze their spotted horses at the side of the roads.  Some of which particularly the old drovers roads are quite wide.   They help themselves to things in the hedgerows, but then we all help ourselves to blackberries, sloes and elderflowers.  When I was young we used to bolt our door and take the milk in very quickly if they were in the neighbourhood.  But now we have lots of groups in the vicinity and I have not heard of any major problems. 

[Robert_Brenchley]

My point is that for someone to use the word hobo in the context of the post ,that poster would be almost surely from the US.

Just geographically working somethng out LOL

XX Jeannine

From the US, somewhere round the latitude of Philadelphia. I haven't tied it down closer than that.

[Jeannine]

 ;D ;D

[GrannieAnnie]

My point is that for someone to use the word hobo in the context of the post ,that poster would be almost surely from the US.

Just geographically working somethng out LOL

XX Jeannine

From the US, somewhere round the latitude of Philadelphia. I haven't tied it down closer than that.

It was not I who mentiond "hobo" first!
Anyway to refine the definition: hobo-types didn't always work but migrant workers do. They have a very hard life and especially their children. I shudder to think.

[Borlotti]

Birds have ears, they listen to you, and if you say you are going to pick the fruit tomorrow, they think 'quick eat it'.  They are very clever these birds and one day the bush is full of fruit and when you think it is ready to pick, so do they.  Probably why fruit cages were invented.  Birds like ripe berries too. I wish I knew who, or what dug a big hole where I planted two pepper plants, that I have been watering everyday on the allotment and left no trace of the plants. Must be the same animal that run across my pumpkins, fox I think.  I would rather the birds had the fruit, then some nasty person.  Starlings can strip a tree in minutes, haven't seen the green parrots yet this year.  They are probably waiting for the sunflower seeds, which they love, and are welcome to.

[Jeannine]

I wonder which part of the US Plainleaf is from, he mentioned it first XX Jeannine

[davyw1]

I wonder which part of the US Plainleaf is from, he mentioned it first XX Jeannine

I think ACE knows

[Flighty]

Jeannine I believe that plainleaf resides in, or near, Reston, VA.

[lincsyokel2]

Tramps used to leave marks scratched on gateposts, to indicate various things to other tramp, such as if the occupiers were kind, or didnt welcome tramps, if there was food or water , somewhere to sleep, of if they would call the police, or there were guard dogs.

These were called Tramp Marks. Interestingly, the term fell out of use after the Poor Laws were repealed, since the system of tramping then slowly vanished, persisting until the late 1960's, but then reappeared as 'Tramp Mark' or 'Tramp Stamp', a tattoo on the small of the back on women of low morality and biologically accommodating disposition.

I love words.

[lilyjean]

Birds have ears, they listen to you, and if you say you are going to pick the fruit tomorrow, they think 'quick eat it'.  They are very clever these birds and one day the bush is full of fruit and when you think it is ready to pick, so do they.  Probably why fruit cages were invented.  Birds like ripe berries too. I wish I knew who, or what dug a big hole where I planted two pepper plants, that I have been watering everyday on the allotment and left no trace of the plants. Must be the same animal that run across my pumpkins, fox I think.  I would rather the birds had the fruit, then some nasty person.  Starlings can strip a tree in minutes, haven't seen the green parrots yet this year.  They are probably waiting for the sunflower seeds, which they love, and are welcome to.

;D ;D ;D Loved it! Brilliant!

[Jeannine]

Thank you Flighty..do all the others live with him XX Jeannine

[plainleaf]

Flightysorry but i don't live close to Reston VA.

[shirlton]

Am I getting the feeling of De ja vu

[InfraDig]

I recommend The Autobiography of a Supertramp, by William Davies (What is this life if full of care...)

[Jeannine]

Oh may we ask where you do live please XX Jeannine

[Bugloss2009]

and I thought a hobo was someone from Hoboken NJ

[GrannieAnnie]

and I thought a hobo was someone from Hoboken NJ

;D ;D ;D  I'm sure Hobokenites will just LUV hearing that one!