Merle Haggard - Narration #4 lyrics

The hobo is a reocurring subject in the Jimmie Rodgers songs Hoboing was an accepted form of travel for the migrant worker Or for the unemployed who simply wanted a change of weather And during the period of Jimmie's greatest popularity You could set your watch by the highbawl of any train Hoboing was an inexpensive almost sure way of getting from one place to another and during the peak of the depression it was not unusual to see Oh half a hundred bo's jump from a train just as it came into the outskirts of a city. They'd jump off a soon as they could so as to ditch the trainbulls of the oncoming yard. But many quite respectable men find it convenient to hop trains also and many of them died identified only as a railroad bum And I would imagine that hobo Bill was one of them...