Waco History Podcast

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé. The origins of Americans riding the rails in search of work trace back to shortly after the Civil War, when ex-soldiers and others sought work on the frontier. Their numbers rose sharply during the Great Depression, when jobs and money were scarce. These hobos became common sights in transportation hubs like Waco. Charles and Ruth Armstrong, both longtime Waco residents, explain their impressions of hobos during the thirties: C. Armstrong: "Most of them was good people. They was kind of like the homeless. They wasn't out to hurt anybody." R. Armstrong: "At that time, see, it wasn't anything unusual. I mean, everybody was in about the same boat because everybody was having a hard time." C. Armstrong: "And, see, they called them ‘hobos' regardless. Some of them was hobos all they wanted to be, kind of like the homeless. There's some of them that want to be. And some of them was trav