Urban Legend: Hoboes

Occasionally in Denver, you'll see a homeless person. They might be pacing back and forth along highway intersections, with a cardboard sign saying something like "NO MONEY. SIX KIDS. GOD BLESS." Sometimes they hang around street corners, slouched in a pile of tattered clothes. And there's always a group of them hanging around the capitol building, leaned against the trees and park benches, their soiled faces peering eagerly into paper bags full of booze.

I bet you avoid them. Bottom Feeders, Bums, Hoboes, you call them. Cheats, Beggars, Lazy Slugs. You recall that occasion when one of them staggered toward you, intoxicated, painfully lonely, hoping to steal some company from you as well as a few dollars from your pocket. You don't want anything to do with those welfare drains, those filthy scroungers. You walk away, briskly, quickly, letting a "No thanks, I gotta go," sail over your shoulder. Then you forgot about it in a sidewalk full of normal people.

But you flee so quickly, you failed to notice the smirk on that bum's face. The Rolex on his wrist. The top-notch golf clubs stowed behind his dumpster. The bulge of keys to a new sports car in his pocket. No, all you see are the desperate eyebrows, the ratty beard, the mismatched charity clothes, a bare dirty ankle. You don't even recognize the prominent faces usually on placards and in newspapers.

Most people are completely unaware of the secret society of bums. I'm sure you've heard all kinds of stories about things in the sewers, scandals with tax money, murderers on the loose, kidnappings-but no one bothers to inquire about our city's visible scum. Legends tend to focus on secret, private things, things below the surface. No one would expect that our greatest unknown is right in front of everyone's eyes, milling around on the side of highways, on corners, at the park.

Furthermore, it is difficult to believe that the lives of these deadbeats are more romantic than our own. To see them as 'gypsies' instead of 'hoboes' takes too much brain power for the masses to contemplate.

One can't expect to understand why anyone would choose to live the down-and-dirty life of a homeless person. You will fantasize about fame and fortune, always being comfortable and pampered and having a spectacular view of everyone else below you. No one in their right mind would give up their high social standing to hustle pedestrians for spare coins. Why would wealthy, well respected people spend their days in soup kitchens?

The answer is this: we all want what we don't have. Many people feel neglected, poor, and oppressed, even if they are far from homeless. These people want notoriety, money, and freedom.

Naturally, those who are famous, wealthy, and powerful are also very empty in that they do not know what it is like to suffer. So, they crave disapproval, prejudice, poverty, bleakness, complacency, and disregard. They are drawn to the life of a social outcast.

They are very lucky people playing the parts of the very unlucky. We watch them both from our in-between position.