[Verse]
The hobo is a reoccurring subject in Jimmie Rodger's 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 highball 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 a half a hundred 'bos 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 train-bulls of the oncoming yard

But many quite respectable men found 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