Monday morning feel good story
Chief Tango sends a link to this morning’s feel good story comes from Florida where a man going to a convenience store was attacked by a hobo when he told the bum he had no money;
Investigators said the man who was shot had approached a customer at the store, only identified as a man in his 40s, and asked for money.
When the customer said he had no money and tried to leave, deputies said the man who asked for money began punching the customer in his vehicle, at which point the customer pulled out a handgun and shot him in the chest.
According to the sheriff’s office, the shooter walked back into the store, told the clerk to call police and stayed at the scene until deputies arrived.
Of course, other hobos are upset;
“He never hurt anybody,” said the homeless man’s friend, who did not want to be identified. “He was trying to get hotel room money and trying to get by. He was a good guy.”
Having been the victim of aggressive hobos, I say “good!”
Category: Feel Good Stories
“Good guys” don’t punch people when they don’t give them money. And having dealt with my share of aggressive panhandlers, I’m not too bothered by the outcome.
“began punching the customer in his vehicle”
I hate getting punched in the vehicle, almost as bad as getting punched in the Jimmy. Engrilish, do you speak it?
I was a hobo.
When I was fourteen (14) years old, and my father was a United States Army master sergeant at William Beaumont General Hospital, I ran away from home in El Paso, Texas, and hopped a Southern Pacific “hot shot” freight train to San Antonio.
In the boxcar with me were a bunch of Mexicans.
They didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak Spanish.
But, they were real nice, and shared their food with me.
During the day, Texas is hot, but when the sun goes down, that desert gets COOOOLD!
All night long, in pitch blackness, that boxcar bucked, rattled, banged, rolled, and tossed around, like a bronco in a rodeo.
The jarring of the boxcar caused the open door to begin closing, and we were in real danger of being trapped inside.
If that had happened, we’d have been cooked to death in the Texas sun.
The Mexicans found a hefty two by four, and together, with all of our combined strength, we struggled to wedge that board to keep the sliding door from closing all the way shut.
When we got to San Antonio, I was hoping to go visit the Alamo.
But, first, I knocked on someone’s door offering to work for a meal (which is what hoboes do in books and movies), and the guy who answered was an Army sergeant who promptly called my folks to come get me.
I didn’t get to see the Alamo until MANY years later, when I was a sergeant in the United States Army stationed at Fort Hood, Texas.
So, that was my adventure as a teenaged hobo.
The article was too kind to call this BUM a HOBO. A bum sits around and begs while a hobo is nomadic and travels seeking work. Big difference in my book.
To JRM – teenage hobo: Gutsy at age 14 and looking back I think you will agree it was stupid. BZ