Tom Joad Versus Jack Kerouac

This past weekend I was out with my family when I saw a couple of young men hanging on a corner. Dressed in their shaggy best, cargo shorts and sleeveless shirts with multiple piercings evident, one of them held a cardboard sign which read: "Traveling, Hungry, Broke." Strangers on corners with cardboard signs are no curiosity on the streets where I live. I am always intrigued by the creativity that is on display at these moments. I am also impressed by the level of desperation that I have seen. These two scored some points for creativity , but zero on the desperation scale.
When I give money to help the hungry or the homeless, I send it to shelters. I give cans of food. I want to get help to those who need it. A pair of young hipsters making their way across this great land of ours seems like a romantic notion to other young hipsters. To me it was grating. Down the road apiece we encountered a much simpler sign, "Please Help," written in a scrawl that echoed the sentiment on a piece of cardboard that may have been this character's only possession beyond the clothes on his back. There was no skateboard propped up next to this guy. Personal grooming had become less than a priority some time ago. The difference between these two corners played havoc in my head all the way home.
Why was I making this judgement as I made my own way across town? Over the last couple of years, the word "hobo" has found its way back into the lexicon of the kids who attend the school where I work. It's used as a put-down, often to describe a moment when someone's shoes or jacket don't conform to the latest style. I ask the kids who are tossing around this epithet if they know what it means. To my surprise, most of them come up with the image of vagrants with cardboard signs. Considering how close many of the families I deal with each day are to this line, I am amazed at how comfortably superior they are flaunting this distinction. That's not me, they declare. That's somebody else. And it always will be.
I hope they are right.