Sparteye:

Doubtless you are correct, but there's also a school of thought that many of these vagrants were former pugilists whose brains had been addled by a few too many punches. They were known as homeless boxers, which quickly was abbreviated as hobo.

There's actually not a WORD of truth in the preceding paragraph except for the first phrase of the first sentence. But truthfully there is a dog rescue group here which calls itself HOBO because they rescue homeless boxers.

Ted--mourning the loss of his faithful Shorts, who went to the big back yard in the sky yesterday at the incredible old age of ca. 15, Methuselah for boxers.


TEd