Davie, I am sure that you are too young to remember this, but during W W II, times were still hard. The depression following the crash of the stock market made many people penniless. This continued into the war years. I was born in Tillar which was on a main rail line through the delta area of Arkansas. Many of these penniless/homeless men rode the rails, looking for work, doing odd jobs - whatever they could to obtain a meal. These men were not always bums; some seemed to be well educated men down on their luck. They would get off the boxcars and come around to the homes in Tillar looking for food. They always came to the back door and were curteous and never caused trouble. Offering to do odd jobs for a meal was their M. O. These sad men had a system, known to all of them, which alerted others in their situation as to which house from which they could expect to find nourishment. This system was a mark made on a fence or tree, etc. They were called tramps or hobos. In those days, there was no phrase "politically correct"....just hard times for most Americans. Sugar and gasoline were among the items rationed during the war. Ration stamps were needed to obtain them. If you ran out of ration stamps, you did without. New cars were extremely hard to come by. People had to put their names on a waiting list to get a new car. I remember these hobos and it is a part of my early childhood that I will never forget, since I experienced their plight personally. Carolyn