Exploration Two from Devon

Hello there!  I’m Devon, double major in history and English here at the Ohio State University, focusing on early American history and literature and love it!  I live down in Delaware where I am very active in the community, volunteering at the historical society and Main Street Delaware.  I must admit that I have always had a hard time writing about myself, its never been something I have enjoyed doing, perhaps this is the only time I am ever lost for words! Besides volunteering at the historical society in Delaware I am also an active member of the Ohio 121^st, a Civil War reenacting group out of Marion.  We portray first-person interpretations of historical figures from Ohio during the time of the Civil War.  

As a junior here at Ohio State I am looking towards graduate school, as I plan to continue a career in the ministry.  I am a very open person, always willing to lend an ear, let’s get to know each other!

My Civil War group at the Memorial celebrations in the Marion Cemetery.

As I read Maury Grahm’s profile in Holding On, several points stood out to me about this interesting man and his unique compatriots.  We today often look back at the Great Depression of the 1930s and do not realize the lives which were effected, we think that we are so far removed from this that is doesn’t really matter, why look back?  Stories such as that of Maury Grahm show us that we really are not as far removed, as we may believe.  Perhaps the most important bit that we need to take away from Grahm’s account of being a “Ho-Bo” is the distinction that he makes between a “hobo” and a bum.  He says, “There’s several groups of people on the road.  The biggest part of them is called ‘bums’, and they bum because they want something for nothing.  They don’t do any work in this world. … Now, the hobo would ever do the.  He’d say ‘I’m a class higher than that.’”  This distention is perhaps the most important thing to take away form Mr. Grahm’s profile.

Maury Grahm’s profile caused myself to wonder about this sub-culture of the “American Hobo” and just why someone in our world today would choose to live such a life.  After reading the first paragraph in Death of an American Hobo I understood a bit better the pulls of some to leave their lives behind and live on the land.  As I read, “It is as if the fears and doubts and anxieties of daily life abruptly vanish. The vise grip that civilization and this world have on my head loosens, and for a moment I can breathe freely,” I felt myself in some small way being pulled to this lifestyle.  So often in our world today we are bombarded with the sadness and fear that we read in the news and see on the TV, and so this sub-culture of the hobo could prove to be attractive to some.  I myself read the words of Henry David Thoreau in his essay Walden and dream of living a solitary life in the hills and backwaters of New England, to live away from “this world” of sadness and fear.