1980s: The Littlest Hobo

January 30, 2019

By AHNZ

This meant a lot to me as a little kid. ‘The Littlest Hobo’ was a Canadian TV show which also aired in Nz in the early eighties. Only the dog, The Littlest Hobo, was constant but given a new name and a new people to help each episode. TLH was basically a high IQ and high Emotional IQ human with impressive problem solving skills trapped in a canine body.

TLH was a superhero who turned up where he was needed but there was one thing he could never do: Keep what he had earned.

Family after family accepted TLH and offered him a home for life but he always turned away, back to the road. Some dogs are afraid of fireworks, this was a dog who was afraid of emotional commitment!

That sentiment is part of our cultural history, especially in the late ’70s to early ’80s. In 1977 Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote…

“If I leave here tomorrow Would you still remember me? For I must be travelling on now ’cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see.”

At approximately the same time (estimated) Barry Crump, New Zealand’s most successful hobo, summed up his own life quite well with the same sentiments of the TLH…

I’ve heard the things they said to me

I’ve bogged meself in stuff

I’ve took responsibility and now I’ve had enough

I’ll greet you like a brother, I’ll make you laugh somehow

And then one day I’ll drift away just like I’m doing now.

—

See also: 1970s Anthropomorphic Television Demigods

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