did that stuff, way back when....
Rode for my only transportation for 5 years (Moto GUzzi...hey its still a V twin, just kinda funny looking...crosswise like) and did the wandering and odd jobs thing to a lesser degree. I wouldn't want to in this day and age, rents are way way higher, low end jobs don't pay that much more, there's waymore paperwork and legal hassle, (insurance for instance, no one ran insurance on a bike in the 60s and 70s) and almost any kind of a job wants references, a background check and on and on. Used to show up at a machine shop or car or bike workshop during the week, tell the foreman my fibs, if he liked me he'd say "We'll start ya on Monday, be here at 7" and if I didn't screw up too badly, I was in. No one cared what was up your back trail. Nowadays, its hard to get a job if you've changed addresses too often, and there's background checks and drug tests to be sweeping floors, and you'd better have insurance on that bike or they'll impound it. There's things you can do yourself, a craft like jewelry making or leather, but you need a stable place to set up your tools, and the marketing is harder than the making. Society has done a real good job of stopping up the cracks where ya might slip through and run free and clear under the radar, as it were. You can't hardly get anyone to pay in cash anymore, and you need a bank account to cash checks of any size, and that gets reported to the State and the IRS....and they'll get you. I sometime s get a sort of bitter laugh when some politician rants on about 'freedom', 'cause there ain't a whole lot of that left around, to my mind. I read an article in Walneck's by a kid, who in the 40s got an old 45, rode across the country to visit his uncle, no license or registration, the cops just helped him along his way, when he got to his uncle's, the 45 was about wore out, so they cast up a pair of pistons(!) and his uncle helped him rebuild it, and sent him home. Kid wouldn't get 10 miles today, and I think its a sadder world for that.
Andrew