Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) a transient worker, a migrant; thus boomer reporter, a journalist who works on papers all over the country, never keeping one job for too long.

1859		H.E. Taliaferro Fisher’s River 33: A mountain ‘boomer’, dressed in a linsey hunting shirt.
1881		Cheyenne Transporter (Darlington, Indian Ter.) 25 Jan. 4/3: The troops engaged in keeping the so-called ‘boomers’ from entering the Territory.
1891		F.D. Srygley Seventy Years in Dixie 342: The mountain ‘boomers’ [...] in their rough cow-hide boots and plain home-spun shirts.
1906		A. Adams ‘Bad Medicine’ Cattle Brands 🌐 I always was such a poor hand afoot that I passed up that country, and here I am a ‘boomer.’.
1917		‘A-No. 1’ From Coast to Coast with Jack London 29: He plied his crooked game until frowned upon by his honest fellow-employees who usually lent a helping hand to have the unprincipled ‘boomer’ discharged from the service.
1928		C. Panzram Journal of Murder in Gaddis & Long (2002) 116: I have met every kind of a crook there is. [...] home guards and boomers.
1953		Kerouac letter 10 Jan. in Charters I (1995) 396: Uncle Bill Balloon is a boomer and I have a few railroad things written that’ll give you a laugh.
1965		H.S. Thompson letter 10 June in Proud Highway (1997) 524: Boomers, Drifters, and Hard Travelers [...] I have a working knowledge of Boomer bars.
1967		(con. 1920s) J. Thompson South of Heaven (1994) 46: Wingy was a boomer — a guy who made the boom camps.
1979		J. Hurling Boomers 5: Whenever the boomers could get away with it, they did the work claimed by other unions.
1987		L.A. Times 22 Mar. 🌐 Those attracted to the work — known as ‘sandhogs’ in the East; ‘tunnel stiffs’ in the West — are, by reputation, hard-living boomers who travel from job to job and are somewhat casual about risks. ‘You finally get to where you don’t pay much attention,’ said Audrain Weatherl of Sacramento, a veteran tunnel stiff and an official of the Laborers International Union.
1991		(con. 1920s) O.D. Brooks Legs 161: Rufe’s a top mechanic, but like me he’s a boomer.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1909		Holbrook Argus (AZ) 28 Sept. 4/2: The Boomer Brakeman. I’ve traveled with the Boomers / To the places they like best, / From the gay old Coney Island / To the sunny, golden West.
1930		‘Dean Stiff’ Milk and Honey Route 27: Occasionally you meet a real boomer hobo among them.
1930		G. Milburn ‘The Boomer Shack’ in Hobo’s Hornbook 63: For Eastbound Jack, the boomer shack, / Was barred from Mexico!
1936		‘Railroad’ in T. Goodstone Pulps (1970) 31/1: W.G. Van Buskirk, who became master mechanic of the Dutchess and Columbia Railroad [...] began his career as a boomer engineer.
1945		F.H. Hubbard Railroad Avenue 195: I became a boomer switchman and brakeman.
1965		H.S. Thompson letter 10 June in Proud Highway (1997) 524: Boomers, Drifters, and Hard Travelers [...] I have a working knowledge of Boomer bars.

3. (US Und.) a transient thief, who works in one town for a short while, then moves on.

1924		G. Henderson Keys to Crookdom 398: Boomer. A high-class traveling criminal.
1933		Ersine Und. and Prison Sl.