by Anton Zollner

Hodon (official: Hodoni; Hung. Hodony) is southeast from the municipality of Knees it has a railroad station on the railroad line, which runs parallel to the  road. Because of the bad status of the road - there are no public bus lines here. In addition, Hodon is "a village, which has many difficulties", as the newspaper "Renasterea marked Banateana" from 9 May 1996 the locality.

In 1717 the settlement consisted only of 15 houses, but in1890, Hodon already had 1,600 inhabitants. In 1910 there were 576 Germans a population proportion of over 43 per cent, which rose until 1930 to almost 50 per cent, in 1940 it had 620 persons of German descend. During the census of 1977 the 184 Germans placed only a population proportion of 15 per cent. With it the Deutschtum began to go against its end. This actually also acknowledged it in January 1992, when from the 1,108 inhabitants of the village only 27 persons admitted themselves to the Deutschtum.

Before 1996, there were only 400 families that lived in Hodon, which were Romanians with few exceptions. Since the large majority of the youth already went into the cities in 1989, most Hodoner belong to the third generation. The village routes are devastated because what took place here during the war.

In 1986 the water supply system broke and therefore were shut down. Bread was not baked here since 1990. The baker's shop leased to a private person had failed in a short time and is since out of operation. Also the telephone network in 1996 was in a bad status that the 30 telephones  " rested " more than it functioned. Only lately a new automatic switchboard with 40 links was put into operation. It has two long-distance lines with the switchboard from Knees, without having in addition, access to the automatic long-distance line network. At the same time there was a lot of " fashion shops " in Hodon, most however had sweets, cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. For an article of  clothing, a few shoes or for household articles the village inhabitants had to drive into the district town. Despite this hopeless position, some optimists try again and again with initiative and diligence to modify something in their life.  

As one can detect now from the Banater press easily, the December events of 1989, hardly any improvements had been made in the country. During a more exact view one can unfortunately maintain even the opposite.