Skip to main content

Home Town

He first appeared sometime in the mid-70s.  We thought he might be a vet with PTSD.  In retrospect, he was one of the first homeless people I recall.  Before that we had the term "shopping bag ladies" and before people used the term bum freely.
In my childhood, everyone seemed to have a home.  Maybe not a house, but definitely a home.  Somewhere to go at the end of the day.  A safe place; a campsite.
We didn't know what to make of him because he was silent.  We wondered.  Was he broke? Hungry? Was he well?
When I picture him I see him in shades of brown and black.  He was a white guy, but living on the street can make you filthy in a hurry.  His clothing was tattered; his shoes barely had soles.  He walked...a lot.
People gave him a nickname: "the victim."
"I saw the victim today, " they'd say.  He was down on Telegraph and Ashby, making his way back to College Avenue.  He walked long stretches but by late afternoon always made his way back to the same intersection, or nearby.
Over the years, I gave him money a few times.  I wondered where he went at night too.  There was a door between two businesses on one of the main drags he frequented and I liked to think he opened it each evening and climbed a staircase to a small apartment.  Maybe he's doing some sort of psychological experiment and wants to collect data on how people react to his look, his needs, his presence in their neat and orderly world.  I liked to think that, but I always knew better.
In the decades that followed, scores and hoards of homeless have followed.  It's the visual reminder of the failure of our economic and health care system, isn't it?

Recently a major TV network aired a special on the homeless crisis in Los Angeles.  I thought I knew homelessness from my town, Portland, Or.  I thought I knew it from my many years in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Los Angeles is every other city times 10. It's been compared to Calcutta, India the scope is so large. Mile after mile of tents and encampments.  One observer has called it dystopic.  Aptly named.  Instead of "Night of the Living Dead" we have "Day of the Living Homeless."
We see the physical change in our urban areas all the time.  The constant encroachment of new apartments and condos, the reconfiguration of streets, the gentrification of communities that force the inhabitants on the periphery of their hometowns and replace barber shops with bridal shops, diners with brewpubs, grocers with baristas.
Maybe Armageddon will arrive not in the form of a massive earthquake, a foreign power, or global warming.  Maybe it's lining up right now on the fringes, in the bushes, on traffic islands and the space between railroad tracks.  They aren't victims and their numbers are growing.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

To a Tee

 I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt.  They are the foundational garment of my life.  My day starts with selecting a t-shirt and it ends with sleeping in one.  Once thought of as under garments, t-shirts are now original art and no doubt, a billion dollar business.   You can get a t-shirt with anybody's picture displayed.  You can commemorate an event, a birthday, a death, even a specular play in any sport.  Family reunions usually have a commemorative t-shirt.  Also, any organization that solicits your support in the form of a donation is likely to offer you a t-shirt. Where once I only had the basic white t-shirt, my drawers are filled with all manner of colorful choices.  Some recognize major events in my life, some, spectacular performances or plays I have witnessed, and some unforgettable places I have been.   I say I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt because I have taken the bait on what I perceived as a must-have only to be disappointed. ...

Body Language

I'm sitting there in a hospital gown, waiting for my doctor to complete my yearly physical.  This is when I look at everything on the walls, read the medical posters, the instructions on any equipment in the room, look in every corner and behind every chair.  I study the paper on the examination table, laugh out loud at the picture of a smiling child holding a bouquet of broccoli, and the note the placement of the computer in the room. Finally, wondering if the gown I'm wearing is on correctly, I focus on myself.  At this point in my life I'm fairly comfortable in a doctor's office.  But it always seems to take so long when waiting for the doc to enter.  So I fidget.  Then I begin a tour of myself.  Scars are tattoos.  I look at the one on my knee and see myself at 12.  Whittling a piece of wood with my Boy Scout jack knife.  The blade slips and I cut a crescent slash through my jeans and into my flesh for life.  50 years later ...

Sex, Religion, and Politics

Watching TV to keep up with the news is like going to a party.  Sex, religion and politics, in any order.  Those are the topics of choice.  We hear about "twerking," and are confronted with all manner of exhibitionism in local news.  Should women be wearing yoga pants in non-yoga areas.  The office, the workplace, school, church...and that's just the teachers! Religion encroaches in all the right places.  Christian Mingle, the online dating service pops up on the screen during the grisliest of crime shows, the politician's speeches and the sit-coms so full of sexual innuendo that every second of canned laughter barely hides the grins, the gasps, the outcries, or the mindless guffaws. So what's the message?  Are we a society and culture in decline or just rapidly changing?  Probably both.  I recall a student once coming to school with a most offensive tee shirt.  Offensive in that the cartoon image on the front made it impossible for hi...