Tony's Story

8 p.m. last night.
Tony was sitting on the cold north steps beside the QFC at Pike and Broadway, eating  barbecue pork slices from a styrofoam box. Beside him there was a stroller-like device with his gear. Even though he had a meal, he was willing to accept a sack lunch, and we sat on the cold steps next to him. I say "we" because this time Centennian came bobbing along, attached to my backpack.

Tony is unemployed because he is disabled. He's had a couple of rough bouts with body injuries. His odyssey as he describes it: In 2006 he had a back problem that resulted in surgery, and when he was closed up, a latex glove got left inside him. A few years later his blood counts were really low and he wasn't feeling well, and an MRI disclosed something in his body that didn't belong there. That problem was compounded with a neck injury when he was working in an auto shop and struck his head while carrying a heavy load. His story is an unimaginable tale of beaurocratic screwups and CYAs, but thats not the story we're going to tell here, because it gets too complicated.

What matters is that Tony can only walk a couple blocks with his backpack, so he uses the roller to get around.

Life at night

Tony has had tents to sleep in at night, and they've gotten stolen in the past. He currently is relying on Tent City, which he said is located in a parking area near the University of Washington. Students have brought food to the encampment, and he has earned time to stay there by performing patrol duty three hours a night. But he got thrown out for at least a day because he overstepped his prerogatives by trying to resolve one of the resident's electrical problems by adjusting a resource he was supposed to keep his hands off. I didn't write down the specific details because I wanted this to be a conversation, not an interrogation. We are still learning what it takes to talk with homeless people without making them feel more uncomfortable than they already are.

The lunch had two sandwiches of Kirland Black Forest ham slices with mayo and yellow mustard; a couople Babybel cheese balls;  a few oatmeal raisen cookies; a large apple, and two napkins. Cost was probably under $6.

The steps were uncomfortable. I was wearing several layers on my top, but only safari trousers, and my butt was freezing. Tony laughed as he dipped another slice of pork into the mustard. He was wearing layers on his lower half.

Hygiene

Tony was on the street for a month and beginning to reek before he discovered, through an Internet search at the library, that he could shower at Urban Rest Stop, located on 9th between Virginia and Stewart. You can also do your laundry there. No charge.

There's also no charge for riding the bus. He had a day pass from the  Tent City. He couldn't stay there last night due to violating the rules about electrical hookups, but he plans to be back there.

The police are generally understanding for the homeless. What happens if a police officer sees you urinating on the street? we asked. They generally look the other way, he replied.

Information for the homeless

The interview left me with a question: Why did Tony have to do an Internet search to find out about Urban Rest Stop? Is there a Web site that has all the information on resources in Seattle for the homeless? If not, what would it take to create a single, comprehensive source?

The others

We delivered two other sack meals last night. We didn't have to walk far.  Just a little ways past Molly Moon's there was someone bundled up in a doorway with an apple that someone had set beside him. I asked him if he wanted a meal. He didn't get up--that would have exposed him to the cold. But he did roll his head around to look and say yes. That was before I found Tony.

After Tony I had another sack lunch to give away and I headed down Pike. Across the street in the shadow of a doorway I saw some low shapes. It turned out to be two young men bundled for the night next to each other. I asked if someone wanted a lunch. I couldn't hear them well, but I believe the first one deferred to his friend, a nice looking young man with long wavy locks of black hair and smiling eyes. He sat up, smiled and we shook hands.

It was cold. We headed back to our place to stay for the night, which was warm, well lit and soft.
Meals distributed so far: 21.
Ubuntu

The Ferry Terminal: Jeff

Friday, February 17, 2017
I and my grade school chum, Darlene, were exiting the ferry from Bainbridge Island when we saw him standing at the end of the footbridge that reached the entrance to the ferry terminal--a bewhiskered, slender man with a cap and jacket, and holding a cardboard sign. It didn't take long to see that he was articulate, pleasant, and bright. He had worked in construction and high tech, but he's 60 years old now, and no-one wants to hire him, he explained.

Darlene and I had just had lunch with another childhood friend at the Madison Diner on Bainbridge. I had the open meat loaf sandwich,  and I ordered the tuna sandwich to go ($11.70 including the tip), because I knew there would be a minor gauntlet of homeless folk between the terminal and First Avenue. The waitress included extra napkins and plastic utensils.

Jeff was the first one we ran into. Jeff is well prepared for a night on the street, with two sleeping bags and two wool blankets to keep warm. And there's a possibility on his horizon-- the possibility of work as a homeless outreach person.

There's one thing Jeff is passionate about, partly because of his building background -- the issue of vacant buildings that could be turned into living quarters for the homeless. He thinks effort should be directed to making use of the vacant buildings. We talked for a while and I scribbled some notes -- ideas about resources and contacts serving the homeless. Something to follow up on.

Then Darlene and I headed off for Bottega Italiana, a gelato shop near Pike Place market. She handed Jeff some cash in parting. Near the gelato shop she gave a Real Change vendor $5 for the $2 publication. At Bottega Italiana we enjoyed excellent peach and lemon gelato.
Meals distributed so far: 18.
Ubuntu,

Jen: The $5 non-meal donation

Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017
This was the day of the non-meal. Instead, I gave a woman $5 which may have gone to feed her heroin habit. Or maybe it helped to get her a dry place to sleep for the night, or another meal.

Her name was Jen, or Jenny, or Jennifer. Sometimes names slip through my fingers. But not the image of her propped up in her wheelchair with the nervous mutt swaddled in a blanker on her lap and the cardboard sign asking for help in paying $60 in lodging for the night. Above her there was a glass awning that caught the drizzle at the corner in front of the Barnes and Nobel  at Pine and Seventh.

I tried to walk past, but she called out to me and I was curious about this woman in a wheelchair, almost in the rain, with the dog. In Rome, the spare changers would frequently have dogs with them. In one case I saw several dogs "cuddling" on a blanket with a donation bowl nearby. They were motionless. Ann, my traveling companion and hostess in Rome, suggested  their tranquility  may have been due to being sedated with drugs.

In Rome, in 2015, these dogs of a beggar were the epitome of tanquility.

When you engage someone on the street, they always have a story, and at least much of it has to be true in some way, because for whatever reason they are exposed to the elements and at least slightly uncomfortable. So there's a reason.

Jen's eyelashes were enhanced. She appeared to have a makeup foundation. She was articulate, conversational, and natural -- easy to engage -- and candid. As we talked, she munched on the remains of a Subway sandwich, so offering to purchase food for her seemed unnecessary at this time.

Jen told me there was a place where she could stay. Although she was in a wheelchair, she could walk a short ways. She could stop into Pacific Place to use the restroom, or sometimes she could just use an alley. To get warm, she could go into  Barnes and Nobel. She could clean up at Immanuel Lutheran Church on Thomas street. She could get around on the bus. If she couldn't find a place for the night, she could find shelter and sleep in her wheelchair, and she had enough wraps to deal with the cold. She could have used some sort of water-repellent cover.

Mental note: See whether I can find sponsors for disposable rain ponchos; for under $140 a bulk order of  72 2-packs is available via Amazon Prime, with free shipping--less than $1 per poncho.

Did she have kin nearby? Yes, she comes from Whidbey Island, and she had family there.

I asked her what was wrong with her leg. Ultimately, it had to do with her heroin habit. She had beaten it once, but her boyfriend got her back into it. The boyfriend is ditched, but the habit lingers. You don't use heroin to get high, she added. You use it to deal with the discomfort of not having it in your system. She had her on-street sources for more, she said. But she wanted to get back on methadone.

So, what to do? She didn't need food for the moment. What she needed was shelter. If I gave her $5 would she use it toward the hotel, or for drugs? She's try to use it for food or lodging, she said.

Meals distributed so far: still 17
Ubuntu,

Rick

February 13, 2017
Rick was selling Real Change, the newspaper peddled by homeless folk in Seattle, on Madison Street just off Boren. It was early afternoon, the day was still chilly and he was bundled up neatly, with nothing to suggest his status except the tabloid in his hand and his question to passers by, "wanna buy a newspaper?" Everyone I saw said "no." I gathered from talking with him that selling five a day might be about the norm.

I asked whether he were hungry. "A little," he said. But he jumped at the chance for a Subway Sandwich. "Let's split one," I said. "You can make the selection." He chose meat on wheat bread, without dressing. I had honey mustard dressing on my half, and we headed back out on the street so he wouldn't miss a sale. Total cost for the two halves: $6.58. He tucked his sandwich into his backpack; it will be his dinner, he said.

Rick became unemployed after the auto shop he worked for closed because the land was being sold. He worked for a Catholic organization for a while, but couldn't work now due to a disability. He was applying for SSI.

He has a trim, attractive blue backpack that held his mummy bag and he sleeps on the streets, a different place each night. I shared with him that the Lost Lake Cafe is a place where you can spend a cold night drinking coffee, and I found its address on my phone and shared it with him. As we talked I asked here he showered. He said he had some options and was familiar with the hygiene center near Pioneer Square.

Rick knew who "D" is (my Feb. 2 posting); he had seen him around, but didn't know him well.

I had to get home and get my car in the shop. Did Rick want my half of the sandwich, even though mine had dressing?  Yes, he said, appreciatively. We shook hands, noting that we may meet again, since he works that spot regularly.

Meals distributed so far: 17.
Ubuntu

Chicken George

Sometimes it's hard to feed a hungry person. George, for instance. He was standing on a corner close to the Capitol Hill Safeway store selling Real Change, the tabloid some street people sell to make money. My understanding is that they pay $.60 for every copy they sell for two dollars. George is on that corner three mornings a week. I bought a paper from him a couple days ago and decided to return with a meal.

I decided to call him Chicken George because I purchased a bird and his name was George. Sort of like the character in the TV series, Roots. I don't like treating people as if they are nameless.

George hears best out of his left ear, and then only poorly. He has trouble walking because his legs were injured in an accident. He sees a doctor for injections. And he endures the cold mornings to raise money to help pay his bills. People who sell Real Change are not beggars. They are the underpaid and underemployed.

I offered to stop in Safeway for a chicken. Did he want some chicken? He could accept a piece or two, he said. I bought a bird in a basket for $5 with my Safeway discount card, one of the cheaper meals I've put together and grabbed the last of the napkins from the dispenser. And I invited George to join me on a nearby bench.

Can't do that, he said. He had to stay at his post and sell newspapers to pay his bills.

OK, I'll eat a bit and bring you some. So, with the wind blowing, I tucked the base of the basket into the lid, sheltered the wrapper to keep the wind from blowing it away, and peeled off a drumstick. Then the other drumstick, and then a breast. That was enough. I reassembled the basket, rejoined George and offered him the basket. That presented another problem: it woudn't fit in his satchel while he was selling his newspapers, and there was no place to put it. Did I have a bag?

I went back to Safeway. The employee tending the self-serve line found a stash of those plastic bag tubes they put out in the veggie department. I took three and nested them for strength, then returned to the corner, dumped the chicken into the innermost bag and tied it off. Then I tied off the second interior bag.

As I was doing this, the woman with the ring in her lip was wondering why her dog was off the sidewalk and eyeballing me. He smells the chicken, I explained, as I headed for the trash bin to get rid of the basket. I rejoined George. I think the bags were too large to fit in his satchel. He set them on a sign. I hoped they wouldn't fall on the ground.

I handed him the extra napkins. That seemed to flummox him. I suggested he put them in his pocket.

One thing that's abundantly clear from all this. You can't superimpose your solutions on street people.  It never occurred to me that someone on the street might not have the free time to sit down and eat, because they might miss a couple of sales netting them $1.40 each. (On my first encounter with Geroge, one man actually paid $5 for the newspaper, so maybe some sales generate more that you'd expect.)

The homeless have their own challenges, methods and limitations. Next time I'll probably opt for chicken nuggets and jo-jos -- something that packs better and doesn't drip. But I'll spend time first just trying to figure out what works.
Ubuntu
Meals distributed so far: 16.
Ubuntu,

Subway sandwiches with the big man hiding in his hood

The nosebleed was short lived, but a natural part of the progress of the cold I had been fighting since returning from Mazatlan on Monday. Now the phlem I was blowing out showed signs of infection, and I knew it was time to go to Bartells for some Tussin and more lozenges. As I approached the entrance at Madison and Boren, I noted the large figure on the bench facing the door and made an abrupt course correction to slip past his silhouette and get inside. When I came out with my sack of nostrums, he was still there, and this time he was facing me, but not making eye contact.

Surrendur

At first, he just looked large, like a human pyramid. He was hunkered down from the cold and wrapped up so that I could barely see his face concealed as it was under his hood. On the sidewalk in front of him was a message on cardboard asking for help. I avoided eye contact because I just wanted to get home, and I might have made it, because the hood was pulled around his face so much that I couldn't be sure he saw me . . . I got about 100 feet before I lost the argument and turned back.

"You must be cold," I said, and he lifted his head to look at me at an angle, nodding affirmation. "Are you hungry," I asked. Quietly, he said yes. 

Would he like to go to MacDonald's? They didn't want him in there because of his hygiene," he explained. Was there a place he could go eat? Subway, he said. They let him come in there and he sat in the back away from people.

He rose, holding his wraps around him tightly, keeping his face well covered -- I presumed because of the nip in the air. He smelled. Not unbearably bad, but enough that I had to wonder what I had gotten myself into. He turned to pick up a sturdy milk basket, which contained some bags and a polyester blanket he could use to fight off the chill.  Subway was within 50 feet. We got inside and into the order line. 

I said Tuna; he said chicken. We each got soft drinks and a cookie, totalling $21.46 for the two of us. I was almost within the parameter of a maximum $10 for a meal that I established when I decided to purchase 100 meals. We filled our soft drink containers and walked to the back of the store, which opened out to the lobby of the building hosting the sandwich shop. As we ate and spoke occasionally I noticed the tatoo on the back of his right hand. The "CD" stood for Central District, and the Crown over the letters represented King County, he explained.

Part way through the meal I said I was Robert. Because of the nature of this post, we'll just call him "D."  Because of his quiet nature and humility,  it only occurred to me as we parted later that, as well as being quite heavy, D was also quite tall. I wondered afterward if he had mastered the art of  unoticeability--a way of coming to grips with the reality of not being seen.

His origins; his health

 D grew up in Seattle. He has been to Hawaii. His parents were black, Hawaiian, Samoan. He is a big guy. He shuffles when he walks, because he has had diabetes since he was 12. I asked Dre about controlling his diabetes. He's short of money for insulin, but he has a friend who is also a diabetic, and who shares his insulin with Dre.

D's neighborhood"

 He has lived on the street for some time now; he had been giving his mother money for rent, and apparently she wasn't paying the rent, because they were evicted. She lived with him on the street. Perhaps she died on the street; we didn't discuss her death.

D has a tent and lives under a bridge. He deals with his mobility challengy by  riding free on the bus that serves the core of the downtown. He uses the bathrooms in friendly restaurants like Subway, and he brushes his teeth in his tent.

I asked him if there was anyone he was connected with in his life; he said he had a neighbor. A neighbor? That's when it hit me -- on the street, the man in the tent next to you is what you call a "neighbor."  And all this time, I had thought a neighbor was someone who lived in a house near you and maybe brought you his yard clippings to put on your garden.

His scar

As D spoke, I had trouble not staring at the strange broad lump of flesh undulating and riding the lower side of his left jaw. It took me time to discover it, because of his manner -- and the scarf inside his hood, which he admitted using for concealment. Even after we both accepted it as something to discuss he slipped the scarf up over it.  The fleshy mass is situated over a scar, he said. (I have since learned that this is a "keloid," This is a condition, most commonly seen in people of African descent, in which  flesh grows over a scar;  in D's cae, it has left a lump perhaps 3/8 of an inch thick and larger than the back of my hand.

D was tired. He had earned 25 cents as of early afternoon. It's hard making a living when your hygiene disqualifies you from eating in MacDonald's. D had been sitting on the bench a good share of the day. I opened my wallet and gave him $5; I had spent as much for an impressive sea shell in Mazatlan a couple days before. If I had given him $15, he could have purchased some insulin. I wonder afterward whether I should have given him more.

He thanked me for the meal. We walked to the door. He was holding his milk basket with the blanket in one hand and his soft drink in the other. Since he had no free hand to shake,  I squeezed his wrist and wished him well. I had waited until after we finished eating before I touched him.

Should I have done more? Enroute home I recalled a Ghandi quote from the Women's March on January 21: " "What ever you do will not be enough, but it it matters enormously that you do it."

Meals distributed so far: 15.

Ubuntu