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.
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Meals distributed so far: 16.
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