Last night I was sitting in a burger shop, preparing to
leave, when I was approached by a woman obviously in distress; apparently my
using a laptop computer was also a major selling point. She told me her
distressing story about how she had just arrived from the local Catholic
Community Services, and had been told that it was just an office, and she had been
directed elsewhere for shelter. I surmised then that she was recently rendered
without a place to live, and night temperatures were predicted to be below
freezing for the next several days. She seemed completely flustered and boxed
out of her mind; considering my own problems I’m not always helpful, or in a
position to help, but upon a request to use my device to find bus times to the
location she was seeking, I felt obliged to comply.
I fired up my computer again and connect to the shop’s free Wi-Fi.
Checking the Metro website, the last bus on the route she had been told to take
to the homeless shelter, at a church and probably for women and children only,
left the transit center enter at 6:31 pm;
it was now 6:33 pm. There was a bus stop for this route that was a 15
second run across the street, and I told her that if she left right now she would
likely catch it in time. But instead of being energized into action by this
information, she just waved her arms around in frustration, angry that she had
not been told that her first stop was not the shelter; naturally the services
office needed to determine if she was some psycho before allowing her off to
arrive unexpectedly at the church shelter.
I was becoming somewhat bemused by her antics, because I was
starting to suspect that she either wanted money—or worse, shack her up myself,
which even if she was attractive (she
wasn’t) I was in no position to help anyone in that regard even if I wanted to.
Anyways, I told her if she needed time to get her thoughts together, we could
find another travel opportunity for her. There was another bus she could take to
one location, where she would have to transfer to another bus; presumably the
services office had given her a bus ticket, so this shouldn’t have been a
problem for her. Once she deboarded from the second bus, she would have to walk
0.92 miles to the shelter. This prospect didn’t seem to energize her either,
merely being the occasion for even more frustrating (for me) moaning and gesticulation.
I recall a long time ago that I was traveling from Fort
Hood, Texas to Los Angles by Greyhound bus. During this trip some guy sat down
next to me and started a “friendly” conversation. He asked me what I was up to,
and I told him I had just finished my enlistment in the Army and had decided I
was going to try LA as my next stop. My companion told me he was from that area
and was only too happy to help me get
“established,” especially after I told him how much cash I had. That wasn’t all
he told me; he mentioned that he had a warrant for his arrest in Texas, which
is why he happened to be traveling back to California. It seems that he had a
“close call” when he and a friend were busy helping someone “move out,” dumping
appliances from a house onto their pick-up truck. That is until the police arrived
and they had to beat a hasty getaway, leaving the pickup behind. My new “friend”
also seemed to remember that he left his wallet and identification in the
truck.
The Army taught me many things, one them something about us
all being a “band of brothers” and a “team.” One thing it did not teach us was
that there was always a stray “brother” who whose motivations were something
other than altruistic. This individual knew a naïve and trusting person when he
saw one. I’ll avoid the sorry subsequent details of this encounter, except to
mention that within a few days I found myself on the streets of Los Angeles,
with about seven dollars and some change on my person. I wandered around, in a
semi-daze, all day; I must have walked about fifty miles trying to figuring out
how I was going to kill myself. I laid-out on a lifeguard shack on a beach in
Santa Monica; I’m not a “physical” person, but I nearly roused myself enough to
strongly consider cracking the skull of some kid who was throwing miniature
firecrackers at me. Instead I wandered off some more, ending up in an abandoned
school house with a lot of broken glass lying around. Before I had a chance to
contemplate the things I might do with these instruments, I fell asleep. When I
awoke in the morning, I heard birds chirping outside. I gathered myself up and
walked out to start a new adventure in life; this wasn’t the first time I faced
a blank slate, nor the last time. I remember what Old Blue Eyes sung in “That’s
Life”:
I've been up and down
and over and out and I know one thing
Each time I find
myself layin' flat on my face
I just pick myself up
and get back in the race
As for the person I encountered on the bus, I hope the
police caught up with him and his warrant. As for this other person, I hope she
got her head together and decided that being without a place to stay on a bitter
cold night wasn’t the end of the world—especially when you had an option to
take advantage of. After I walked out of the burger place a Kent police car
passed in front of me, into a parking lot where there appeared to be a small
camper. When I walked past this location 15 minutes later, the camper was gone.
Yep, whenever things look bleak, the Kent police are always there to make
life even worse. It is no coincidence
that the police started their “no camping in Kent” forays after the city
council shot down a proposed homeless shelter.
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