Camping page 2I was making my money stretch by eating every other day; I would have a roll and buy three slices of whatever was cheapest from the supermarket. If they had dented soda cans for fifteen cents or a dented beer for a quarter then I’d get that as well. If not then I’d make do with a bottle of water I refilled at one of the parks. The rolls were Mexican Bollilos rolls, usually two for a quarter. I’d save one for the morning and often not eat anything else that day. My “splurge” would be a B.K. Whopper for ninety-nine cents and a small coffee on Sunday! I managed to keep food costs to under a buck twenty-five a day. Still evetually my money would run out!
I was staying clean by washing in the parks when they open first thing in the morning. I had my cheap razors and would use the liquid soap as shaving cream. Also it was my laundry soap. I’d use the same sinks to wash my clothes and underwear. I made a point of changing to cleaner underwear and socks everyday and washing them out every third day or so. Shirts could be worn three times but not three days in a row. I aired them out and tried to keep them clean of spots and whatever. Socks were definitely a change everyday item. Too long worn and the sweat from your body makes the fabric stiff and likely to tear. They had to be at least rinsed out. Everything of course was drying in my car. Pants washed and wrung out by hand took two days to dry in the car.
I scrounged for cans and plastic bottles to bring to the recycler for cash. There was a lot of competition.
For someone with nothing to do and no place to do it life was pretty busy!
I still wasn’t sleeping through the night, fitfully at best and would cry when I was alone. I cried a lot. But I was getting damned tired of crying I wanted to laugh. I wanted to care again! I’d lost all and everyone I cared for and I needed to fill these rents in the fabric of my life. I was tired of the taste of ashes memory had.
On the days when I just couldn’t hack it anymore or like Sundays when there was no place to try I went to the library here in town. That first month I was there a lot. I was the guy with the knapsack over in a corner reading Tolkien, Pratchett, Rita Mae Brown, Suzy Bright and Spillane. Did I mention Brin, Stephen Hawking, Agatha Christie and Piers Anthony and the help wanted ads?
I found self-help books mawkish and useless. There are good reasons why some roads are less traveled! But I did find something new for me. Computers and the Internet! There were moments when I felt like a certain Doonesbury character but I needed something new to learn. In CAMELOT Merlin’s advise to Arthur is that the cure for woe is to learn something. I took this to heart.
At this time they didn’t yet have the nice new systems they have set up now. They had “dumb” terminals; just monitors with keyboards hooked up to a main in back somewhere. But I found they could get on the Internet! Most people didn’t know that and I don’t think they wanted everyone to know anyway. Logging on and off was a chore. The wait for a connection was long and it was a no graphical browser, Lynx 1.1 on Telnet. That’s prehistoric by what most use. Anyway there was a lot it couldn’t handle. Java script could knock the connection out, “frames” pages would be blank and not accepting cookies meant that Yahoo and other sites like them were closed to you. I got around the no e-mail because of no cookies by using free cards from the Vermont Teddy Bear Company to e-mail to people. Eventually I found a free e-mail service that didn’t use cookies so I could receive as well. All it was to most was orange letters on a black screen but to me it was something new to read at the library! So I took every chance I could to do so. There was no time limit except that when the library was busy they would need all the terminals for searching the magazine and newspaper database called Infotrac and to do book searches, as this was also the card catalog. Still this gave me hours to search parts of the WWW, late evening on weeknights being the best. I first found the Homeless People’s Network through this and other sites that became helpful to me. Some that were just plain fun to go and read what was new occasionally. It was a whole new world! It wouldn’t replace all that I lost but it was one small help and a hope.
I wasn’t crying but would still wake often and I was lonely and needed, wanted help. I needed a change; I needed a time out and away.
Finally I got the correct number for the United Way, which gave me the correct number for the Salvation Army in Riverside, and oh did I know they had a shelter? Bingo! The young lady in the S.A. office here in town kept giving me the wrong numbers and the information operator kept giving me the number for the office here in town. Anyway I got the correct address for the men’s shelter in Riverside. I hoped this would lead me to some way out of my situation.
One thing that amazes me still to this day is how much incorrect and out of date information the state and other service have on aid available to the homeless (and others) here. I’ve seen enough to realize it isn’t just a local problem. If just a couple of things were wrong that would be ok as there is no keeping up with whether or not everyone has changed phone numbers or location or their level of service. But to have everything wrong! Men’s shelters that had no facilities and were just referral services for pregnant teens! Someone needs to weed through this stuff every six months to my thinking! Also it would be nice if aid groups making any change would actually make sure that the word gets out would be a help all the way around.
But here I was with my stuff in a backpack, not a lot of money in my pocket and wondering what next. There was a friend I hadn’t talked to since it had all blown up. I didn’t want her to see me like this. Maybe that was a mistake or the sin of pride, all I knew was I couldn’t be much help to her like this.
I was tired of getting in that car late at night to sleep. It was safer than sleeping rough, under a bridge or in a park but there isn’t too much to say for it otherwise. So I packed some clothing in the backpack along with my sketchpad and a binder with some loose-leaf paper for writing and my toothbrush and razor. Scrounging up a couple of small boxes I packed my blanket, comforter and pillow along with everything else. I asked my daughter if she could dive me into Riverside the next day. She would also put my boxes in the garage to store them for when I needed them, hopefully at my own place. At least that was the idea then.
It was more than a little strained we hadn’t talked in a long time. To a certain extent this had been happening and growing for quite some time. I think she was trying to make her own life and way now that she was out here. She had started dating and getting out. My feeling was that she felt that being close to her dad was holding her back. Maybe I was in her way and she was right. So there had been a growing rift for a while and circumstances worked to blow everything apart. My hope is that with time we will heal this split and on that only time will tell.
So the next day she drove me to the S.A. shelter in Riverside in her new car. Well not brand new, she’d bought a used Metro, which was more reliable than the Toyota she’d had. We made a little chitchat. More like I would ask or say something and she’d reply with as few words as possible, if she had to say something.
No matter what this is going to take time. If it happens at all.
Finally we arrived at the place. She dropped me off am and I went in to check if they had any openings. I found they had room and signed in, I went out to tell my daughter I’d gotten in but she’d already turned the car around and was driving down the street.
Well enough of that for now.
Tina the Troubled Teen is courtesy of brunchingshuttlecocks.com. I think she’s a real doll and besides I needed the laugh.to next chapter, You're In The Army Now!
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