Welcome        page 3
 
 

  Well much on the previous page was pasted from the original version of this site with a little editing. My version of Word 6.0 argues with me on much of it, because it likes to (I assume)! On one page I used the word winter with a capitalized W. Word insisted it should be a small letter and I switched to that, then the green line appeared again under it and clicking there the correction showed a capital W!
    Anyway my intent is to update this site from time to time. Eventually the contest must end but unfortunately homelessness will not end so easily. I have added a chapter of homeless stories that I hope to expand with more first person narrative about what it is like to be homeless for the writer. This whole site is my testimony so I won’t add too much of my experiences there. I get to hog the rest of it though!
     Like I wrote I was back in town and I was in no rush to let my old family know. My feelings were hurt and anyway it wasn’t like I expected them to welcome me back. They could find out when they found out, period and end of discussion.  There may be things I owe them but this wasn’t on that list.
    I was short on money and friends. It was an incredible struggle to stay somewhat respectable looking or at least not offensive. I was up before dawn each day and out of the car. I would wait for the rest rooms to be opened in one park or another to clean up. Until a maintenance worker gave me a watch that was left behind in a rest room I had to ask the time. It was a cheap plastic stopwatch that couldn’t be reset but the time was correct so I had to make a mental adjustment for Daylight Savings Time! Usually the restrooms would be unused for a couple of hours so I got to change, wash up and shave. For the most part this was when I washed my clothing. I would use liquid hand soap to do all of this. Then usually it was back to the car to “hang” my wash up on steering wheels, seats and across a wire I stretched across the roof area. For privacy I covered the windows with cardboard at first but as time went by and I got a little money I bought packing tape and taped cheap aluminum foil over the windshield
    I took pride in being able to feed myself and for doing it at fewer than two dollars a day! I had found there was no “safety net” despite what anyone said and stopped bothering trying to access services that if they existed weren’t going to be mentioned or offered. As odd as it may sound many homeless people use “social” services to a greatly smaller degree than those who aren’t homeless but just having a hard go of it. It may be from a misplaced sense of pride but when that is all you have left then you treasure it more. I am not sure what mattered more to me about the theater group, that they put on free plays or that I was openly and warmly welcomed. The best I could do to pa them the respect I felt for them was to help strike the sets at the end of a production and to help work on the costuming. I did that with Dee. She didn’t have the income for a regular full time employee but she was willing to teach me some about the day to day running of a business. I also had a blast learning to make masks and small decorative wreathes for the women to wear. Mine were a hit, a couple never made it back to the shop from a production. An odd sort of flattery but I will take what I can get!
    I lost some friends, not real friends I found, so no true loss and made some good friends. Most came to me from online. With time I was able to earn enough money to afford a very cheap used laptop. I used this to go online using free or cheapest Internet access and found I enjoyed this medium better than TV. Well I always was big on reading!
    Eventually the town after a year and a half started to threaten to tow my car away! This was reason to worry! I’d tried sleeping under bridges and in fields out of sight here in town and truly hated it. Once I met this woman with her kid, they were hiding from the father who was - is a criminal and very abusive. She was afraid to go to the police because each time she had before they were no help and it only got worse for them. The little girl had a welt from being whipped with a fire poker. I convinced them to contact a woman’s group that got her tickets for her and her daughter to go live with relatives. Dad had disappeared back to Texas with some underage moppet of a girlfriend! The police couldn’t have shown less interest!
    Tough I had just put some money away I was far from rich. I was able to buy a used van and put what little I had in storage. I stayed in the van and also crashed out on the floor at an office in a small mall where I did some part-time work covering for the regular maintenance worker and all the Sundays. This was where I usually went online late at night and early in the mornings, as the services provided local dial-up numbers and wouldn’t be charged to their phone bill.
    This is where I spent my second Thanksgiving, making my own dinner. This is the story as taken from a website I have designed and am looking around to put up:

    “Well I hope you enjoyed this visit! My plan is too completely redo this site from time to time. My idea is to change the theme with the season and holiday, it maybe an indoor meal or a picnic or just a pub-crawl. How does Marx’s birthday sound? I think they still have a traditional one on his birthday in London. The inspiration was the loneliness and isolation I experienced during the year and a half during which I was homeless. One Thanksgiving I got to crash out in an office in a mall where I did some work; it was a desperate, desolate time but I was determined to make the best Thanksgiving I could out of that night. The only places open to me meant being around people I did not want to be around and those I did I couldn’t. From my local Stater’s brothers Supermarket I had a small box of stuffing, a sweet potato, a turkey leg, frozen broccoli and a tiny can of cranberry sauce. The cooking was done with a hotplate and microwave oven. Using my laptop I went online - I used the free Internet service from K-Mart at that time, not only was it free but also it didn’t add to the phone bill – and sent a Thanksgiving card from Yahoo and Excite to my friends online. Also I sent one to all the members of the Homeless People’s Network, an online news and discussion group I belong to. I had set out paper plates not just for myself but for all the people I love who weren’t there and one more in memory of anyone who didn’t have a place to go to and be wanted.
    There are way too many of them.
    I found some comfort in doing this and the night seemed so much less lonely. Then surprisingly around midnight Wanda and the other vampyre girl squad members showed up! They are Masquerade players. They’d decided to find those they knew who had no one and no place and get them together. So after all I had company and an extra meal I hadn’t expected made all the better by having the chance to share it. This has been my best Thanksgiving to date.
    Some Thanksgiving I’ll do the full story of that night.”

Soon after the event described above I was able to get a small room with a bath. I don’t have a kitchen but cook using the microwave or use the propane camp stove I bought. Eating out no matter how “cheap” is so expensive! The poor pay more for what little they have. I’d rather go into a restaurant and pay a little more than eat at Mc Donald’s or Burger King a lot. Besides the atmospheres in those places is hurry up and leave which is not what I want to sit down to a table anywhere and feel! Not that a Whopper, Fry and Coke are that cheap anymore!
    While I really didn’t spend hours staring at my bathroom I did spend a glorious time in a hot bubble bath! Yes, I do have a yellow rubber ducky!
    It isn’t easy but so far I’m not back on the streets and I want to keep it that way. Hell, I want to do better!
    I will close now, gentle reader. I hope I haven’t offended you however unintentionally! I will come back and expand this part of my narrative with time. Please return and bring others.
                                                             to next chapter, My Nightmare
                                             to home page