Last night at the Alcove, Dave Madden, the new nonfiction faculty member in the University of Alabama's MFA program, commented on the lack of visible homeless people in Tuscaloosa. I concurred, saying I've only seen maybe one man that looked homeless since I've been here. According to this outdated Tuscaloosa News article, the local branch of the Salvation Army only has 68 beds, and the VA Hospital, which "serves most of north and central Alabama," only has 48 beds in their domiciliary unit. Unlike many major downtowns in American cities, you just don't see many homeless people here.
"They're all down by the river," a local lawyer, protested. "I can see them from my office window. It's a real problem down there."
So this morning, around 8:30 a.m., I headed down by the Black Warrior River (Tuscaloosa is a portmanteau of the Choctaw words tushka, meaning "warrior," and lusa, meaning "black") to search out and possibly talk to homeless people. I assumed I would find a small encampment but didn't. I spotted this one artifact––which could be construed as evidence of a homeless lifestyle, but could just as easily be a lazy man's lunch––near a park bench:
My next mission is to make my way over to the Salvation Army center. Stay tuned . . .
In the woods behind the old pool/bathhouse on Jack Warner Parkway/River road, I stumbled across a tent settlement one day. It was only a one person tent, but it was obvious someone had been living back there for a while.
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