Before I set out on my mission to find the homeless camp under the Northport Bridge this afternoon, the words from my conversation with the poet Tim Skeen a few days ago haunted me: "Are you going over there alone? You're a brave man." And this is from a Hurricane Katrina Red Cross volunteer and an ex-army M.P. who performed clean-up duty on the German Autobahn; we're talking body recovery and watching people burn to death in their cars.
I put on what my brother Joey calls my "Whitesnake jeans"––my rattiest pair––and pull my driver's license out of my wallet and tuck it into my holey pockets, along with my camera and notebook. I don't want to carry money or credit cards, but I figure it's a good idea to have I.D. in case something bad happens or I get harassed by the police.
The bike ride over the bridge is nerve racking, because, even though there's a protected walkway, the four-lane bridge shakes with the weight of trucks and cars, and the rusty chain-link fence between me and the Black Warrior River below rattles, like it's all going to come apart. I make it across and turn right to head under the bridge. I pass the salivation-causing smells of Dreamland BBQ (the "fake" one, as people call it) and hear what sounds like urethane skateboard wheels clacking over sidewalk cracks on the other side of the raised bike path. For a minute I get excited, thinking maybe there's a hand-made cement skatepark, like Burnside in Portland, under this bridge. But when I reach the bike path, I realize it's just the echo of cars click-clacking over the small surface gaps on the bridge above.
Not only does the fantom skatepark not materialize, but there are no blue tarps covering scrape wood and shopping carts, no barrels for fires, no crates for sitting. No homeless encampment at all. There is only the overflow parking lot for Wintzell's Oyster House and some lawn.
I figure I must be mistaken, and I take the bike path east to continue my search. There's a parklike area and some schools but no homeless camp. I head back west, thinking the homeless must be under the railroad bridge to the west. I find the perfect spot for a small homeless camp––it even has graffitied walls––but there isn't a homeless person to be found.
The bridge continues overland a ways, so I decide to ride into downtown Northport and find the bridge's end, where the homeless camp must exist. I cut down a dirt path under the railroad bridge and onto Main Street, eyeing the bridge behind the industrial buildings for signs of the homeless. Nothing. I turn left on 5th St. and find the end of the bridge. To the south lies thick underbrush, and on the other side of a fence, a park which looks like homeless heaven. Even though it has a wooden picnic table, several "No Trespassing" signs mark the area. I think, If you have to go hunting for the homeless, then the town doesn't have a homeless problem. I decide this is the end of the line and the end of my search for today.
I ride back into Northport, the downtown of which looks something like Andy Griffith's Mayberry. (This is where people move to send their children to good public schools, so I've been told.) The downtown is a mishmash of art galleries, children's boutiques, a day spa, and expensive furniture stores, not to mention the best breakfast place in Tuscaloosa County, City Café.
It's the kind of town where the small hardware store is 101 years old (if these walls could talk, I don't think I'd want to hear what they say) and I expect to see Floyd the barber in the four-chair striped-pole barber shop.
Ironically, in this idyllic downtown, the Tuscaloosa News shouts a cover story from the newspaper stand next to the barber shop: West Alabama Lags Behind in Kids' Health. It turns out Tuscaloosa Country ranks 36th in children's' health, which measured "low birth weights, infant mortality rates, the number of births to unmarried teens, the number of children in single-parent families, children in poverty, and high school graduation rates." The most disturbing of these statistics is the high infant mortality rates; according to the article, Tuscaloosa County ranks 59th out of 67 counties, with 12.5 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, twice the national average of 6.7 per 1,000 live births.
And tomorrow's (September 29) edition of The Birmingham News will carry this cover story about how Alabamians are falling deeper and deeper into poverty. According to the article, "In 2009, 17.5 percent of the people in the state––804, 683––lived below the poverty level, well above the national figure of 14.3 percent and a 13.1 percent increase from 2008. . . . Of those, 340,000 lived in deep poverty, which is income below half the poverty level. " But even the rich aren't fairing well, as the number of people making over $200,000 per year in the state dipped from 2.3 percent in 2008 to 2.1 percent in 2009. That's 9,197 less rich people. So where are the homeless, Tuscaloosa?
Interesting story as always Eric.
ReplyDeleteAs a veteran homeless-person finder myself, I may be able to give some tips based on experience.
Firstly though, I'm, curious what time you set out on your journey. At Sacramento and at Escondido, for example, I encountered the phenomenon of not finding homeless people for a while. It turned out they congregated at the free food kitchen. So, if you looked for them around certain hours, they weren't at their usual places, but instead at the kitchen wherever that was located. They even might show up hours before meals, so if meals were served at 5 p.m., they might be there 3:30 p.m. to just before nightfall when they went to sleeping quarters.
Also, if you identify where other free resources exist, such as a homeless shelter or giveaway program, that would be the place to go. Of course, if you see somebody panhandling or looking homeless, you can just ask them where people go.
Tuscaloosa is a smaller, university town, so maybe doesn't have homeless aid resources. In that case, homeless people may not even stop there, but go to places such as Birmingham that have those resources.
Good hunting!
Dan Weisman
Eric,
ReplyDeleteAt dusk, go to Queen City Park, or head to the culvert under River Road across from the AA during the day. At night, try the Y.
Tuscaloosa's homeless situation is rather interesting, as many people from all over Alabama have been sent here to the mental institutions (Bryce, Partlow, or Taylor-Hardin). Since the Wyatt v. Stickney case in the 1970s, the hospitals have become predominately "treat-and-release" rather than long-term-care institutions. Because many of those released patients do not have stable families to which they could return, so they stayed in Tuscaloosa and eventually went off their meds, becoming part of our homeless population.
Emily