Part II Day 259: November 5, 2010 (birthday lunch with the poor, and rolling nowhere . . .)

Sometime in high school, we were asked what we planned on doing after graduation, and I sarcastically answered, "I'm going to die." It was an undeniable truth, is still true, but it masked the fact that I lacked a plan for living my life. In some ways, I still do. You see, I grew up skateboarding, and our only ambitions included getting sponsored and traveling as much as possible. We admired anti-heros and vagrants (a few close friends even called ourselves "Team Vagrant"), the homeless we encountered around Fresno, and the apartments in San Francisco that housed up to nine semi-squating skateboarders. We slept on fellow skateboarders' floors or in people's garages, waiting for the day it would be our turn to move to SF or hit the road on a real company's skate tour.

I tell you all of this because someone recently asked me why I was interested in homeless people. And since I've been reading Ted Conover's book about railroad riding tramps and hoboes (tramps work, hoboes just ride, bums do neither), Rolling Nowhere, I think he puts it more succinctly than I can, when he writes, "I grew up with a romantic vision of hoboes as renegades, conscientious objectors to the nine-to-five work world, men who defied convention and authority to find freedom on the open road." And in my own way, I've accomplished the same thing, traveling the roads of North America, working jobs without alarm clocks or inflexible schedules, and never living in one place more than two years straight. And what has that gotten me?

Today is my thirty-seventh birthday, and while I've traveled everywhere, I've gone nowhere. I'm working part-time as an instructor at at university (who would have ever thought that could happen?) with no health insurance and no job guarantee, not even for next semester. If I didn't have the savings and family I have, I would be on the edge of abject poverty. Maybe that's another reason I'm interested in the poor (and the rich). So today, I've decided to spend my birthday lunch among the poor of Tuscaloosa at the Community Soup Bowl. (To tell you the truth, I have always felt more comfortable around poor people than the rich. There's no formality, no pretension.)

The scene in the Soup Bowl is similar to my earlier visit, with mostly older black males scattered about the cafeteria tables. An elderly white woman serves me a tray containing boiling hot chicken noodle soup, two packs of Saltines, and an overcooked square of cornbread. I pick a Styrofoam cup of apple juice off the counter and take a seat near an older black man who eats with his right hand and holds a crutch with his left.

Again, I'm struck by the sense of community around the dining room. The effervescent black woman who runs the dining room sits and chats with a man. Each person who enters says hello to a few other men around the room, and they genuinely inquire about one another. "You doin' all right?" a recent arrival asks the man at my table. He nods his head and says a slow, "Yeah." But from my perspective, he isn't. While many of the men wear thrift store-like clothes or blue collar work shirts, the kind for plumbers and mechanics, this man's dirty windbreaker and T-shirt betray his possible homeless state. And he needs a crutch to walk. And bread crumbs, the kind a wife would wipe off an oblivious husband, are all over his face, which looks like a Susan Clayton sculpture. He's screwed, I think, but I'm glad he has a place for community and food.

In Conover's book, a tramp tells him that "a fellow could get along if he simply knew the cities and their free resources," utilizing the "Sally" (Salvation Army facilities), the "Willy" (Goodwill stores), and the St. Vinnie's (St. Vincent de Paul). But while citizens often complain of people abusing our system of charity and welfare, it only allows you to "get along," and tramping or poverty is not a glamorous life that many would want nor choose to live. As Conover concludes,"If we're not going to make room for tramps inside society, we can at least make allowances for their presence outside it. We can repeal laws against victimless crimes such as public intoxication and vagrancy, and we can make sure that no one is denied food, warm clothing, and shelter, all which are basic human rights.

"That these things have not been done already can be explained by the way most of us still see hoboes as a race apart, strangers whom we have no need to know and no way of knowing."

That last part reminds me of what I wrote in my last post about the problem of de facto segregation in our cities and not caring about people we don't know. In opposition to that spirit, I came here today hoping to have a conversation with a few people, but I'm feeling too shy, too contemplative on this birthday I never thought I'd see. (I survived the rock star age, 27, but this is my Vincent van Gogh year.) When I finish eating, I walk up to the counter to speak to Amy, the woman who runs the joint. She doesn't recognize me, maybe because I've grown a beard, and she asks me if I need seconds. I tell her I came by a few months ago to volunteer, but never heard anything from her. I ask if I can help, but she says she has more than enough help, which I think speaks volumes to Tuscaloosa's community, driven by Christian charities.

I leave wondering where I go from here. Like the tramps in Conover's book, "plans [are] simply possibilities," not necessarily "something you made and carried out." My life so far, like this project, has been an essay, an experiment in living. But, as Conover says, "sometimes you can get enough of experimenting. Sometimes you want something normal and dependable." I'm hoping to stay in Tuscaloosa for several years, to build my own sense of community, and work toward those things I know I want: a home; a love/life partner; a published book; a stable job; possibly a post-apocalyptic child; and more wonder and travel . . .