Homeless Chronicles

It was never my intention to add insult to the injury of being poor. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is very likely but not all homeless people experience what I went through in the mid- 90’s. The following is part of my testimony. I was homeless for almost three years
I was the worse case scenario type homeless person. I was a lazy street educated welfare scheming sponge with no taste for responsibility. I kept myself in mental and spiritual disrepair in the occupation of my own choosing. Poverty! I was the Director of Waste Management assigned to the chore of going under. I managed to develop my life into a thriving waste of time. The hours were long and the pay was nil. No health, no life and no days off. I stayed busy at being nonproductive until I retired in 1998.
I displayed the unkempt, unshaved urine soaked alcoholic look on many occasions and added drug addicted to my resume. I was a garbage picking shoplifting freebie monger with a fondness for an all week expense paid night on the town. I had compassion on all those who made life easy for me and had something to offer. After all, people are just waiting in line to be used up in the hand out industry. I maintained an obnoxious and disgusting attitude during office hours but was very pleasant, especially around other degenerates. Even the shiftless have standards. Although I had all the qualities mentioned above, I still had to come up with an excuse as to why I was so visibly pitiful and yet so deserving of help. It really wasn’t my fault that I had ruined my existence and somebody should have to pay and it shouldn’t have to be me.
Back then I wasn’t about to allow any shelter program, preacher or some soft sell job search system assist me in any personal repairs. I was able to convince myself that I wasn’t a certified derelict but that I was just sobriety deficient and employment deprived. I slept in the alleys and gutters of Tucson, AZ in ideal weather conditions. I would wake up in a sewer drain or under a bridge. One time I had passed out under a urinal in a bus station and my only concern was that another application of deodorant would hold up through the food stamp interview. I was enrolled in a crash course at Curbside College as a final semester student in a seatbelt experiment.
The first thing on the daily agenda was to acquire a cigarette and a quart of Old Milwaukee, in a brown paper sack in order to remain anonymous. Although I rarely owned a pack of cigarettes, I felt everybody else got one extra in their pack which automatically belonged to me. Kind of like an early spread the wealth concept. And the beer, well, it’s not just for breakfast anymore. A dollar bill is nothing but a Beer Stamp to a drunk but drugs have to come by way of a free loaded grant from any and all possible sources. Friends and family are expendable due to technical difficulties. The kind and gullible folks who have jobs and pay taxes often take the necessary pity and are overly liberal with a pseudo enabling generosity. They will sponsor a crafty panhandler’s situation especially if a sign of woe is involved. Anyone with half a heart can’t help but give a dollar to a pitiful looking guy with a sign that says disabled vet, broke down with five kids and will work for food. The truth behind most of those signs is alcohol or drugs or both. Work is not often in the equation because almost no one can live on minimum wage, if addiction is somewhere on the menu. Living, to those who have no life consists of an endless chain of bad habits that cost money. The difference is that the rich can afford to be drunk on excess and stay suitably functional. The poor acquire no such privilege but still demand an equal opportunity. The poor also want cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine and alcohol. They also like to gamble, view pornography and be gluttons. This is the America, in their mind of the brave new world and the home of the free ride. As long as a poor person thinks freedom is the exemption from responsibility we will always need soup kitchens and shelters. And the government of the people by the people, catering to a generation of disenfranchised malcontents cannot stand. How can we afford to support those who refuse to expend any effort achieving at least a minimal spiritual or pseudo prosperous existence?
I had become a full grown candidate for becoming a potential criminal. Of all the things I had lost, I began to miss my Christian life the most. Thinking clearly started to gel during times in jail and in church. In the soup lines and on the lonely sidewalks of the big city is where reason came home to roost. I realized my whole mission in life had come down to a full belly of free food and a warm place to relieve myself. My soul was priced to sell and was marked down from an already low, low price that I still could not afford. If it had not been for Christian charity I would have perished on several occasions. I look back now in appreciation. The genuine volunteers of America deserve credit but should not be required to pay the way for able the bodied to enjoy their self inflicted destitution. These days there are many who are out of work because of the economy. That is a totally different story altogether from what I have recorded in this brief account of my American experience. I should think that life is more difficult for those who were already resigned to a vow of poverty through various addictions. As long as there are Christians in the world, the world will be fed. If there were no charity in the world who would put up with the poor; the rich and selfish? How about other homeless volunteers? How about the Buddhist who can’t even feed himself? The New Age Church has no time for it. They are too busy being prophetically enlightened with themselves. Beside that, population reduction can’t be accomplished if you feed everybody. Ask any dictator. Homeless people and poor countries looked to America as the last hope of the hungry world but when the food gets scarce things will become apocalyptic. Until then which shelter is serving dinner tonight and at what time?
I can tell you from being exposed to the homeless system that many of the destitute people, in spite of Obama’s dream, will not change. Not every poor person lives like I lived but a healthy faith in Jesus Christ will help anyone to survive the hard times ahead. That faith in Him brought me out of the homeless lifestyle in due time as I repented of the sin that was so easily being made available through the generosity of others and social programs. The land of there’s plenty more where that came from is now all but history and we are facing the wrath of God in the days to come. Soon the store shelves will be bare of those items that once suited our extreme indulgences and we will either call on God or perish. The perishable item on the shelf now is the soul of the individual. The situation can only change when any person fitting the description above has had enough of milking an empty cow. That was my life without much exaggeration. The name has not been changed to disavow the whole episode. Are there any questions? I can only think of one at the moment. Will you accept the invitation to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb?

*Most of the content of the above posting has been edited and the current thyme updated from a speech that I gave at The University of Toledo at a symposium on homelessness in 1996. It is to be noted that I received no applause. Thank God. Maybe someone actually listened. T. LaVigne