(click for Revver video)
Bicycled over to the culdesac where my 74 year-old homeless
attorney parks his RV. His House of Yehweh Park Avenue was gone again.
Probably his drug addict daughter needed another 28 hour nap.
The side door was hanging wide open as usual. A junky old bicycle
with flat tires was leaned up against it. I guess the old man has
decided he needs a bicycle to accompany me on my afternoon rides. It's
lonely living in an RV on a back street. Lord knows his daughter won't
give him any companionship.
I poked my head in. The House of Yehweh emergency groceries were
rotting in the RV's sink. The place smelled of death. Usually it just
smells like shit, but today it smelled corpselike. Hundreds of flies
were buzzing around inside the cluttered RV. The old man was sleeping
on bed. Flies landed on his lips. He didn't twitch.
"HEY! " I shouted, "You alive?"
He twitched. That's all I can expect. I got back on my bike and
headed back to the veteran's shelter. Some of the guys in the shelter
chow hall asked about the old man.
"He's alive," I reported. So far, that's true, but I don't expect
him to twitch EVERY time I come check on him. Someday I expect him not
to twitch when I call. He will have passed . . . with his car and his
money and his daughter gone.
But until then he's a feisty old sonuvabitch, when he's not
rotting inside the raggedy RV. When he's out and about, he's more
animated than any ten of the shelter veterans; quick with the verbal
spar, loud, boisterous, opinionated and vulgar, ranting and raving and
waving his clenched fists in defiance of cops and sneak thieves and
anything Republican.
He reminds me of the bold and hearty men who left their homes in
Oklahoma to go gold prospecting in Alaska. They don't make 'em anymore
like this, thank God. Our culture couldn't stand too many defiant old
men.
I'll check in on him tomorrow, this ancient mariner, this mad
Methuselah. I check to see if he twitches tomorrow.
Tags: Revver, foodbank, homeless, homelessness, inglewood, marquisdejolie, people, rv, shelter, stories, street, veterans, yehweh
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