Wrongway Lettner Is Gone

Tags: Lettner, Wrongway, veterans shelter, homeless, military veteran, anger management class, Harvey Pekar, peckerwood, community service, Phase One, marketplace demographics, mess hall, crazy veterans, Backpacker's Inn, Century Boulevard, the boulevard, the street, breathalyzer, trespassing, Bell Gardens, factotum, jarvis, marquisdejolie, Hollywood, hollywoodland, Revver, viral video, web video, internet video, aggregator sites, home grown terrorism, American neo-fascism, nonprofit corporation, 501c

Wrongway Lettner is gone. He was a vet I was hanging out with in the theater room or at the benches in the commons of our homeless veterans shelter.

Lettner came in to the vets dorm the same day I did, May 27. He came in with much less, though. His old lady kicked him to the street and then he got arrested for not being able to prove that he was going to court-ordered anger management classes, so he lost everything; his car, his motorcycle, his home, his job, his clothes and his dignity.

I am amazed from listening to some of these guys at how fast you can lose everything. I didn't lose anything before I came here, you know. I was living my Arconian Harvey Pekar peckerwood life in relative comfort, thank you very much. George (Wrongway) lost everything. And now he's lost everything again.

George jumped through all the U.S. Vets homeless shelter hoops I did. In Phase One, he completed his 40 hours mandatory community service working in the kitchen or sweeping up butts in the parking lot. He attended all the mandatory Phase One classes on How to Build a Resume and Marketplace Demographics and Self Assessment and How To Brush Your Teeth and How To Eat and all that re-entry into civilization crap I had to go through.

George went on the clothing runs like I did to pick through a pile of Salvation Army retread threads out of a humid, musty room in the back of a warehouse somewhere in East L.A. George went on the DMV run and attended the morning meetings and the afternoon meetings and the evening meetings like I did. And now all that is lost, a futile waste of time.

George asked me to help him write a couple of paragraphs for his Money Management class on "Goals." He didn't have any idea on what to write. I told him just to make up something, but he couldn't think of anything, so here is what I wrote for him:

"Money Management

Mrs. Light

GOALS

George Lettner

SHORT TERM

My short term goal is to get a job and a comfortable place to hang my hat. I will get the job with the assistance of the Veterans In Progress program, save my money and rent a place near my job. I’ll need to save about $2500 for the security deposit and first month’s rent.

LONG TERM

I want a house and an affectionate cat. If I start looking now, I’ll be able to find the cat. The house will take longer, five years maybe, for a modest down payment. I’ll need to save about $30,000 for down payment and closing costs. I’ve owned a beautiful home before, so I know that I’ll never be truly happy with anything less than my own cat."

George told me that after Ms Light read his goals, she shook her head every time she passed him in the commons.

"A cat?" was all she would say to him as she shook her head. Crazy veterans.

George thought that I might have messed him up with all that cat shit, but I assured him that Ms. Light wouldn't hold it against him and she didn't.

It was George that got George kicked out of here. He had a drink down at the Backpacker's Inn on Century Boulevard Saturday and brought his alcohol breath back to the vets dorm billiards room and one of the "Resident Assistants," pretending as they always do to be hanging out with us in a "friendly" way, smelled his breath and gave him an on-the-spot breathalyzer test and that was that. George had to get out. Hit the road, Jack, and dontcha come back no more, no more (for 90 days).

George's bed was stripped and his stuff, his clothes and sundries, were bagged up into a garbage bag and dropped in to storage where it sat for 3 mandatory days before it is given away to the remaining dorm residents.

I see it often enough here; some bagged veteran doing the walk of shame off the property, back into the street with whatever he can carry. If you don't leave right away, they call the cops on you for trespassing. George asked for bus tokens but the cold-hearted RAs wouldn't give him any.

They get off on watching a vet slinking off into the street on foot.

Poor old Wrongway Lettner. He's living in a Bell Gardens warehouse now, a homeless shelter in a really dangerous section of East L.A. He sleeps on a cot in an open bay of about 8 other cots. Pidgeons fly in to the warehouse and poop on him. He shouldn't have had that drink.