(click for Revver video)
Just got a Fedex delivery of some cheap software here in Marshall . The Haitian Fedex delivery guy looked familiar.
"Have you ever lived in Los Angeles?" I asked him. He said that he had.
"Are you a veteran?" I asked. He said that he was.
"Did you ever live at Westside?" I asked. He said that he had and, in fact, he was thinking about going back. He said that he had liked living in that homeless veterans shelter very much. I was bumfuzzled:
Curfews, mandatory periodic random drug tests that checked for illegal beer drinking or the presence of over-the-counter painkiller in veteran bloodstreams,
the contractual ability to throw you out into the street if you so much as glared at one of the many racist counsellors who harassed the vets daily,
no overnight visitors,
no daytime visitors unless they passed the RA's lecherous "Ho Inspection,"
sharing toilets, sinks and showers with the funkiest motherf*ckers in the world,
living with PTSD-infested ex-crackheads, felons, killers and pedophiles;
What's to like?
I told him the bad news about GP single room rent being jacked up to over $500 and that they charged a buck a meal now for the chow hall crap and that you still have to sleep three-creeps-to-a-room for 90 days until they're sure you don't have body lice.
He was undeterred. Good for him. We laughed and joked awhile, and then another thought struck me:
"Did you ever live at the Motel Marquis crack motel on Crenshaw Boulevard in Gardena?" I asked him. His eyes grew wide. Yes, he had lived there. "Did you ever have trouble with Monty (motel manager) about your garbage disposal?" I asked.
Now I was scaring the Fedex delivery driver. He looked around for a hidden camera and backed away. I'll be damned. It was him. I wrote a poem once about a stranger who was having problems with Monty at the Motel Marquis where I lived on and off. Then I video-ized it:
Small world.
Westside, in case you're wondering, is run by a nonprofit corporation, U.S. Vets, which has other homeless veterans shelter business entities in Hawaii, Houston, Nevada, Washington and 8 or 9 other locations. U.S. Vets IS one of the better homeless shelter businesses in the biz (the 'biz' being receiving government grants in the form of per diems (the government pays $29 per head-per-bed) AND U.S. Vets charges the homeless vet rent and fees and free labor and such).
Tags: Revver, viral video, funny video, music video, homeless, homelessness, homeless veterans, homeless veterans shelter, U.S. Department of VeteransAffairs, V.A., military veterans, vets, U.S. Vets, Westside Residence Hall, veterans issues, Project Cloudburst, veterans initiative, Marshall, east texas, Inglewood, vets home, mandatory drug testing, random urine tests, PTSD, warehousing the homeless, James Jarvis
Just got a Fedex delivery of some cheap software here in Marshall . The Haitian Fedex delivery guy looked familiar.
"Have you ever lived in Los Angeles?" I asked him. He said that he had.
"Are you a veteran?" I asked. He said that he was.
"Did you ever live at Westside?" I asked. He said that he had and, in fact, he was thinking about going back. He said that he had liked living in that homeless veterans shelter very much. I was bumfuzzled:
Curfews, mandatory periodic random drug tests that checked for illegal beer drinking or the presence of over-the-counter painkiller in veteran bloodstreams,
the contractual ability to throw you out into the street if you so much as glared at one of the many racist counsellors who harassed the vets daily,
no overnight visitors,
no daytime visitors unless they passed the RA's lecherous "Ho Inspection,"
sharing toilets, sinks and showers with the funkiest motherf*ckers in the world,
living with PTSD-infested ex-crackheads, felons, killers and pedophiles;
What's to like?
I told him the bad news about GP single room rent being jacked up to over $500 and that they charged a buck a meal now for the chow hall crap and that you still have to sleep three-creeps-to-a-room for 90 days until they're sure you don't have body lice.
He was undeterred. Good for him. We laughed and joked awhile, and then another thought struck me:
"Did you ever live at the Motel Marquis crack motel on Crenshaw Boulevard in Gardena?" I asked him. His eyes grew wide. Yes, he had lived there. "Did you ever have trouble with Monty (motel manager) about your garbage disposal?" I asked.
Now I was scaring the Fedex delivery driver. He looked around for a hidden camera and backed away. I'll be damned. It was him. I wrote a poem once about a stranger who was having problems with Monty at the Motel Marquis where I lived on and off. Then I video-ized it:
Small world.
Westside, in case you're wondering, is run by a nonprofit corporation, U.S. Vets, which has other homeless veterans shelter business entities in Hawaii, Houston, Nevada, Washington and 8 or 9 other locations. U.S. Vets IS one of the better homeless shelter businesses in the biz (the 'biz' being receiving government grants in the form of per diems (the government pays $29 per head-per-bed) AND U.S. Vets charges the homeless vet rent and fees and free labor and such).
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