420 Summit

A Good Man

A little while back I was at the corner store buying something or other — I was drinking hard at the time so it could have been damn near anything — and noticed a homeless dude lurking near the entrance. This guy wasn’t one of the borderline; maybe homeless, maybe mentally ill or maybe just really dirty. He could have been in a movie. Mismatched gloves, three coats and the hem of a second pair of jeans sticking out from beneath the first over a pair of worn boots held together with duct tape.

I am not without empathy but there are just too many people in need and I dread the inevitable, “Got any change, a cigarette, an extra pair of socks, scrap metal?”

Click image to enlarge.

But he didn’t ask for anything. He just nodded a good morning and smiled. I bought whatever it was I was buying and got a couple of dollar scratch-off tickets. I ended up giving him one on my way out — just because he didn’t ask.

I headed up the block towards the park, which is a park only by the loosest definition. This is not a place children place. Jerry Burell park is more a twenty-four seven flea market of vice. You can buy anything there: drugs, guns, women, men who want you to think they are women. You can rent a stolen car for a small rock or buy an iPod for a few more. There are swings but they don’t have seats. There is a water fountain that the city won’t replace because, as they put it, water fountains are expensive and they never last more than a few days. There is a shack that may, or may not, have bathrooms in it. Nobody knows since the door hasn’t been opened in a decade and is actually welded shut. The ground, under the slide is littered with little square baggies — each representing a missed school lunch, an unpaid utility bill or a victim. All the baggies are torn on one side and inside out. A wasted day, or life, is of little consequence but God forbid the most minuscule particle of dope should go to waste.

This is a park I like to avoid. Three daylight shootings in less than a year tend to get my attention and it isn’t as though our local gangbangers are particularly good shots. Although I lived on the block and was fairly well known, liked even, I see no reason to tempt fate. So the last thing I want to hear, passing the ‘pavilion’, are rapid footsteps coming up behind me. It makes me nervous.

Seeing it was my homeless buddy, I relaxed a little. I figured I could handle someone who hadn’t eaten more than a Little Debbie or two or slept for more than a few hours at a stretch in a week. Nonetheless, I checked his hands but only saw paper. As it turns out, the lottery ticket had hit for twenty bucks and he wanted to give me half.

Looking back, with somewhat clearer vision, it dawns on me that I want what this guy, someone that people cross the street to avoid or step over without a thought had. Integrity.

And no, I didn’t take the money but sure wished I had when I ran out of booze a few hours later.