Mickey Walker-January 17, 2010
My sweet Quinn, our 15 lb. Bichon Frise male, sans heuvos
thanks to the Ft. Lauderdale animal control shelter some 5 years ago, wanted to
play some “fetch the tennis ball.” It was Christmas morning. He protested with dog-felt barks if I held the ball too long
or messed with him by asking if he really wanted the ball and faked a throw or
two. So after the game of fetch at
the empty house next door, we went back inside to find that we were short about
20 ingredients necessary to go with a fine Tur-duck-en treat already roasting
in the oven. Quinn’s coal-black
eyes and nose, set in a powder puff of fleecy white curly hair all over, made
the perfect Christmas morning. He
looked like Frosty or at least a Snowy Owl. So I sampled a few goodies at our kitchen counter before
trekking off to try to find a store open. Quinn gave me an even more endearing attention when he saw me chomping
on treats. Instantly, I had
transformed from the Ball-Thrower and Fun Buddy in the brown grass to the Food
Guy. This was more serious. So I asked him if he wanted some
“yummies” which was dog code for people food, usually a decadently sweet and
gooey sweet piece of cake and the like. Quinn barked and rolled over twice. Quinn knows that if he does his rollover trick he gets an
instant treat and a pat on the head every time. And whenever Pavlov starts him to salivating, like when he
hears a rustling chip bag or an opening refrigerator he is there at the ready
watching your every move from a distance subtly.
So I took off from Humble, Texas where we live, to find a
grocery store open. Nothing. I knew that if I drove down the US 59
Highway, there was a Fiesta Store (specialty grocery store catering to the
Hispanic palate), but when I got there it was closed. So I made a U Turn and found a large grocery store with a
hundred cars or more in the parking lot. It was Sak N Save on the northbound feeder road of US 59, and it was
open. As I searched for a basket I
noticed several people, perhaps 200 yards in the distance in back of the
store. The figures moved slowly
about a fire they had built in an upright 55 gallon drum. Homeless people, they call them. So I went inside the store, got the
bell peppers, the eggplant, the key lime and coconut pies, returned to the
truck opened the truck bed flip top and watched the hobos in the distance as
they moved about the fire barrel, a splendid source of warmth. It was cold. Thinking I might buy them a treat on Christmas Day, I went
back inside the store, but there was no hot food. Maybe some sweet rolls with cherry or cheese center. Nope. Instead of bucking the long checkout lines, I decided to
strike out anew down Jensen Drive that forms a long narrow acute angle with US
59 going south.
This was an old neighborhood, full of discarded tires and
trash. It was not a very good or
safe part of Houston. I found a
Church’s Fried Chicken on Jensen Drive with one car out front. A head bobbed inside so I went up to
the red light, made a U-turn, and headed north again. They were open on Christmas Day.
At the counter a sleepy-eyed young woman, dark eyes, hair
and speaking Spanish to an older man who worked the chicken bins and made the
fries, seemed surprised to see me come in. It was Christmas Day, after all. Another shorter Hispanic man came from the back and said
something to the other man who worked the bins. Shorter, he was the cook. He wore a long white apron that had seen some grease in the
course of his working with the deep fat frying machines. I got a 15-piece regular box with two
super size fries, okra, and cole slaw. The girl was curious and amused but from a dreamy place of not wanting
to seem nosy. I told her I needed
lots of napkins. She rolled off
about 10 feet of a brown paper towel roll, and put 5 little personal-sized
cardboard boats in there, too. Catsup? Yes, I said, and
maybe 5 forks, and she gingerly slid them all into a square box and put the
boxes into white plastic sacks. The fries and cole slaw and rolls were in smaller individual boxes, and
she put them inside on top of the big chicken box.
I asked her for a single piece of spicy chicken for me. She gave me a piece on a napkin. “On the house.” she said. She seemed curious at where I was
headed with all that food on Christmas Day. I told her about the men at the fire barrel, and she knew of
them. They live under the overpass
when it rains, she told me. I said
a nice meal at Christmas couldn’t hurt, and she smiled knowingly. I gave each of them at the Church’s a
twenty for a Christmas tip and left.
Let me say that I am not into philanthropy. I do not oppose charity, but honestly,
I could have done a much better job in the past of helping my fellow man. My
community service I must admit has been confined largely to friends and family.
But on that Christmas Day I just wanted to help those people at the Church’s
and those homeless souls at the 59 Highway who lived under the overpass. Beyond that, I cannot explain it.
I pulled under the freeway and could see the hobos in the
distance, perhaps 4, no, coming closer, 5 of them. As I neared the gigantic discarded piles of old tires that
lined the entrance to the hobos’ outdoor living room on the road, I could see
that there were 3 white men, a Hispanic, and a black. They knew something was up when I pulled off the road onto
the shoulder. The black man,
who reminded me of Magic Johnson, walked slowly up to me. I opened the door and reached over to
the passenger side and lifted the huge plastic bag of chicken and fixings into
the air and swung it over to the black man who took it so softly. A little something, I told him, for you
and your friends, for Christmas. They all smiled big and began to say the nicest things to me, like you
will never know how much this all means to us. The black man shook my hand and said he would make sure that
it got divided equally. We are all
together, he said, and our home is over there under the bridge. Maybe he was 35. Two of the white men were maybe in
their 50s, and looked like ruddy, raw deckhands just off a tanker, and the
other white man, perhaps 65. They
all raised their open hands in the air, saluting me, thanking me in the most
sincere fashion. The Hispanic
followed suit, though I am not sure that he knew all that was happening.
I thought about them and how their response seemed
spontaneous and more than just a Pavlov response to food. You could see it in their eyes. They did not want anything from me, nor
did they think I was a sucker for giving them a handout. It seemed genuine.
I began to think about America. Why was it that some of our citizens had to live that
way? They had no food, no house,
no room, nor a job to preserve themselves and their dignity as human
beings. Yet, instead of attacking
me and robbing me on the spot, they showed genuine appreciation for the
gesture. Perhaps they were like my
dog, Quinn who gave me special status when I turned into “Food Man” and handed
out the goodies. But I did not
think so. I thought they were
free-thinking humans for the moment on Christmas Day who had a brief reason to
celebrate with one another around the oil drum fire, the partitions of old
stacked up tires, and the oyster-shell carpet.
Obama’s stimulus package intended for banks to lend
money. The money was targeted to
retrain Americans displaced from their jobs and to help the poor learn new
skills necessary to become self-reliant humans. No such luck. Recently, Obama chided the banks for not lending the government TARP
stimulus money to those Americans and companies it was designed to help get
America on its economic feet again. Yet still, we see endless examples of how CEOs of failed and struggling
corporations continue to use TARP money to pay themselves and upper management
50 million dollar salaries and 20 million dollar bonuses each year. As if that isn’t insult enough, even
companies who failed miserably paid out executive salaries and bonuses in the
billions. And Wall Street
executives continue to pay themselves big salaries and bonuses while taking
corporate jets on lavish vacations and trips to sales meetings in Tahiti, Dubai
and the likes. Nothing makes sense
anymore. On the one hand we have
homeless hobos living under bridges. They have nothing. On the
other hand there are those who have more than a thousand humans could spend in
a lifetime, and no one seems to care enough to be outraged. I am, though so they better watch out. 