My desk was on the second floor of a downtown building. My window looked out at a tavern that had two dumpsters behind it. Homeless came to those dumpsters every day, pulling out aluminum cans they sold to get money to buy some food.
One day I saw one of them take a Styrofoam container from the dumpster, pull something out of it and eat it. I thought then, “Enough of this crap.”
I bought canned soups and canned beans with pull-tab tops. I bought plastic spoons, kept everything in a file drawer. When I’d see one of them at the dumpster, I bagged a can of each and a spoon and took it down to them. I did that for three years, until I got moved to another floor and had no window.
I’m not a hero. If you say, “They should get a job,” I’ll tell you that of the dozen or so I gave food to, only one was physically able to hold a job. He was so hyperactive no one would have kept him more than a couple days.
The others were painfully thin. Most had few teeth. All were polite and said, “thank you.” For any of them, it would have taken unusual circumstances to be hired and kept at a job. Each was probably homeless for different reasons. I didn’t ask.
It’s been ten years, and I wonder what happened to them. It’s a tough life.
I’m Fred Lierman, and that’s my perspective.
