June 9, 2011

Former Boston Celtics big man, Henry Finkel dropped in on yesterday's post to ask what kind of pants I wear.  A great question, Henry.  They are U.S. Expedition brand cotton shorts purchased at a thrift store for four dollars, and the very latest in homeless fashion.  The song of the day today is "Devil's Basement" by Jonathan Tyler and the Northern Lights with cameo appearances by Optimus Prime and Super...man?

After grabbing dinner at Taco Villa last night, I headed to Tent City.  It's just before 9:00, and I'm relieved I don't have to ask someone to come unlock the gate for me.  Several residents are sitting at the picnic tables near the Administration Building.  They are discussing the upcoming remodel of the Administration Building and I decide to walk in and take a look around.  As of right now, the building consists of a main room, a bathroom, and a TV room.  The main room is about twenty five feet by fifteen feet and contains a microwave, coffee pot, and hot plate on a countertop which bisects the room lengthwise.  Usually this room is occupied by the younger residents of the camp after 7:00 PM, but they are absent tonight.  I ask someone where they are and he says that he heard they got a motel room for the week.  I imagine the eight of them in a motel room for a week, and every scenario in my head ends with at least one of them dead and most in jail.  I'm relieved to hear that we won't have to deal with them for a while, and it seems all the other residents are too.  Though I don't think they've broken any rules of the camp, I am uneasy when they are around.  I know that a couple of them work, but they rarely have anything to show for it as evidenced by the makeshift spaghetti they ate a couple nights ago.  All signs point to drugs harder than the pot they went to smoke the other night, and I hope they end up in jail over the course of the week.  I decide to monitor the active roster for the Lubbock County Jail to be sure.

I've never been inside the TV room so I decide to have a look.  This room is completely empty except for a 13" TV sitting on a small table in the corner.  There are two guys in here at the moment and they don't look up when I walk in.  "That's the kind of shit I like!" a black guy sitting on the floor near the TV growls to a white guy leaning against the back wall of the room.  The guy on the back wall is resting his head back against the wall and his eyes are closed.  This doesn't seem to faze the presenter as he ejects a DVD from the DVD player on top of the TV and begins searching for another to show.  I'm not sure what he is showing, but I know that I don't want to get caught up in this game of show-and-tell so I turn around and leave.  The bathroom is next to the TV room, and, though it has running water, the toilet does not work.  For now, we use portable toilets located outside.  Slim is outside and he tells me that demolition is set to begin early next week on the Administration Building remodel.  They will be replacing the TV room and existing bathroom with four bathrooms complete with showers.  Slim seems hopeful that a washer and dryer will be included in the remodel.  As of right now, the residents can use the showers and laundry facilities at Carpenter's Church which is a couple miles away, an inconvenience for sure.  I tell Slim to let me know if I can help in any way and I head to my tent.

I emerge a little while later and head up to the Administration Building.  There are only a couple residents outside and I sit down to listen to their conversation.  There is one man there who is obviously not a resident.  He is trying to come up with ideas that will provide a source of income for the residents of Tent City and he's doing a pretty terrible job.  He's a large man from the northeast as evidenced by his accent, and he is a moron.  "You gat a caffey pat in there?" he asks nodding to the Administration Building.  The guy next to me says that we do and the big man tells us that we should sell coffee to the truckers passing through.  The man sitting next to me is hispanic and he is always sitting on the benches out front.  He is a very nice man, listening to anything anybody has to say.  He's not too bright, but even he can see the problem with the fat man's plan.  "That coffee was donated.  I don't think we could sell it." he says.  I'm not even sure Big Man notices because he immediately tosses out this little gem:  "You know how much United paid to have their name put ahn the Spirit Arenah?  Ten million dallars.  You could get someone to sponsar you guys out here."  A black man named Julius laughs out loud at this.  This guy is the worst kind of idiot so I head inside.

There's not a lot going on in here as one man is on his laptop behind the counter and another woman is sitting in a chair across the room loudly talking on the phone.  I sit down and pretend to be engrossed by something on my phone and listen to the woman's conversation.  I gather that she's talking to an ex-boyfriend as they are arguing.  I can't tell exactly what they are arguing about, but I gather that she wound up homeless when he kicked her out of his house.  She tells him that she has plenty of suitors and that he should have seen her neck the other day - "It looked like a necklace" she says.  I guess he finds this upsetting because she hangs up the phone after a brief moment of silence.  She walks outside and I follow a couple minutes later.  She's telling the men outside that she works at a bar and explains that, when checking IDs at a bar, it's important to look at the birthday AND the photo to make sure that the ID is actually the presenter's.  She cannot stress this point enough, but I know that I've had enough so I head to my tent hoping that there is some action tomorrow.