BUDDY CAN YOU SPARE A DAME?

A bit of background on this next, otherwise I might come off sounding a bit nuts. Maybe not, but you never know.

I was getting into loving humanity and I had read -- and believed, that there is a relationship between loving and service. The mind will not let you serve someone you hate or dislike, so it you serve them, then the mind, in order to be consistent, must make you love them.

Also, remember that as I walked around downtown and midtown Sacramento, I wore bib overalls, was barefoot, carrying a pair of thongs, the book I was reading, and a stick I happened to be carving. Quite a sight, I imagine. Oh yeah, during some of this time I was also bearded as in my picture on Blog number twenty and a half.

One night I'm walking down 28th street, about to cross "L" street against a red light. As I step into the street, an old man waiting at the curb said to me, "You're supposed to wait for the red light." Now there was nobody else around, no cars, no other pedestrians. No reason at all that we should wait for the green light, but trying to serve, I immediately stepped back on the curb and stood beside the old gentleman. Neither of us said a word, but I sensed that he was uncomfortable since I was doing something out of the ordinary. But I served him and I did love him. I felt good.

One day I'm walking down 21st street on my way to Weatherstone's and this mentally challenged boy started talking to me. We talked for a while and then he wants me to go inside. He lived in a halfway house and I was familiar with these, since my wife did some of her internship at theses houses and I often accompanied her. I say, "OK."

We go inside and there was about six or seven of his peers in there and I stayed and talked with them a bit and then the owner of the house -- a large Black woman came out and saw me there, asked me why was I inside and I told her about the boy wanting me to come in. She was very polite and kinda condescending because I think she thought I was not quite right in the head, dressed like I was and seemingly fitting in with mentally challenged people. She told me to leave in a manner one would tell a six year old boy to leave, and I left. It was an interesting visit.

One day I was in Safeway buying something, carrying one of my sticks and the lady at the counter said to me, very sweetly, "Did somebody carve that for you, Honey?" Obviously to her, I didn't have the sense to do something like that.

One time I was sitting on the sidewalk in front of Weatherstone's and a guy walking by gave me a quarter and went inside. I thanked him, but the guy with him must have explained about me because he came out and apologized. I assured him I wasn't offended. I kept the quarter.

One time a man downtown came up to me and said, "I don't want to offend you, but are you hungry? Would you like a sandwich?"

Another time I was walking down "J" street after buying a sandwich, eating on one half, carrying the other. A bum sitting on the sidewalk asked me, very excitedly, "Are they giving away food?" I said no, but I gave him my uneaten half a sandwich.

I heard a lot of people saying some bad things about the bums. Some fear, mostly just didn't want them around. I always looked upon them as I did children. What they showed you was what they were. They didn't put on any poses about what a great this or that they were. They were real and I appreciated that. That's what I like about babies too -- besides that, babies are cute.

To me, bums are the spices that made humanity taste so much better. I guess you could call them the "salt" of humanity.

I heard a lot of intimate conversations in my walks because strangers would assume I was a bum and they didn't think I was important enough to hide intimate things from -- that I probably wouldn't understand them anyhow.

Funniest thing that happened to me in this vein concerned a friend I met at a coffee house called Java City at 18th and Capital. I used to sit and talk with him for hours. He was a self-employed sign painter with one part time employee.

He liked to talk about food. He ate out a lot and liked a good meal. One day he mentioned an especially good wine he had run into at a restaurant and I offhandedly commented, "I don't like wine."

He looked at me in surprise and exclaimed, "Why, I never met a wino that didn't like wine before."

Now I had been talking face to face with this guy for a year or two, almost every day.

He had never seen me drunk, had never smelt alcohol on my breath, had never seen me take a drink of an alcoholic beverage.

I didn't drink anything in those days except maybe a bottle of beer once every two or three weeks on a hot day. And all this time he had me pegged as a wino solely because of the way I dressed and the way I wore my hair and beard.

He knew I was married to a social worker. My wife often sat with us as we talked.

I laughed a lot about that incident. One of my favorite memories. What a guy. I got some more stories about him, but not right now.