Month: July 2016

As I read the daily Eugene, Oregon newspaper, excepting the Monday paper, which is so small it is not worth a quarter, let alone a dollar. I read that because it has an expanded local area, plus greater national news. I do not watch television, and haven’t since I have no home to set up satellite reception and WiFi. The free WiFi many local businesses provide is sufficient for many things, but really no national businesses exist in Bandon, and most local businesses do not see the value of that, although motels do. Coos Bay has City Core wide free WiFi so I do try to use that on Saturdays when I go to feed the homeless. Being homeless myself that is a bit self serving, but a simple, quick home meal does make you feel better about yourself. I do feel ok about myself, but there are many stress issues associated with being homeless. There are the safety issues, both personal and possessions. How do possessions make you stress? Fear of losing the possessions causes stress. It’s more the fear of having to replace your tent, and that’s your home. My tent is large, and I do not set it up in town, nor, once it is up, do I leave it alone, because it would be stolen. I can’t replace it if it is stolen. My resources are very limited, and a major expense like a large tent is beyond me. I have diesel costs that already drain my finances and that’s if no repairs are needed. Truck repairs usually mean I have to park where I can have parts delivered. I order them off the internet, once I know what’s wrong. I am learning diesel. It costs $500 to hook the truck up to the computer. That is nearly my month allotment, and that fixes nothing. It just tells you what the computer says is wrong. I have a diesel because it was offered to me for $100 down and $100 a month for four months. Good price, and it’s been a good truck. Still, I have replaced the tires ($800) the shocks (!400)

When you start off in life you are a lump of flesh with small, jerky movements and no muscle tone. Your mother wraps you up and shows you off. I’ve seen a few pictures of me as a baby and young kid. I was horribly crosseyed and all I remember from kindergarten to 3rd grade of school are a few scattered instances where I was beat up, or was crying. Then I had eye surgery and from then on my memory cleared right up. My eye began turning outward at about fourth grade, however my Doctor had gotten into a car wreck, and he was driving a Volkswagen “bug”, the wreck was severe, breaking the doctors spine and making him a paraplegic and he commited suicide. All that in the two year span between my first surgery and the need for a second. School was never my forte. I was not popular, I had no depth perception so sports were a joke. No one taught me sports, I never understood the concept of baseball, the strategy of football or basketball. No depth perception meant I was picked last for any team, and as I aged I began to take photos, always an observer. I was good at photography, worked it all through high school and after. I always had my darkroom and several cameras. Digital and the cost of silver doomed photography as I knew it. Now my things are obsolete antiques. I have a lot of experience in the darkroom, however now that process has been completely replaced. My experience means little, and with digital, my lack of experience tells volumes. I write, and I read. Sometimes they go hand in hand. Sure, I can spell. I have a dictionary and auto correct. Sometimes I make up a word, but usually it’s all good to go with what I know. My vocabulary is more than sufficient. I can turn a phrase, drive home a pun or simply eloquently state my case. Words have saved me, and enriched my very being. I have been paid to write, for years. As a private Investigator I was paid to write reports. Finally, a skill still of value. A skill that not only I am good at, but something that has made other people happy. Such a skill that many other people are envious of. Being envied is not all it was cracked up to be, to me. Being envied simply means others wish they could do something like you do. That is not shiney, but it will do, until my book is published.

Much has been said, and written concerning the power of positive thinking. Norman Vincent Peal made a fortune writing and speaking about it. He wasn’t the first, nor will he be the last. What does that mean then. Essentially it means if you approach things with a negative attitude, your interaction will be negative more often than not. As an example have you ever been with someone that ALWAYS belittles anything and everything you face together? Why the hell do you do anything with that person? Its obvious she or he is not a friend, because friends are positive with each other. Anyway, if you go into a show with intentions of enjoying it, odds are you will enjoy it, no matter how bad it is, because you entered the theater upbeat, so it is easier to be upbeat all through the show. If your friend starts off negative, you, then, have to climb over the negativity to become neutral, then climb again to be positive. That is a lot of unnecessary climbing. So, stay around positive people, you will have a better life.

This is a serious discussion. What does homeless mean? Duh, that you have no home. WRONG. You always have a home, didn’t your parents tell you that? Well, they lied, because while they live they will usually put you up, but mine are both dead. They left money for me to buy a house, but my oldest brother stole it. He is dead now, so he has to face what shit he did, and what he did to my parents pales to his theft of $57,000 and change from me. He stole $200,000 from my mother, then put her in a home, which I assume he never went to, since he never told anyone else in the family what he did. Worse, when both my parents were in the hospital last, he jerked their life support. My Mom died in few hours, my Dad took nine days, plus they both died alone. So, yes I can honestly say he is dead and gone, good riddance to bad trash. He left a son, grown now, but I have nothing to do with him, assuming he is the evil seed from Satan himself. He helped deplete my Mothers nest egg. I do not know what else he did, he just e.g. his dad ruin my Mothers life, and that after she raised him from birth. So, always have a home? I never really had one with them, so my friends have always treated me better than my family. You can pick your friends, you are stuck with your family.

Sometimes you wonder what the grand design can be, considering the life you are living and its circumstances. Obviously no one wakes up in the morning and announces to the world at large “I think today I shall be homeless”. Being homeless requires numerous factors to occur simultaneously before you are without home. Money pops to the head of the list, usually, but that is only the start, since most homeless have money. That is with a caveat because it’s not enough money that brings you down to no walls or roof. Rents are too high, deposits double or triple the initial outlay, so let’s just concentrate on that to start. Where I live, in Bandon, Oregon, rents generally start around $500 a month for a single room apartment. Utilities are through the City and a $200 deposit is required. The electricity is reasonable so $40 a month is normal for me. Water and sewer is not bad, say $30 a month. Therefore after you move in you can squeak through with $70 bills monthly. Garbage is paid by the landlord. That totals $570 a month, say $150 a week. My retirement fund has $753 a month and that would allow $180 for food and all other expenses, provided I have paid the $1700 to move in (first, last and security deposit).that is existing, but no vehicle, no pets, no entertainment and no medical or medicine. That’s a lot of nos. I have two dogs and an old truck 1994. I also have medicine, I am a diabetic. If you have not jumped ahead of me, those figures indicate I do not have enough money to have a home. I am poor. In America we now have a lot of poor people. When I was growing up there were very few homeless, and we called them by a different name. We called them “bums” because they lived unkempt, often drunk, and slept wherever they could. Now we call them homeless, because they are regular people down on their luck. Really? Down on their luck? So all you need is good luck to have a home and life? Not really. I became homeless when the owner of the property my house was on died and I was forced to move when the land was sold. I could have disassembled the house, and sought a piece of land to place it on, but time was not enough, and I virtually had no way to transport a disassembled house. I lost out. Most of my possessions were left behind, and burnt. I have already demonstrated I could survive, if I had the $1700 to rent, but I didnt

Here we have my opening salvo in my struggle to be heard. As I sit, parked at the Rocky Point bhainoat launch, it is a beautiful sun filled day. I will soon begin cooking some hamburger patties from 93% beef 7% fat. I will make maybe eight, planning on eating two, the remainder as back up for times of hunger. I do have ice in a small chest, with the meat, cottage cheese, potatoe salad and milk. No room for other items. I do have a very large chest, which holds lots, and two blocks of ice, but I am not chilling food for a picknick, just for survival. I stay in the forests in Southern Oregon during decent weather. I have been having medical issues, and have need of a surgery to remove a “ganglia cyst” off my arm, apparently the result of an insertion of an artery blood collector for an IV my last hospital stay. It’s painful, although I feel little pain due to my morphine regimen I am on. It stops my annoying aches and pains from the “hnp” in my lower back. That’s a ruptured disc, hip beibg,doc speak for herniated nuculos propolsus, or near that. It is easier to say hnp, but I didn’t want you to think I meant hip. I can’t just go into the hospital because Brutus and Damnit depend on me being with them, feeding them and walking them. My last overnight stay my nurses took turns walking them from my truck, realizing that Damnit, at 15, required being lifted into the truck, and watched closely because of failing eyesight and hearing. That was certainly nice of them, not required, and when I left I found nec essay cleanliness items stashed in my truck. I was there because I mixed my meds up and mistakenly overdosed on my enalapril, my heart meds. I had to be”watched” so my heart didnt stop. I nnobnow use a urine sample cup to collect my nighttime meds in, so mistakes dont repeat. I will be 70 in November. Welcome to my world.