For about a year and a half after high school, I hitchhiked around the country, with no money, no job, and no home. Oh, I could go back to my dad's house anytime I wanted and had a few other options too, but in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while there were dangers, it wasn't particularly dangerous to hitchhike and, among many others my age, it wasn't considered shameful to panhandle. It wasn't at all difficult, either. I left home once with a nickel in my pocket, spend a few months hitchhiking to Oregon and Washington along the northern route, went down into California, then came back on Route 66, and I ate well enough along the way and came back with more money than I had started with. Sometimes, I would change my destination because it was easier to get a ride to somewhere else. I didn't consider myself to be homeless, or to be a street person; I was just seeing the country on the cheap. Then again, I wasn't actually living on the street. Most nights, I had a place to stay, usually with someone I didn't know, such as in a college dormitory, which was always a good bet if in a college town. If nothing else, there was the lobby. There was also a network of friends of friends that I knew of. With a few exceptions, I stayed away from the missions and such because the chances of violence were pretty high around those places. In California, I could sleep on the beach, but I rarely had to do that. One exception to my missions rule was a place in Albuquerque that we knew as Brother Bob's. It had another name but everyone knew it as Brother Bob's, for the guy who ran it. Was that you, @Bobby Cole? Brother Bob's was a place where I was likely to run into other people I knew, or had met along the way, or where I was likely to meet other interesting people. One day, at Brother Bob's, I had been hitchhiking with a couple of friends of mine. They were going to go camp up in the hills, with someone we met who had a car, to see some UFO lights or something, but I didn't feel like it. I fell asleep there at Brother Bob's, during the day, when everyone else was out doing other things. I was awakened by a booming voice, asking me if I was ready to die for Christ. I had never actually met Brother Bob before, although I had seen him come in and out a few times. Although he was probably going to launch into a sermon, asking me if I was ready to die for Christ sounded like a threat to me, so I literally ran out of there. I went to a nearby restaurant for coffee. While there, I met another guy a year or so younger than me who had also been staying at Brother Bob's. He was hiding out from Bob, too. Although we agreed, after some discussion, that he probably wasn't actually going to kill me, no one wanted to be there alone with Brother Bob. About two years later, I was sitting on the steps of the Justice Department in Washington, DC during an antiwar protest, and I thought I recognized someone who was on the same steps. It was the guy I had met at the restaurant in Albuquerque. Small world. Anyhow, particularly when it comes to some of the younger people who might seem to be lowlife, good-for-nothing, street people, not all of them are going to stay that way. A few years after my time of panhandling my way across America, I was adopting a seven-year-old and making more money than I knew what to do with.
In all seriousness, I don't doubt that was it. When confronted with it, he said something along the lines of they were old and were going to die soon, anyhow. This was part of a larger agenda though, as he wasn't alone in doing that. Michigan's governor has some deaths to her credit, too.
Just as something to do, look up Euthanizing the Homeless and Seniors on Google. The reason I did was to see if Lon’s thread was picked up by the search engines. Frankly, I stopped looking when I saw several articles about the same subject. I won’t accuse Lon of grabbing someone else’s thoughts but I was sooooo surprised to see that many people are honestly talking about the exact same things. In one article, seniors are, “dead weight”. According to Obama, we’re old and do not need an operation. “Give them a pill” he said. It’s sad really. Some people who were allowed to be born talk about abortion whilst others who will be seniors someday are talking about killing seniors off. P.S. Nope, not this Brother Bob although I have preached at the Albuquerque Gospel Rescue Mission on....2nd street I think.
"Useful Life Years" People who wish for such things should be careful to examine the value of their own contributions.
No, I’ve never tried that approach. I’ve never really been a Billy Sunday kind of a preacher. I have on occasion said something like, “How much would it take for you to deny being a follower of Jesus Christ?” Same thing I guess but a different way of saying it.
As an addendum, Cuomo et al. are also accused (documented) of putting Covid people into group homes for mentally disabled adults, so he was targeting that population as well. Both were picked up by Democratic governors in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Actually, I find it it strange that this entire thread was begun by someone who would be at the top of their euthanasia list.
Are you volunteering Lon? I am positive that 99.9% of homeless folks feel that they are your equal Lon. I am positive that I feel they are your equal, and their lives are as valuable as yours. I understand that coming from your place of privilege that , that concept probably hasn't occurred to you.
Truth on all accounts I believe. The Western world has gone crazy and particularly here in the U.S. The age equation used to be something akin to an honorable estate because age = experience and experience = wisdom. Wisdom is valuable but the person carrying that wisdom is priceless. I once met a man in a shelter coffee shop in Atlanta who was homeless but yet, he wore a Presidential Rolex watch. I had already heard about him because there were a few who tried to take that watch and the stories I heard about the results were not pretty. Though he didn’t look like it he was apparently deadly or so people said. Any way, after I bought him another cup of coffee we talked for a bit and then said our so longs but with that I told him I’d be at the shelter shop the next day. Sure enough, the next day he was there and I bought him a couple more cups of coffee and a pre-made tuna fish sandwich and we talked some more. A couple days of doing the same thing and he finally started opening up. So the story goes, he was a pretty successful man in the ad business and the watch he was wearing was a birthday present from his wife and 2 children. The same wife and children who were killed by a drunk driver some 3 or 4 years prior. In essence, he gave up and after some bad habits took everything else he had, he found himself on the streets and, he liked it that way. The bottom line is that he moved to a different world. No one expected anything from him and he didn’t have to care for or love anyone just to lose them like he did with his family. When he needed money, he’d give plasma, blood or work a day from a labor pool but that watch never left his wrist no matter how bad things got. Now, did he lose his value? Certainly not! The few times we talked I gleaned some knowledge and wisdom that I would never have gotten anywhere else and some of it I still carry with me today. The thing is, he didn’t want to die but he did want to be left alone for the most part but he only knew the city so the streets became his home.
I don't think homeless people think one way or another about me or anyone else. I think they are incapable of clear thinking. My Place of Privilege is by design not chance.
A wealthy farmer said that on the next day, he would build a new barn. He didn’t make it to the next day to build his barn. In other words, life is not by any human’s design. It’s by chance. At any point, no matter what plans you may have made in life Lon, it could have been all taken away at the drop of a hat as many others of much wealthier positions have found out. To be sure, I prefer my “place of privilege” to that of having ill health but again, I too could lose that at the drop of a hat. It’s only by chance that our plans come out the way we wish. Edit and an addition: Think about this for a moment. A young and / or a middle aged homeless person has the ability to change his or her choices and become totally successful people and an addition to society. I have seen it and experienced it. As seniors, we have few if any choices left as to what tomorrow might bring. Are YOU ready for that needle yet?
Such things would not exist if there were a stronger sense of Universality in our nation. Your closing sentence shows how we're falling short of that goal.
What a great story! I know there are many here who actually choose a life on the streets, but those seem to be exclusively males who value freedom over almost all else.
Again stunned by Lon's post. It sounds like something that could come from a medieval lord or a Nazi, or perhaps some of today's elite class of politicians. Apparently he has never had contact with those people. As your story relates, @Bobby Cole there are wonderful people on the streets as well as some not so nice, and many of them have been tossed onto the streets by things and circumstances outside their control. I think I have written in a past life here of the stranded Alaskans.