Interesting People

In my travels around town I run across the most interesting people. This time at the Starbucks down at San Pedro and Cypress. There is the local bum that daily comes into the place, looking like he has spent the night in the most trashed out dumpster he could find. Then, following right after him is the business man on his way to his next sales appointment.

I Love My Job!

Of course, there is me, the guy in the corner sitting before a Panasonic ToughBook computer and wearing half dirty denims, a tee shirt and tennis shoes that are scuffed and stained from the mornings’ opportunity photos taken of the graffiti- marked trains sitting on a siding up on the north side of town.


There are others in the store, too. The mother and daughter sitting across the way, apparently working on some sort of school application. The nursing student to my right, studying furiously, as if some patient’s life depends on it - all while listening to tunes on her smartphone.


At the long rough-hewn table where I am sitting, a spot across opens up, and a young woman takes the seat to begin her morning activities. A student, I presume, yet she comes in with more of a purpose than I generally find in the students that I am used to seeing in the store.


After a while, I see that she has pulled out an iPad , followed by a keyboard. Intrigued, I wait for an appropriate time and ask about that keyboard - especially if it is wireless. No - I ask not because I want to hit on her, but because I want to know how far things have come in the technology department - and to learn about what different people are up to. (Well, maybe a little bit is also motivated by the fact that Apple stock has gone crazy in the past several years and this iPad thing may be a reason for that.)


Turns out that the keyboard is indeed wireless, and that her iPad has an internal chip that connects it to ATT wiifi for about $15/month for internet access most everywhere!!!. Thus ensues a discussion about all the communication and connectivity technology that is available nowadays. My tablemate showed me for example, all of the apps that she can get on her iPad, and in particular, showed me her book app, which she says is a real money saver because she can get her textbooks in electronic format for about ½ the price of a hard copy. We both agreed that hard copy books were what we liked to read, BUT, as she stated to me, the convenience of having electronic books and magazines delivered direct to the iPad made not being able to read real books more palatable.


I asked if she was a student, and she replied yes. She said that she already had her psychology degree and was doing additional work to become a funeral director. This, then, led to some more discussion about that particular field and the perceptions of some toward it. In this regard, she told me that one woman told her that "Girls can’t be funeral directors,"while another was concerned that she was "too young (25) to be a funeral director." Go figure.


As I said, I meet the most interesting people in my travels around town.

Street Corner Philosopher

His name is Bill and most days, rain or shine, sweltering heat or numbing cold, he can be found at the intersection of Broadway and Loop 410 in San Antonio Texas, waving and nodding to passers-by as he shows off the day's headlines on the newspaper that he has for sale.

His face, etched by what looks like years of hardship and hard living, reminds me of an old worn shoe, with creases that appear to have been etched by years of exposure and hard knocks - and possibly bouts with the bottle. Bill looks like a street person, what with his crumpled clothes and all, however, those clothes are clean, and so I surmise that he is not spending his nights under a bridge.

As the cars come to a stop, some people extend their hand, showing a dollar, in return for which a paper is thrust to the window for them to grab before the light turns green while others begin to honk in their own haste to get to nowhere. Sometimes there is more than a dollar that changes hands, and I wonder as I see this, how much can a man make standing on the corner selling newspapers to passers-by.

I myself do not take a newspaper, but nonetheless, I find the sight of him to cast a beam of permanence in this impersonal world, and like a stubborn weed clinging to that last bit of soil to be found between the crags and crannies of a hash and unforgiving landscape, so too this purveyor of the morning news purveys more that just the news, for in his act of being there without fail, he demonstrates stability and perseverance in the face of whatever life throws.

Why do I write about Bill? I guess it is because to me he represents the honor of work instead being on the dole as are the bums that inhabit the other corners of that same intersection. Bums and miscreants, who, holding out their cardboard signs with scrawling handwriting proclaiming their "Vietnam Veteran-ness", ask for a dollar here or there because they are just "Oh so homeless." Such disgust I have for these, as they, standing there in their hundred dollar pair of Nikes and with their 5 dollar pack of cigarettes, assault the eyes and senses. One can tell by looking at any of them that they are of the most distasteful sort, preying on the sympathy of the sheep who now and again extend out a hand with a dollar or two. As livestock gravitate to where the food is, so too do these miscreants gravitate to their food supply, given by the people that are doing nothing but enabling them and fostering their return the next day so that they may assault the eyes and sensibilities yet again.

I have always wanted to stop and talk to Bill, and after a year or so of passing him by, I did stop and strike up a conversation. Bill tells me that he has come from Louisiana, and from the speech and the manner and the weathering of his face I tend to believe him.

He said that he lived just east of New Orleans, and that everything he had was wiped out by Katrina. He said that did have a job at one of the oil refinery or pipeline companies ( I did not ascertain which), and told me that he used to go around and look at all the gauges on the oil storage tanks to make sure that they were not leaking.

As to his current job of standing on the street corner for hours at a stretch in the aftermath of Katrina, he says that he makes 20-30 dollars a day, and that even though he lost everything, he really does not miss it and feels freer than at any point of his life.

Becoming a philosopher, he proceeds to tell me in his muted Cajun drawl, that all that stuff just held him back, and remarks that his whole life up to that time seemed to be directed toward keeping up with the Joneses -  and that doing so was killing him. He follows this up by saying that because of the attachment to stuff -  and the payments that go along with having it -  that if a man loses his job he stands to lose everything.

Street corner wisdom, and, indeed, I have heard this from another who told me that he never has felt so free as when he had nothing in his pocket and did not know where he was going to be sleeping that night.

Bill, now engaging in a bit of rhetoric and oratory, goes on to ask "What more does a man need but  20-30 dollars a day" , and further expresses the opinion that, he too, is disgusted with the way that the interlopers (I think he used the word "bums") holding up their signs of false need, and offering nothing in return, suck off the passers-by, like a tick might do on the back of a dog, for money that will just go to beer and cigarettes. He fully supports that the police now and again will pull up in their unmarked cars and take "those people" for a "little ride". (His words, not Mine.)

I like Bill.