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.