Last Thursday, February 26, was the last HOME Van drive out. At all three stops we saw mostly familiar faces, and some people who are very dear to me. Many people came up to Arupa to say goodbye and get a hug. I occasionally hid behind a car to cry. I only lost it completely when I said goodbye to Mike, one of the sandwich makers, whom I have come to respect and admire as he and his wife nursed a friend whose house they shared.

The house, a small bright green geodesic dome, was built for the owner by several homeless men, who lived there on occasion. Showers and laundry were available on a regular basis, and there was a small food pantry. Gainesville is dotted with informal, almost clandestine services for homeless people, in homes and churches, and in our case, in an old gray van and a couple of cars.

 

Arupa and Bob Freeman, whose house is HOME Van Central, and who have been working 40-60 hours a week to run the project, are well past retirement age. The growth of services at Grace Marketplace, the new center run by the Homeless Coalition, has brought our numbers down, and the time has come to shift direction. Arupa and Bob will run a small food pantry, and respond to individual needs and emergencies. We will still deliver water to campsites in the hot months. Our main focus will be to buy tents for the people who want to move near Grace Marketplace, where people can get hot meals, showers, and many other services.

sunset and rainbow at Grace Marketplace  photo by Greg Undeen

We all have our favorite driveout memories. One evening, going through the medicine boxes, I came across a bottle of  flavored personal lubricant. “Who the fuck donated this?” was my ladylike reaction, and Arupa and I had a giggle. But a little while later a man and woman came up to the van window and shyly told me they had gotten married a few days ago. They were beaming with happiness. I slipped it into her bag – a lot of the women we meet are modest about intimate items.  She thanked me the next week, and every once in a while I brought another bottle of lubricant for the honeymooners.

 

A woman in her sixties lived in a tent on the dental lab property in Tent City. She had greasy gray hair and filthy feet, but she had a strong sense of dignity and self-respect.  The winter that she got a week-long cold night motel voucher, I brought her a bag of groceries. She opened the door in her bathrobe, with her long hair wet from the shower, and I realized that I had thought of her dirtiness as part of her. I was struck once again by my ignorance.

After the Bath by Edgar Degas

When she turned 65, I took her to apply for Social Security, and discovered she had been married five times. It was quite an enterprise for her to recall all the names and dates. The Social Security official was polite and patient. Not long after, she married again, to a 28-year-old man, and the HOME Van held a wedding ceremony. The bride spent the morning at the beauty parlor, and then I drove them to the downtown plaza, she in her white dress and veil, he in a tuxedo, where Reverend Dave, the HOME Van minister, married them.

image: worth1000.com

 

I have so many memories of the early days of the HOME Van, when the numbers weren’t so crushing, and we had more time for frivolity. Arupa and I spent an afternoon decorating Easter eggs to distribute on the driveout. At our first Christmas party I passed out song sheets, and my brother Don led the singing on his harmonica. On our third anniversary we had a big party on the downtown plaza, with ribs and chicken donated by David’s Barbeque, and a band of homeless pickers and singers. Less frivolous were the memorial services we held on the plaza – a circle of people holding candles, speaking of their friend who was gone, and Reverend Dave saying a few words of comfort and faith.

 

image: bangordailynews.com

As one of my very favorite customers said when he heard that the driveouts are ending, “All good things must end.” I have tried to understand why this makes me so sad. I won’t miss boiling ten dozen eggs, or as I used to do, baking five  batches of cornbread. I won’t miss organizing the soup rota, or making five to seven gallons of soup when I had no volunteers.

we usually did better than beanie wienies

 
I won’t miss making sandwiches on Thursday mornings, turning six loaves of bread into pb and j’s. But I’ll miss the other sandwich makers, three men whom we met years ago on the drive-outs, all now housed.  Arupa puts on Pandora, usually old country music or rock, and we talk as we work. Lots of gossip – celebrity gossip, local politics, who’s sick, who’s in jail. Personal history and family stories, what’s going on in our lives. Lots of joking, lots of teasing, especially of me.
 
I won’t lose track of one of the guys. He lives near me, and we rode together every Thursday to sandwich-making and then to deliver a food box to a former HOME Van customer. In the afternoon I’d pick him up to go to the drive out. He house sits for us when we go away, and now that he’s losing his HOME Van gig, he’s going to come walk our dog on weekday mornings. But I know I’ll rarely see the other two. I remember how close I was to my colleagues at the law school, and how quickly we lost touch. There are work friends and friend-friends, and you lose touch with the former when you retire.

 

Trisket needs her exercise

I have so many memories of so many people. A gentle schizophrenic man in many layers of clothing and scarves. It was years before he would look me in the eyes with the sweetest smile, and ask for “whatever you have.” I settled on giving him vitamins and bandaids and Tums. Another man, of enormous intelligence, integrity and courage, who has been in the woods since he was released from prison, where he spent fifteen years for avenging his daughter. A man who moved to the woods so he could support his daughter in college with his small Social Security check. I’ll miss the hugs, the jokes, the God bless you’s, the homemade card Rose gives us at Christmas.

image nydailynews.com

For years I was in charge of socks and candles, dispensed from the trunk of my car. This sounds tedious, but each transaction was a little connection. Can I have some dress socks for church? Do you have any more of those diabetics’socks? When we had more volunteers  I graduated to medications, freeing Arupa to wander in the crowd and talk with anyone who needed something special, or merely a dose of Arupa.

image: sockittoemsockcampaign.org

I liked distributing medicines, because it gave me genuine, if brief, contact with a large number of people. I’m no good at names, but people expected me to remember their illnesses and injuries, and I often did. I sat in the passenger seat of the van, with a daunting line of people at my window, stretching around the parking lot. I heard of many ailments. People like to show their wounds.  I have a weak stomach and would always let my eyes go out of focus when confronted by scars, stitches, burns and boils. I’d urge them to go to Helping Hands or the Rahma Mercy Clinic, the emergency room or the VA.

Rahma Mercy Clinic image: sam felter

I remember the woman who lived in Tent City and rode her bike to chemo treatments at Shands, the man who was between two surgeries and living with a temporary colostomy bag, the woman I saw on our last drive out, who had major abdominal surgery four days ago, and was about to start radiation.  People were discharged from the hospital, sometimes sent home in a taxi to the trail that led to their camp, with expensive prescriptions which they couldn’t fill. Arupa carried some cash and could sometimes help, but often the cost was beyond us. We could give them ibuprofen and acetominaphen, but no real pain meds. We had bandaids and ointment, but no antibiotics.

image: theguardian.com

I retired more than eleven years ago from the law school, and never looked back. The only thing I was going to miss was my students, and even them, not so much. At the time I retired, the HOME Van was less than a year old. Now I’m facing a second retirement, and I’m not looking forward to it.

In all the years of riding with the HOME Van, I only saw the tip of the iceberg. After a winter drive out in the freezing rain, or a summer drive out where we fought mosquitoes and gnats, I struggled to wrap my imagination around how it would be to live homeless. People who live outside have complicated lives. Some of them traveled, many stayed put. I was just a tiny part of their lives, but they were a huge part of mine.
 
To JC and Gary and DJ and Rose, to Buddy and Michael and Bill, Matt and David and Nick, to Wanda and Nina, Diane and James, Nate and Judy, Ashley, Tommy, Renata, Charles. To all the people who live or have lived outside, coping every day with hardships and troubles I can barely imagine, making their happiness with or without booze and drugs, I will miss you more than I can say or you will know. You have blessed my life.

 

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