Part 4 - Mandy...my street corner girl...

A few steps from my new Army soldier acquaintance was Mandy. Mandy looked about 17 and she was quick. I don't think it was the camera, but she seemed to walk ahead of me with a slow provocative walk and a turn just as I reached a few feet from her. How the heck did she know where i was in proximity to her turn...That was a good trick. Anyway, she asked me if i wanted some company, i asked her for what (I suspected she was hooking), "for a date" she said "I've been trying to get a place to stay out of this weather or make enough money to get a place for Christmas." I asked here where she was from and she played it off and changed the subject, choosing instead to flirt and see if she could get me teased into opening my wallet. I did get out of her that she was from the Midwest, she had left home because it was "lame back there". She was underage, but she never said how old. Feeling a little nervous by then (guilt by association and all), I said my good byes and moved on down the road on Commerce. I did think as i walked away how sad it was that this young woman had a family back somewhere and yet circumstances had come to pass that she was walking the streets of Tacoma. WA willing to sell her body for cash or a place to stay for the next few days.

I use to see this stuff when i lived in Los Angeles, CA. I left LA because it was way too much of that type of stuff. I hope we don't forget our young as we see our way through these troubled financial times. The Mandy's of the world will become tomorrows law enforcement customers and the tip of the spear of the next crime wave if we don't pay attention.

Part 2 - Ken on the rails

Next, I boarded the rail car and met Ken. Ken had a long salt and pepper beard, wore glasses with warm looking yet well worn clothing of the salt of the earth variety. He wore a neck brace which drew my attention to him as I scanned from the rail platform trying to decide which door to enter the couch from in the first place. He was speaking in a very familiar manner to a rough looking man who I assumed to be a friend of his. They sat across the aisle from one another so I squeezed into the seat behind Ken and we all sat up at the front in the north bound direction.

To make myself interesting, I begun to take pictures out the window at the crowed lined up to catch the Sounder train up to Seattle for the Seahawk's game. Sure enough, Ken turned sideways and asked me what I was doing? I struck up a conversation and told him I was taking pictures for my blog journal. I asked him if I could take a picture of him and he willingly obliged and posed a great smile.

We started talking in earnest and I asked him how he had spent the last week out in this weather. He shared much. He said he was getting tired of the cold, but having a few beers every few hours and riding the light rail all day was keeping him "warm and comfy". I asked what happened to his neck. He said he had a sprained neck and contusions over 65 percent of his body. Apparently the previous day, he had been challenged by a group of 18 - 23 year olds to go inner tubing down one of our very steep snowy hills we have around here. Know Ken looks like he is deep into his 50's and not a specimen of fitness either.

He had taken them up on the dare and found his way down a steep road, spinning out of control with feet dangling at a high rate of speed as he described the experience. He eventually was bounced up into the air and was stopped by the grill of an oncoming truck trying to make it up that Hill. The driver of the truck stopped to check on him and well, Ken earned a trip to the emergency room. As he put it, the nurses were nice and the doctor was pretty funny. He got a warm bed and a good meal out f it he said. He would be riding the rails for the rest of the day however since his camp and tent had been snowed in when he went to go check on it after he was discharged.

By this time I had reached the Convention Center Station said my good byes and Merry Christmas and prepared to hoped off. Ken and his buddy wished me well and told me to keep it real... I sure hope I can Ken old buddy, but please, stay off the inner tubes, that's like me going skiing.

The Poor At Christmas... A Series Of Short Essays - Part 1

During the depth of the Holidays, a little over two weeks ago on the winter solstice (December 21, 2008), I decided to expand my monthly walking excursions around town and spend some time in some of the areas I don't often get to. Namely I was thinking, the back alleys and hidden areas of our City. This walk was also unusual from the walks I normally take around town in that it was during the height of our recent snow storms. A week before this day on December 14th, Jill and I had rescued our now named new addition to the family, Lucy the Cat out of the beginnings of the snow event when the temperature dropped from the high 20's into the low teens in about an hour. The weather that week got me thinking about the poor and the homeless.

Its nice thought to think that most of the homeless use shelters during these extreme weather events, but as i discovered, not everyone follows conventional wisdom. It also depends on how you see that trade for a bed for the night. Needless to say, I got my boots on, put on some extra layers and got out in the weather to slog it for part of the day. I wanted to see what those of us that were down on our luck (i.e. the poor and homeless) were doing as they waited for the holidays to arrive. It was an interesting walk, which I documented in digital photographs.

I started from my home on McKinley Hill, walked past McKinley Park, past the Tacoma Dome and down to the Freighthouse Square Light Rail Station. I took the light rail down past the UW Tacoma campus, got off at the convention center stop and walked up to Commerce and 7th at the bottom of the stairs of the old lodge building.

Along the way, I met a few interesting people. The fellow in the sleeping bag pictured above is Sonny. Sonny is a member of the first nations peoples. He decided that his sleeping bag would do just fine in this weather. Up in the north country, he had camped in worse. He told me about his 'old lady' who had gone to jail last night in a neighboring City for trying to get a date so they could have some money to get a motel. He offered to hook me up when she got out, but I politely turned him down. He was a funny fellow. He laughed a lot for a guy who had been woken up suddenly by the sounds of boots compacting the airy cold snow feet from his sleeping place under a balcony. I asked if if he planned to get something to each later, he looked looked away for a second and then looked at me and said "I'll find me something, but first i got to go see about my old lady". That man sonny had his priorities straight as he say it. Who cares about food when your other half is in the tank.