After weeks of hiding out in Portland, living in parking lots of public parks during the day and trolling Portland streets for safe places to park at night, I finally hit my limit and left town. The weather sucked, as it often does in early summer. The beach was great, but eventually the nice casino security people would have told me to move on, can't stay there all summer, sorry. Portland was not welcoming me. I'd been to all the medical appointments, picked up all the meds, retrieved the junk mail from my brother . . . There was no reason to hang around a city where I was not welcome.
On my road trip, I was reminded of the dubious power of being the "pilot car"on a two-lane highway with few passing lanes. The so-called pilot car is the car that is going slower than the rest of the pack. I can count on one hand the number of times I actually passed a vehicle going slower than me. One was a truck going up a steep hill. One was a truck towing a camper. He passed me later. I'm slow on the climb, but I'm speedy on the descent. Gravity is still working, even if other things in life aren't.
Like any society, homeless people have a hierarchy. You could say we have a class system. The lowest class homeless person is the person (usually a man) who curls up under a tree on a public sidewalk and throws a blanket over his head. He could be dead, he could be drunk. Odds are he would prefer not to be sleeping on a sidewalk.
At the other end of the homeless continuum are the people who live in shiny new Sprinter vans, tow enormous fifth-wheel trailers with new Dodge Ram pickups, or drive new Class C camper vans, the ones with the bed over the cab. I would add the folks who drive giant Prevosts but if they can afford a luxury motor coach, they most likely own several houses, so I would not classify them as homeless. They may have been bitten by the wandering bug but they always have a home base to return to when they get tired of driving their entire house along a narrow two-lane highway.
In between these two extremes are the rest of us, everything from tents and tarps pitched along the freeway verges to broken down motorhomes to minivans and sedans. There are a lot of unhoused people out there. If you know what to look for, they are easy to spot. The problem with stealth camping in a city, as I've previously discussed, is that homeowners (in the nicer areas) know how to spot a car that is not part of the neighborhood. In the bad parts of town, nobody cares, which is why any car can be a target for gas thieves. I digress.
At the Walmart parking lot, a woman pulling a little trailer with a relatively new SUV parked near me. She had a dog with her. She went shopping and came back with a load of stuff. The wind had kicked up, and a man came over to help her with the loading. He told her he was living in his truck and pointed to a nice pickup parked nearby. He asked where she was headed. She said nowhere, she lived in Cedar City. He said he did, too.
Where do I fall along the unhoused continuum? Glad you asked. Compared to the street sleepers and tent dwellers, I'm definitely high-class homeless. I have a relatively new, mostly presentable soccer mom minivan. I have everything I need with me. I know how to keep myself clean, fix food, fetch water, and take out the trash. I practice leave no trace, I don't wave my arms and yell like a crazy person, I'm nice to dogs and their walkers . . . In short, I try to be a good member of the community.
And still, I'm not welcome. Homelessness is a crime in many places. It's not illegal to park your car overnight on Portland city streets but you'd better not be sleeping in it. Kind of like, you can buy a condo but you'd better not paint it bright pink. There are rules made by cities to keep residents safe. Many of these rules make sense. You don't want someone setting the neighborhood on fire just because they felt like making a decent cup of coffee instead of buying the swill at McDonald's. Homeless people are not considered residents. They are eyesores, pedophiles, whores, beggars, and thieves. They clearly made bad choices somewhere along the way, or else they would not be homeless.
Humans are social creatures. Whether I want to admit it or not, I feel better when I'm parked near (but not too near) other people who are living the nomadic lifestyle. Some choose it, some are forced into it, but whatever the reason, just like other members of a class, we find comfort in community. Most of us. There are always the ones who find the most remote campsites up the steepest, most rutted road and then drag a big log across the road and hang a sign that says "Space occupied, Keep the Eff Out!" Now that is an introvert.
I may have made some bad choices along the way, but one element working in my favor I had no control over: I got old enough to draw social security. If I did not have my paltry monthly allowance, I would be one of those tent dwellers, pushing my belongings in a stolen shopping cart, sleeping with one eye open, and waiting for the authorities to tell me to move on. I'm a lucky one. I can move on by choice.
My psychic friend says my situation will be changing soon, but she wasn't sure if it would get better or worse. Not sure how to react to that, so I will carry on and wait to see what fate brings me. Maybe housing is in my future. Maybe not. I think I mentioned I've started collecting stickers to put on my windows. No more hiding. I figured out I can buy adhesive sticker paper and waterproof markers to make my own stickers. If you have any design ideas, please feel free to email or text. Or leave a comment. I'm not sure the comment section on Google Blogger actually works, but you could try it.
Meanwhile, the road trip continues.
