National Hunger And Homeless Awareness Week

Nartional Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week Nov.12-20

Last year I got on the Blogger Unite cause wagon. I am dedicating my blog today for another cause.

Each year, one week before Thanksgiving, National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness co-sponsor National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. During this week, a number of schools, communities and cities take part in a nationwide effort to bring greater awareness to the problems of hunger and homelessness.

I am reblogging my last year's post. I just can't seem to do any better than that. I was homeless for a short term in 1999. I sent my kids to their dad. The place I lived and my counterculture lifestyle backfired on me and my children were at risk. I battled for my bohemian hippyesque life until I realized my kids were being exposed to some hard stuff.  I did a "nestea" plunge homeless, broke and without my children into God's World.

FROM 2010:
FOR CHERYL SCOVEL (A DIGITAL MEMORY AND THANKYOU)

November 14th through November 20th 

During this week of Awareness..
Give to your local missions or shelters!
Help them expand the love of God

In a way that it is needed

Food and Shelter
And unconditional kindness

In 1999, I became homeless.  My experience was life changing.  I met so many interesting people who were just as down and out.  Some were wanderers and hopped from mission to mission.  Others, were like me, no job and had a personal life fall out.  I was lucky and thankful to the Bakersfield Rescue Mission and the Crossroads Mission of Yuma, Arizona.  Feeding, clothing and shelter.  I was able to shower and do laundry.  I also had resources available for free bus passes and employment assistance.
I was never hungry.
In fact, we ate so much that I imagined the neon sign that read "Jesus Saves" should of included "Jesus Feeds".

They didn't treat us like pigeons to get us to hear the word. They just were there and friendly.  They didn't make us feel like lost sheep or guilty that we lost faith.
I was never afraid.

 I was fortunate to be in a smaller metro area with a shelter. In Bakersfield, I made a friend-Cheryl. She had a smile and a walk that when she passed by the flowers would blossom. She smiled at me as I was behind her going to the dining hall and said "If any of those guys back there are looking at my ass, you tell them they owe me a dollar". We began to be friends after that.  
And she was happy in a place you would think happy would have a hard time to find.

After being rejected applying for 40 plus jobs and being told that the Alaska fish industry recruiter was only looking for migrant farm workers...
I had gone to the Kern County Fair to join the carnival. I knew I could get work there and follow it.  Cheryl and about 10 other homeless followed my lead. We followed the whole season with the carnival company.  II had my own kiddy ride. It was the safari train you see pictured.  I had to put the tracks together.  You needed about 4 strong men to lift the cars.  I was lucky to have my own ride. The kiddy ride director (Benny) told us that being a Carnie is "the hardest work you will ever do being homeless". It was a Carnie camp out. Not everyone had housing. We would take our sleeping bags into some of the rides and sleep there. We ended in Northern California and dismantled our rides in the pouring rain.  It was like swimming.

I was fortunate to have a circle of friendly people who were in the same situation. We all put together our money and at the end of the season rented a U-haul and hauled ourselves South like illegals in the cargo area. We went to the summer spot where Carnies go. There were two places Indio, CA or Yuma, AZ  I got a job in Yuma and decided not to follow the next season.

Always a street wise good soul was by my side protecting me like a saint or an angel.  Cheryl set herself up at a motel in Yuma. I went to the Mission.

I failed to tell you Cheryl (as I suspected) was a prostitute.
She told a story how she was the Petroleum Pageant Queen in her local town in another time...She'd say she would see her children when they graduate. She always talked about guardian angels. I found her an angel pin that she wore like religion. Cheryl was surely an angel with dirty wings. She would say that she loved having sex, but men had to pay AND satisfy HER.  In her opinion she was not selling her body, she would put a money criteria to do something she normally did.  

She walked around town with me as I tried to find a conventional  job. We parted ways when I got my job. I was able to leave the Crossroads Mission. I heard she was getting married, then I heard she stole 2K of weed from her fiancee who was looking for her only to forgive her. She had come to see me earlier and we hugged and cried as she said goodbye on her way to Phoenix.  I didn't tell him that.

There was another angel named Dennis who looked like and thought he was Jesus and would cry because he would get horny.  He took over the charge of guardian.  Dennis helped me find an apartment next to some friends and stayed with me until he felt the sex building up then went back to the homeless shelter to be Jesus because he had a hard time being Platonic. Grinning with this memory... 

In my apartment, I would burn three Catholic candles.  A friend of a neighbor asked me what I did that for and I said "1 billion Catholics can't be wrong".  I just didn't know exactly why. Although raised a Catholic, I was not really devout as an adult. I would chuckle when I'd buy them and think 1 billion Catholics can't be wrong.  They burned a long time and gave a hint of heat in my studio apartment that was all I really needed in the Yuma winter time.  Then something DID happen. The person who asked me about the candles became my friend. He and his wife  lived down the road. That friendship turned  into a ride North bound.  Before we left, I went to the local Catholic church and left the heavier portion of my collection of heart rocks that I had found on my way to Yuma next to the St. Francis statue. 
Oh I failed to add that all through this homeless journey I would find heart rocks.
There was love everywhere!  
I kept only a select portable amount.

[picture source]

In the bigger cities, there are not always spots at the missions to accommodate all the homeless.  I was lucky. I had my angels.
My angels were real people with real lives that were not perfect, but were loving.  My description of them may spark a stigma in your mind (Prostitute and Schizo), but their reality and hearts were real. 

The true sad problem are "The Abandoned" or "The Loveless".  These are those that can't get into the shelters because of some rule or got kicked out because of one.  These are Nam Vets that live outdoors some remote area holed up because they came back not quite right. These are also the mentally ill that roam the streets because the system hasn't caught up with them, or they scored just high enough to qualify for release, get a 'nut check' (social security), but come out to ride the bus and wander the streets talking to themselves or that big rabbit that sits next to them.  One could look deeper and there are drug and alcohol addicts and broken souls from tragedy that they dare not share. Addiction and despair and insanity all live there. 

You can get robbed, raped or killed as prey in the dark shadows.
I teetered on the edge of danger many times, but a force of goodness just kept me from falling.  There are good people in the dregs where you would think good would have a hard time to find.


All through my personal homeless experience I discovered:
I was never hungry. I was never afraid.  There is love everywhere!

• It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.

• For it is in giving that we receive.

• Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. 

• I have been all things unholy.If God can work through me, he can work through anyone.

• Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

• A real friend is someone who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.

All above quotes are from:
Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone 
aka St Francis Of Assisi
 1182 – 1226

Post script:  I found a person with Cheryl's last name on FaceBook that lived in her home town (where she once was the  Petroleum Pageant Queen) and was told by the son who never knew her that she had died two years ago.  The lifetime of drugs finally caught up with her was the epitaph emailed to me.  I am sad that she could not save herself and that she is most likely buried in Potter's Field. 
I don't know what pain is deeper that of motherless children or childrenless mothers. 

RIP Cheryl  2008

It has been 12 yrs since my journey North to a sober life.

Thank you for viewing my blog!

Bluezy (Susan)