

# How To Be Homeless With Grace & Style

Larry "Brute" Bruttomesso

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright Larry Bruttomesso 2007

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# Foreword

Over the years I've heard one successful author after another advise first-time writers to stick to a subject they know. In my case that would be homelessness. In one way or another I've been homeless much of my adult life. In the early days, this was a conscious lifestyle choice. Playing country music in nightclub bands was all I wanted out of life. I'd go wherever I had to, do whatever I had to, to maintain my lifestyle as a honkytonk musician. The crowd on the dancefloor was my tribe, my people. I was their shaman, their witch doctor. When the band was "in the groove" and the crowd was hot, an authentic magical spell was created. Everyone could feel the electricity in the air. At that moment there was no place else I'd rather be.

Since the dawn of mankind, the painted-up folks pounding on drums and dancing around bonfires have understood this feeling. And to think, I was being paid to experience this ecstasy night after night. Life was good!

Then, as now, there was no security in the music business. If things got slow and you were a family man, or otherwise had strong ties to your town, you got a "day job". If you were me, you picked up and went searching for greener pastures. For years, I roamed from place to place, forming or joining existing bands. Sooner or later I'd either get bored and quit, or get fired from those bands. Then, it was back on the road again.

Most of the time I lived in a pickup truck with a topper on it, and later on, a rather comfortable Ford van. From time to time I'd shack up with some woman I'd met, but these arrangements never lasted very long. I mostly lived for the moment, not doing anyone any harm, but not exactly becoming a pillar of the community, either.

Then, around 1990, the handwriting began to appear on the wall, but I paid no attention to it. The Mothers Against Live Music (my pet name for Mothers Against Drunk Driving) appeared out of nowhere. Their political agitating for such things as police roadblocks and lowered blood alcohol limits quickly produced one unintended consequence. It wiped out the four and five-piece bands that were once found in nightclubs all over town. In our place came club DJ's, and what is now that most revolting of wateringhole institutions, karaoke. Hey, why pay an expensive band when you can let the drunks sing to each other for free?

I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on the bar owners. Their backs were, and still are, against the wall. It's almost impossible to stay in business when the police are lurking nearby, specifically targeting your customers.

And so it went. Each year becoming a little leaner than the last. Great musicians leaving the business in droves. I hung on till the bitter end and paid a big price for my stubbornness. The only things I accumulated were memories. Today, there is no sense in even forming a band, unless you just want to play in your garage. It's over.

The first section of this book covers the finer points of living in a car.

The second part describes life as the kind of person most folks would think of as "homeless". From April 1st, 2002, until September 1st, 2006, I was one of those urban campers in Port Charlotte and Ft. Myers, Florida.

I'll offer advice on how to make this exceedingly unsafe and uncomfortable existence as safe and comfortable as possible.

The third section chronicles the sometimes hair-raising events leading up to my surprising and spectacular rise out of homelessness.

Stuck into the middle of this book is a chapter of "strange but true tales", a collection of memorable incidents that occurred at different times in my life which I hope you'll find amusing.

Even at my lowest point, I tried to never appear in public dirty and unshaven. My old friend, Gail Keel, of Buckingham, Florida noticed this. Gail is one of the most gifted and natural musicians I know. She even possesses that rare trait known as perfect pitch. One day, she mentioned that she thought I was handling my homelessness with, in her words, "grace and style". Her offhand remark inspired the title of this book.

While I can't pretend to be a fortuneteller or go-to expert on the world economy, there are certain social and economic trends now occurring which I believe will lead to a dramatic rise in homelessness in our not-too-distant future. The working and middle classes may someday be in for a terrible shock.

Chief among these disturbing trends is the rise and de facto institutionalization of single motherhood. I've been told it's politically incorrect to even call attention to this elephant in the room. I can't help but wonder what kind of citizens these illegitimate children will eventually grow into, with no paternal influence and supervision. What kind of education and work ethic will they have? Will we even have room for all the prisons we'll have to build? Even if they somehow avoid a life of crime, they will probably still end up as wards of the state because of their inability to support themselves. A few more generations of this and our nation might become ungovernable.

The older I get and the more I see, the more I'm convinced we've already entered the "Bread and Circuses" phase of our national decline. The similarities between our present situation and the fall of the Roman Empire are uncanny. Don't even get me started!

I've also heard it said that the wealth of a nation is what it grows, mines, and manufactures.

Today, it seems our sole national product is unpayable debt. This service economy, or information economy, or global economy, or whatever the hell they're calling it, seems to be a race to the bottom, dragging the American middle class down with it. Add to this the Federal Government's irresponsible spending, unbridled Wall Street greed, the trade deficit, the shrinking dollar, outsourcing of good jobs, unregulated and apparently unlimited Third-World immigration, and the social friction it will create, and I fear we're heading for a future scenario that will make us nostalgic for the Great Depression of the 1930's.

So, if you are a Joe Sixpack or Jane Soccermom, in debt up to your eyeballs and living paycheck to paycheck, perhaps you should glean some practical homeless survival tips from this book.

"Interesting Times" are on the way.

# Chapter 1

### How To Live In Your Car

If you suddenly find yourself living this way, try not to worry too much. You've got half the battle won. As long as you've got your vehicle, your world is still a pretty big place. You can still get to where you need to be and do what needs to be done. There is still plenty of reason for hope.

Your real troubles will start if you become homeless _without_ a car.

The second half of this book is devoted to that particular lifestyle.

Perhaps you are lucky enough to have friends who will allow you to park on their property at night. In that case, the thing to remember is to not wear out your welcome. Don't knock on their door at all hours, asking for things. It's best to make yourself as unobtrusive as possible. I preferred to sleep outside in my vehicle, even if they offered their couch or spare bedroom.

The value of real friends cannot be overstated. They can literally make the difference between life and death. More about that later.

On the other hand, if you're new in town and don't have any friends yet, you'll have to rely on your wits to stay out of trouble. And believe me, there is a lot of trouble out there, just waiting for some homeless fool to appear on the scene. You must be very secretive when you park for the night. As you read on through this book, you may find my never-ending obsession with personal security a bit excessive, maybe even paranoid. However, once you've lived the homeless life for a while, you'll be singing the same tune. When you first start out, you won't quite realize how vulnerable you are. Small mistakes can have big consequences.

First of all, let's discuss where _not_ to park for the night. That would be beaches, parks, scenic waterfronts, or anyplace where your car will be the only one left when the crowds leave for the night. These areas are always heavily patrolled. You won't even make it through your first night. A cop _will_ stop by and check you out. The best-case scenario is that he'll merely tell you to move on. Unfortunately, there are several worst-case scenarios to be aware of.

Most cops are courteous and professional.

Some are borderline psycho.

I've dealt with both types, and my advice is to not attract the attention of _any_ cops at all!

The worst thing about being arrested for people like us is having our vehicles towed and impounded. Impound fees are astronomical. You may end up never seeing your car and possessions again.

Also, keep in mind that before they tow it, they'll search it. I'm not a doper, but if you are, I'd suggest you keep your stash elsewhere.

If you live in your car long enough, it will be searched sooner or later. I've had my van ransacked twice by police, and although I had no contraband on board, it still felt creepy watching them go through all my stuff. To add insult, after they let me go, I discovered they'd let in a swarm of mosquitoes while they had my doors hanging open.

After being rousted, you might wonder aloud where you can spend the night if you can't stay here. Your friendly constable will then direct you to a campground. A pay campground. Problem is, if we could afford that every night, we wouldn't be homeless in the first place!

Nowadays it seems every square inch of land on this planet has been claimed, deeded, designated, and populated by vigilant types who keep a sharp eye out for the likes of us. There are several more places where parking for the night is inadvisable.

Always avoid suburban neighborhoods with single-family homes. Even if there are parallel parking spaces available on the street, the local residents are quick to notice a strange car spending the night in front of their houses.

Years ago I was in Orlando, looking for a band to join. Most of my job hunting was done on weekend nights in bars, so I had a lot of free time during the day.

I spent most of my days in the downtown library. To avoid parking meters, I left my van at Lake Eola Park and walked over.

At closing time, I'd return and drive off to find a place for the night. Since I hung out in the library every day, it didn't make much sense to go very far, so I tried to sleep in the neighborhood I was already in. Much to my dismay, I found a very efficient "Neighborhood Watch" program in place for several miles in every direction. I couldn't get past those Orlando vigilantes no matter how I tried. They caused me all kinds of grief. It was as if they spent their nights looking out their windows.

Another place you'll quickly get into trouble is the little Mom-and-Pop motel. You might think you can blend in with the cars of the paying guests, but think again. The people who run these places are among the snoopiest folks on earth.

The parking lot of any business which might attract burglars is also a bad bet. Electronics stores, pharmacies, and construction sites should be avoided. I learned this the hard way one night in Pensacola, when a false burglar alarm brought the law swarming around my van, guns drawn and highly excited.

Now that we've covered where not to spend the night, I'll tell you about the places where the odds are pretty good you'll enjoy an undisturbed night's sleep in your car.

Remember, the most important rule is to blend in. If the area always hosts a lot of different vehicles parked overnight, then that's where you want to be. No one will pay any attention to you.

When I was living in my van, my first order of business upon rolling into a strange town was to locate a large apartment complex with no security gate or guard shack. It should be a medium-income sort of place. I like to see modest cars and pickups, with RV's and trailered boats parked by the back fence.

Notice, please, that I said _medium-income_. Don't try parking in a low-income housing project. In fact, stay out of the ghetto altogether. There is plenty of territory available around town without having to risk life and property in a dangerous neighborhood.

On the other hand, you'll also want to avoid condo/townhouse type places. You'll know them by the brand new cars parked everywhere. The security is much tighter here. Your raggedy old ride will stick out like a sore thumb.

Many years ago in Dallas I learned an embarrassing lesson about numbered parking spaces. I pulled into a strange apartment complex late at night (another no-no), parked and went to bed. A few minutes later a car pulled in behind me, blocking me in. The driver then walked away. I got out and stood there wondering what was going on. A bystander told me the guy was mad because I took his assigned parking space. I looked at the curb, read the number, and went to the apartment and apologized. The guy came down and moved his car and I got the hell out of there. Always make sure you're not parking in a numbered space!

Daylight hours are when you want to scout around for these apartment complexes. Don't wait until bedtime to go looking. You'll draw attention to yourself by prowling around aimlessly after dark. When it's time to park, it is best if you just come rolling in and slide into your pre-scouted space as if you belonged there. Also, it pays to have backup locations arranged in case you get run out.

I liked to go to the far reaches of the property, out near the back fence where most tenants don't park. You won't be disturbed by constant comings-and-goings or loud voices. Stay well clear of the dumpster unless you enjoy being jolted awake at 5AM. Those garbage truck drivers really slam those things around!

The biggest threat to your security will be late night dog-walkers. These people will arrive in complete silence and be looking in your window at you before you even know they are there. There are two ways to protect yourself from them. First, always pull your vehicle well forward, leaving no room to walk the pooch between the front of your car and some obstacle like a fence or hedge. No matter what you drive, your windshield is the "picture window" through which your privacy will be invaded. You'll have more chance of avoiding detection if the dog-walkers are forced to pass behind your car.

The second trick is to always park in a shadow. You'll quickly learn to spot these places. It is usually where a leafy tree branch blocks the street light. The easiest way to spot someone sitting in a parked car at night is if he is silhouetted. Always make shadows work for you. It also helps if you've got all the windows, including the windshield, blocked with something. I used that foil bubble insulation found in home improvement stores. My favorite is the stuff that's silver on one side and black on the other. All you have to do is glue small pieces of Velcro around the inside edges of your windows. Then you cut the insulation to fit, and glue corresponding pieces of Velcro onto it. At night you put it up, and in the morning you take it down. I prefer the black side out at night. It makes the car look empty to passersby. If the insulation I mentioned isn't available, large sheets of black poster paper make a good substitute.

Now, for the most important rule for sleeping in apartment parking lots. Once you pull in, look carefully around for a few minutes, lock your doors, and go to sleep. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT get out and walk around for any reason! You should have gotten that blanket out of the trunk earlier. You should have acquired a wide-mouthed piss jar by now. Don't do it outside! The night has a thousand eyes. This was true even before security cameras came along. You can't go wrong if you assume they are everywhere and conduct yourself accordingly.

On one memorable occasion in Tampa, back in 1997, I broke the rule about not staying put after I got parked. I had a bag of garbage that I had neglected to get rid of earlier. I started the van and drove around the complex, looking for a dumpster. It soon dawned on me that I was being followed everywhere I went by a guy in a big pickup truck. I ignored him, found the dumpster, deposited my bag, and went back to my parking space. He watched me the entire time. A few minutes later a Sheriff's deputy showed up and rousted me. He made me stand for some polaroid photos and told me if I ever came back I'd be arrested. That's how I lost my favorite roost in Tampa. Don't let it happen to you!

If, for some reason you can't find a good apartment complex, there will probably be several alternatives available in most cities. My second-favorite setup is large chain motels. There is always a constant turnover of vehicles, and security, while not absent, tends to be rather lax.

I was always happy to find a large motel with a nightclub or all-night restaurant on the premises. The beauty of this is that you can park in a space that might be considered territory of the club, eatery, or the motel. In the wee hours of the morning, no one can really be sure where the owner of the vehicle is. Did he have too much to drink at the bar and was driven home in a cab? Is he sleeping in the motel? Nobody will care. Perfect!

If there is a large university in town, you'll find the neighborhood just off campus suitable for your needs. There will be pretty, tree-lined streets and old rooming houses everywhere. Street parking is the general rule here and great care should be exercised when choosing your spot for the night. Always pick a dead-end street. These neighborhoods are often chaotic, with careless and drunken college kids driving up and down the narrow streets. There will most likely be cars parallel-parked on both sides and there won't be much room for moving traffic to get through. Never park on a street where passing traffic can get up much speed. Down at the end of some cul-de-sac is a good place to keep from getting sideswiped after the bars close.

Of course, you realize that by parking in an off-campus neighborhood, you are going to be awakened almost every night, not by cops or security guards, but by a passing parade of high-spirited youngsters. How those kids can carry on like that at night and stay awake in class the next day has always been a mystery to me.

If you're in a coastal or river city, you will want to check out the local marinas. Sometimes you'll find one that's a real gem. There might be work boats such as shrimpers or tugs which leave for days or weeks at a time. Their crews will leave vehicles behind and you can park among them. There may also be showers and other amenities you can take advantage of.

Speaking strictly for myself, I can't understand how people can occupy a barstool for hours at a time, talking and listening to utter nonsense. Every time I've tried it, I soon got bored and wandered off. That being said, I should also point out that, in certain circumstances a barstool can be a very good place to be. If you're new in town, valuable information can be obtained there, in a roundabout way. I've gotten some very good leads on available jobs and other useful tidbits. Also, a lot of bar owners will allow you to park at their establishment overnight. One winter, a guy in Idaho even let me run a power cord out his back door for the electric space heater in my van.

Only in the most dire circumstances will I sleep in one of the rest areas in the Interstate Highway System. Twenty years ago, these places weren't so bad. Today, the so-called "good guys" are vigorously competing with the "bad guys" to see who can be the biggest pain in the ass. I don't know about you, but being accosted by homosexuals peeking into the stall while I'm trying to take a crap isn't my idea of fun. Those restrooms have become their playground. The state of Florida has installed these elderly security guards in every rest area. These guys even carry big pistols on their hips. You'd think this would cool down the daily orgy, right? Well, you'd be wrong. The queers still annoy male visitors unimpeded and these pistol-packing idiots make their presence known in completely unproductive ways.

Here's an example of this that's been galling me for years. When Ma and Pa Retiree visit the Sunshine State in their zillion-dollar motor home, they often use these rest areas as a free overnight campground.

They're in no hurry to leave. In the morning they're walking their dogs, gabbing with the other RV'ers, and using the barbeque grill in the picnic pavilion. I have no problem with this. I'd do the same thing if I were in their place.

What I do have a problem with is the double standard these damned rent-a-cops apply in the following situation: In the evening you pull in with your raggedy old van, find a remote parking space, and hit the sack. When you first arrived, you had noticed several of these aforementioned zillion-dollar motor homes already there. Halfway through the night you're awakened by someone pounding on your van. The security guard informs you that there's a three-hour parking limit and you'll have to leave. There are no posted signs mentioning this rule. It's completely up to his discretion as to how this rule is enforced. You look around and see the very same zillion-dollar motor homes you noticed earlier. You ask him if he has also disturbed those folks with the same news, and you offer to pull out right behind them as they leave. Your friendly guard then brings forth a counter-offer. He'll be happy to bring the local police into this matter. So, you drive off in the middle of the night, and Ma and Pa Retiree sleep on, blissfully unaware of the three-hour rule. This has happened to me several times over the years in Florida.

Earlier, I mentioned how a swarm of mosquitoes gained entry when my van was being searched by the cops. While there was nothing I could do to prevent it that night, most of the time you can effectively keep mosquitoes out of your vehicle.

I've had lots and lots of experience dealing with mosquitoes. One of the things I've noticed is that they always approach from downwind. Mosquitoes upwind of you will be completely unaware of your existence, even though they are only a few feet away. This simple experiment will prove my point. Park an RV or pitch a screen tent in a mosquito-infested area. During the night when they are at their worst, turn on a flashlight and observe where they are clinging to the outside of the screen. Every one of them will be on the downwind side. There will be none on the upwind side.

And by "wind", I don't even mean a breeze you can feel. Just the general drift of the air is all the mosquitoes need to home in on you. Even on a night when the air seems still, cigarette smoke will slightly move in one direction or another.

If you must keep your car windows open at night, open only the ones on the upwind side. While that might not keep them all out, it will certainly be better than what will happen if you keep the downwind windows open. Of course, the best solution is to buy a few yards of fiberglass bug screen at the hardware store, cut it to size, and tape it in your windows.

Also, if you must get in and out of your car during the night, use the upwind doors. The mosquitoes won't be waiting there.

You might be wondering how to determine which way the air is moving if there is no obvious breeze. All I can tell you is, the longer you live outside, the more sensitive you'll become to your environment. You'll just know.

Here's a trick I learned during warm-weather hunting/camping trips in the swamps of Florida. As I returned to my van after a hunt, I'd be joined by an ever-growing swarm of mosquitoes. What I learned to do was to unlock the door, but not open it. Then, I would walk slowly away, taking my mosquitoes with me, to a point about twenty yards from the van.

Then, I would quickly brush off any mosquitoes clinging to me and sprint to the van, yank the door open and dive in, slamming the door behind me. Not one mosquito ever got in when I used this technique. However, when I say "sprint", I mean _sprint._ If you try this, you'd better move those feet!

I hope this chapter has been helpful to you. Keep in mind, however, that what works for me, might not work for you. I would suggest that you take each situation as it comes. Stay flexible and be alert for opportunities which may arise. This way of life will rekindle long dormant survival skills. You'll be surprised at how clear-thinking, resourceful, and patient you become once the chips are down.

# Chapter 2

### Staying Clean

Those of you who live indoors might not fully appreciate what a glorious, life-enhancing miracle a private bathroom is. At midnight on the coldest night of the year, you can just turn on the water and take a hot shower if you feel like it. You can also walk right up to your toilet and sit down without first having to clean some stranger's filth off the seat. For the homeless, such luxuries are but a distant memory. Maintaining personal hygiene while homeless can be done, but it's always quite a challenge. A great deal of planning and effort are involved, but to me, it was worth it. I'll do anything to avoid lice and scabies. I've had both, and if there is anything this side of Hell worse than scabies, I can't imagine what it could be.

Idaho Bowhunt 1990

Rubbertramps, as people who live in their cars are sometimes called, enjoy a distinct advantage over other homeless people. They have greater mobility to search out the things they need. If your world is limited to walking distance, your options are much fewer.

Years ago, the Salvation Army had the only public showers in Orlando. They were only open one hour in the afternoon. Sometimes there were a hundred guys waiting in line to use the five showerheads. I suppose it was better than nothing. If you have your own ride, there are several alternatives than trying to get clean in such a freakshow.

One of my favorite tricks when I was younger was visiting the local university and roaming around until I found the men's locker room in the gymnasium. I would casually stroll in like I belonged there. Then, I would quickly shower, shave, dress, and leave. I always took care not to engage in conversation with anyone. This trick worked well because at the time I was still a young man and could more or less blend in with the student body.

However,I do recall one memorable incident when I didn't quite blend in. It was in Nashville, back in 1984. Vanderbilt University was my favorite showering spot. One day, I was surprised to find all the outside doors at the gym locked except one. At that door a guard was checking student ID's.

This called for a change in plan.

On my street map, I found another college a few miles away, so I headed there. I'd never been there, but I found it with no problems.

When I entered the gym, there wasn't a soul around. Just the way I like it. I had just stripped and entered the shower room when I heard the thunder of pounding sneakers and rowdy voices in the hall. Nothing to worry about. Just a bunch of students stampeding in from the athletic field. In a few moments I was surrounded by dozens of naked young bodies.

Now, there was something to worry about.

I was the only white man in the crowd!

Later, I learned that Tennessee State was a "historically black school". I certainly didn't know it before that moment. The kids weren't paying any attention to me, but it immediately occurred to me that some coach or other authority figure might look in and see my lily-white ass in that sea of black, and wonder just who the hell I was. I didn't even have a chance to wash. I got out of there as fast as my feet could carry me!

If you can afford it, join the YMCA. Not only will you be able to get hot showers just about every day, but you can get yourself into better shape while you're there. If I was working steady and had the money, that's what I did. In those days the "Y" was a lot cheaper than health clubs. Another great thing about your membership is that your card will get you free guest visits at YMCA facilities all over the country.

Such a deal!

I was always glad to come across a state park or recreation area. There is always a fee for overnight camping, but day trippers usually get in free. This "day tripper" would always get a shower while he was there.

If you try this at a private campground, be very careful. It can be done. I've done it many times. But, do keep in mind that these places are businesses, with the owners often lurking somewhere on the premises. They generally do not take kindly to deadbeats and will not hesitate to confront you, and possibly even corner you, naked and cowering, in the shower. Not a pretty picture! I always made it a habit to park my van off the property and walk in. That seemed to keep me out of trouble.

Washing over a sink in a public restroom is much less desirable than a shower, but sometimes it's the only option available. You can get a lot more done if you hunt around for the right kind of restroom. It is best if you can lock the door behind you, or at least have a private stall containing a sink. In Florida, there is some kind of law which requires that these self-contained wheelchair-accessable stalls be everywhere. These are very handy homeless cleaning stations.

Some burger joints which specialize in drive-through orders often have single-occupancy restrooms out back, which you can enter from outside, unobserved by the employees. These restrooms get very little use because almost all the customers don't even get out of their cars. In Tampa, I had constructed a shower hose which fit over a sink faucet very nicely. I would lock myself into one of these restrooms, strip naked, and basically turn the room into a big shower stall. There was a very efficient drain in the middle of the floor. When I was done, the floor was wet, but not flooded. It sort of looked like they'd just mopped in there. I would then grab a huge wad of paper towels and wipe the floor so the next guy wouldn't slip and break his neck.

If you find yourself with absolutely no place to wash, dry baking soda rubbed into your armpits and crotch will get you by for a while.

# Chapter 3

### Strange But True Tales

Over the course of their lives, everyone has experienced incidents so bizarre, amazing, or humorous that they live in our memories and are spoken of at bars and parties years later. Here are a few of mine.

Nightclub musicians meet a lot of interesting and downright weird people. They lead pretty fast lives, looking for excitement among people who are also looking for excitement.

In the early 1970's I had the good fortune to meet a great entertainer and guitar player named Dick Quinn. He was an old pro in the business and I was a pretty good amateur harmonica player. He must have seen some potential in me because I was always welcome to jam with him at his gigs. I considered him my "showbiz daddy", and learned a lot from him. This relationship went on for several years. During this time I bought a fiddle and did my best to learn something on it.

The day finally came when Dick was putting a new band together and he asked me if I'd like to join. I took this as a great compliment and jumped at the chance. During the summer of 1978 our four-piece combo played a joint called the Silver Spur in the town of New Port Richey. The clubs were really jumping in those days and we were playing six nights a week.

The Spur didn't have an elevated bandstand. We stood on the same floor as the crowd on the dancefloor. There was only a wrought-iron rail separating the band from the dancers.

One of the club's regulars was a good-natured young bodybuilder the band had nicknamed "Twinkle Toes" because of his wild, uninhibited dancing style. This guy created quite a spectacle with his steps, spins, leaps, and splits.

In our little corral, the band didn't have much room. Often, the neck of my fiddle would protrude a little past the railing. One night, I was fiddling "The Orange Blossom Special" to a packed dancefloor. That particular tune brings out the hillbilly in everyone. The crowd was really stomping and Twink was in rare form.

Suddenly, his elbow came up and struck the peg box of my fiddle with great force. The instrument flew out of my hand, straight up toward the ceiling, did a somersault, and landed right back in my hand again. This happened so quickly I didn't have a chance to react, so my hand was still in place when the fiddle returned. I merely let the bow drop back onto the strings and kept playing. Hardly missed a beat. Twink's back was turned and he wasn't aware of what he'd done. When the song was over, I asked my bandmates standing closest to me if they'd seen what just happened. No one did. I was the only person in the room who knew what had occurred. I hope you realize that me and an accomplice could practice this stunt till doomsday and never replicate that event.

* *

I was working in a house band in another swinging bar a few years later, when I saw a pretty young woman in a miniskirt smiling up at me from the dancefloor. Most of our crowd were regulars and I was sure I'd never seen this girl before. I smiled back, and when the band took its next break, visited her at her table. She introduced herself as Tina. One thing led to another, and after closing time we ended up at her house. After a sexual romp she fell asleep. I couldn't sleep, so I got up and went home. I never saw Tina again, but she wasn't quite out of my life just yet.

About a week later we were hosting our Sunday Jam Night, when anyone could get up on the stage and play or sing with the band. A stranger approached the bandstand and asked if he could play harmonica with us. I was delighted. I always enjoyed checking out the technique of other harp players. I assured him he was welcome and told him to bring his harps in and we'd get him up right away. He said he didn't have any with him and was hoping to play one of mine, pointing to the open case of twelve harmonicas sitting on my amplifier. This happened from time to time, and I had a firm rule against anyone blowing on my harps. It's rather unsanitary. I told him this, and to say I was surprised by his response would be an understatement, to say the least. Hands on hips, he glared at me and said,

"Well, this is just fine! Here you are, fucking my wife, and you won't even let me play one of your goddamned harmonicas!"

My jaw dropped and I stood there, gaping. As soon as I recovered some of my composure, I stammered, "Wh...who...who is your wife?"

"TINA!" he growled.

For another moment I stood with my mouth hanging open. Then I turned, picked up the harmonica case, and held it in front of him like a tray of hors d' oeuvres. "Which one would you like?" I asked.

As it turned out, he was a pretty good musician and a good time was had by all. Neither he nor Tina ever came back and I have no idea how he found out. I can only guess that, for whatever reason, she told him. I didn't even know she was married.

* *

Another night at the same bar I got friendly with an attractive brunette. After the gig I followed her in my truck to her house. When we walked through the front door we were greeted by a nearly-grown puppy. We were also greeted by a sight I'll never forget. Every square foot of the hardwood floor in that spacious living room was covered with dog shit.

My eyes were seeing it, but my mind wasn't believing it! There were dozens of turds, ranging in condition from dried and white, to that night's freshest deposit, and every stage in between. It was apparent she never picked up after this animal since the day she got it. Once again, I stood there, gaping. She excused herself and left the room, stepping carefully around shit, to fix drinks, use the bathroom, or to "slip into something more comfortable". I honestly can't remember what she went to do. I do remember I wanted out of there. Sex was now the last thing on my mind. No one has ever accused me of having discriminating tastes in women, but there was no way I was going to spend another minute with _this_ one! Without a word, I turned and walked out the door. Funny thing is, she seemed so normal back at the bar.

* *

While I'm on a scatological roll, can you stand another story on this subject? I promise this is the last one. When I was a teenager, I worked as a deckhand on various fishing and sightseeing boats. One particular sightseeing boat left St. Petersburg every morning to visit a place called Bahia Beach on the other side of Tampa Bay. I greatly enjoyed this job. The captain was an interesting character. Well educated, well traveled, and a great storyteller. I especially liked the lurid tales from his days on the Los Angeles police force back in the 1940's.

One evening a church group chartered the boat for a private party. My job was to be generally helpful while the passengers were on board, and then clean up the boat after they disembarked. After the cruise I was about to start cleaning the ladies' restroom when I came upon a shocking sight. One wall was smeared with shit. That was bad enough, but the weirdest thing about it was the care with which it was done. Whoever did it took their time and spread it as carefully as you or I would apply paint. To top it off, there were several handprints pressed into it. The whole thing reminded me of those pre-historic cave paintings in Europe.

I fetched the captain and he said he'd seen that sort of thing when he was a cop. He said it appeared to be some deep-seated psychological disorder in some women. About three years later, I was working as a janitor in a bowling alley in Austin, Texas. The place closed at midnight and I spent the next eight hours cleaning up. One night I found another shitty wall mural in the women's bathroom. Same style as the last one. Very strange! I suppose these days I could find some university study on this phenomenon on the internet. Back then it was all a mystery to me.

* *

Anyway, back to my sex life. I wish! Now that things have calmed down, I sometimes wonder why I was so wild and promiscuous in my younger days. I suppose it was a combination of several factors. For one thing, it was a wilder time. For another, I was a nightclub musician. These guys are always in the right place at the right time. Add alcohol to the mix and things can get interesting. Also, I had some catching up to do. When I was a teenager, I was very short, very skinny, pimply, and poor. Rather small for my age and quite introverted, living in an area populated by hardcore rednecks. I haven't been back there in decades, so I don't know if it's changed or not, but the Lealman, Lowe's City/28th St./Haines Road areas of Pinellas County in the 1960's could have been Hillbilly/Cracker Central Casting. The neighborhoods and schools were as rough as 100% white neighborhoods and schools could possibly be. It was all I could do to keep the ever-present bullies from noticing me. One of my survival strategies was to keep a stony face and blend into the crowd. Unfortunately, this kept the girls from noticing me as well.

Years later, once I became a working musician, I discovered that women love smiling, strutting peacocks who don't take themselves, or anything else, too seriously. Fiddlers were rare in those days because most musicians of my generation preferred electric guitars. Because fiddlers were such a novelty, the applause and general hysteria I often generated in the clubs was amazing. Women have always been drawn to excitement and I learned to take advantage of the situation. I treated it all like a big game.

I also discovered I had a talent for reading women's eyes. I knew, within ten seconds of meeting a strange woman, whether or not she wanted to go to bed with me just by looking into her eyes. It never failed. If I didn't immediately see "The Look", I knew I'd be wasting my time with her. Don't ask me what "The Look" even was. I'm not sure it was even voluntary. Maybe just dilated pupils, or something?

The Good Old Days, 1984

At closing time, after a night of fiddlin', grinnin', drinkin', and struttin', I was ready to get laid. All I had to do was circulate through the crowd, beaming and graciously accepting compliments. Women literally jockeyed for position to get my attention. Looking back, it all seems so unreal. I was actually living a fantasy. It wasn't like I possessed much natural sex appeal. I just had a "gimmick" that worked.

The years flew by and now I realize I frittered away the prime of my life in pursuit of pleasure. No meaningful relationships with women were ever formed. I never married or fathered any children. Just sex and partying. Of course, nearly all those women were not the type you'd want to marry anyway, but there were a few potential "keepers" in the bunch. Back then, I had a habit of dumping them the moment they pissed me off about anything. There were plenty more where they came from. Now, I do somewhat regret not giving those budding relationships more of a chance.

At the height of my career, I was working in nightclubs five or six nights a week. My entire love life revolved around women I met "in the workplace".

Drinking was an on again/off again problem for me in those days. I had an odd relationship with booze. I only drank when I worked. On my days off, I remained completely sober. Not a drop!

Sounds somewhat backwards, doesn't it?

Hunting and fishing has always been a passion of mine. I spent endless hours practicing archery and firearms marksmanship and mastering game-calling techniques. During deer, bear, or turkey hunting season, my weapons and camping gear would be outside in the van while I played an alcohol-free Sunday night gig. At closing time, I'd hit the highway and not be seen in town until it was time for work Wednesday night.

I never took any alcoholic beverages along on these camping trips. I was there to hunt or fish, not drink.

However, "worknights" were a completely different matter. I could never stand being the only sober person in the room. If everyone else was drinking, then I wanted to party as well. Five or six nights a week of this, year in and year out, is not a good thing. It's a wonder I now have a functioning liver at all!

Out of the scores, if not hundreds, of women who came and went in my life in those days, I can only recall a tiny handful of dates where liquor and semi-drunken sex weren't the main event.

I also developed another habit that pretty much prevented me from ever acting like a normal human being.

Married women.

The 1980's were mostly an unbroken string of these affairs. Those women wanted the same thing I did. Easy sex with no strings attached. They tended to be very good-looking and on their best behavior. They also talked among themselves and recommended me to each other. I remember several pillow-talk occasions when one of them would say something like, "So-and-So said I'd have a good time with you, and she was right!" I also never caught any diseases from any married woman. I wish I could say the same about the single ones! During the 1970's I was beginning to fear that every girl on earth had the clap!

As good as I was at this game, let me tell you about a guy whose mastry of this art still astounds me to this day. Bob was the bass player in a four-piece touring band I was in way back when. We traveled all over the Midwest, mostly playing bars in smallish towns like Decorah, Iowa and Mt. Vernon, Illinois. Bob was my roommate during these tours. The other two guys shared their own room. Our agent always booked us six nights a week, so we often had to drive like crazy to get to the next gig, which might be six hundred miles away. The first night there would only be time to check into the motel, set up the equipment in the club, get a sound check, eat dinner, and shower. Then, it was back to the club.

There was one thing I quickly discovered I could count on. For the week or two we were in that town, I'd have the motel room to myself. The first night, and I mean the _very_ first night, Bob would strike up a conversation with an attractive woman at the bar, and when we were through playing for the night, he would approach me and tell me to go back to the room without him. The next morning he would arrive at the motel, driving this woman's car, pick up his belongings, and bid me farewell. Except at the job, I wouldn't see him again until it was time for the band to leave town. He did this with different women in every town we played! This guy had more natural sex appeal than anyone I've ever known. I suppose either you've "got it" or you don't!

* *

Here's a "Strange But True" tale that combines picking up women with ghost stories, or at least something supernatural. The two incidents I'm about to relate are the weirdest and most unexplainable things that ever happened to me. I've never been very religious, and for most of my life I didn't believe there was such a thing as life after death. I never gave much thought to the paranormal. What I'm about to tell you is the unvarnished truth. Make of it what you will.

One fine day in May of 1973, I was strolling along the Municipal Pier on St. Pete's waterfront. I was perfectly sober, as I often was for long periods of time in those days. I paused at the railing above Spa Beach, a small patch of sand which had attracted a large crowd that afternoon. As I casually scanned the scene below, my eye fell upon a shapely brunette in a bikini, sitting on a blanket, surrounded by five small children.

Suddenly, a strange voice crashed into my thoughts and barked, "TALK TO HER!" Startled and shocked, I instantly obeyed.

Before I go any further, I must at this point explain exactly what happened in that moment. That day I wasn't prowling around trying to pick up girls. I was just enjoying a beautiful spring day. Also, since my nightclub musician career was still years in the future, I hadn't yet learned to be a calloused pick-up artist. I was still very young and much too shy to even think about accosting strange women on the street. Or at the beach.

This loud, gruff voice was not a product of the usual noise in my head. This came from somewhere else. This was somebody else. This wasn't me! The effect was exactly like someone pushing an intercom button and making a sudden, unexpected announcement in a quiet office building.

As I already said, I obeyed this command without hesitation. The woman happened to be looking my way and I called out, "Happy Mother's Day!" which, by the way, it was. She asked me why I said that, and I pointed out the size of her brood, and hoped she was happy. She laughed and said only one of them was hers. The rest were her daughter's friends. When the kids ran off to play, she invited me to come sit next to her. I did, and in no time at all, we launched a brief, but torrid affair. This fling only lasted a couple of months, but the voice, whoever he was, steered me right. I would have never approached her on my own.

Two years later, again in the month of May, the voice came back. During the previous couple of years I'd been dating and getting laid without any supernatural assistance. One day I was walking home from a neighborhood store when I saw a beautiful blonde coming down the sidewalk. I always left the really beautiful ones alone. Their lives tend to be a constant whirl of attention from throngs of admirers, and I don't like being part of a stampeding herd. In fact, I had a policy that went something like this: If I met two girls who were friends, and one of them was gorgeous, and the other, so-so, I'd always flirt with the less attractive of the two. It never failed to surprise both of them. The one I went for would be thrilled to finally beat her more popular friend at something. Everyone needs their moment in the sun, even if it was the result of a cynical plot.

This particular knockout was wearing a pretty little blue sun dress, a big straw hat, and sunglasses. As she got closer, I could see she was hitchhiking. Sort of.

She had her thumb out, but was walking with her back to the traffic. It occurred to me that she didn't care whether she got a ride or not. As we drew near, I was just about to pass her by as I would any other aloof beauty, when the intercom blasted to life.

"TALK TO HER!"

Once again, I was startled into action.

"You'll never get a ride that way!" says I.

"Oh? And why not?"

"Because the drivers can't see your pretty face!" came my brilliant reply.

She laughed, and introduced herself as Avis. The first, and to this day, the last "Avis" I've met. We talked for a while, and I invited her home for a beer. She came along, and thus began another hot summer affair.

She was a Minnesota Swede, with natural blonde hair and bright blue eyes. She was the only blonde I can now recall whose pubic hair was the same color as the hair on her head. She was hot stuff! That Voice Guy sure knows his business!

A long-forgotten memory about Avis just came back to me. Shortly after we began dating, she moved in with me. I was working on a sightseeing boat and was still an amateur musician. Every country band in the Tampa Bay area knew me, and I was always welcome to jam at all the best clubs. The women I dated were quite impressed by this.

Avis was one of those rare girls blessed with a natural, radiant beauty, long, shapely legs and an hourglass figure. Makeup was invented to help other women look better. She didn't need any. When she got dressed up in one of her slinky little dresses and heels for a night on the town, she created a sensation everywhere we went.

On one such outing, it didn't take long for other men to start prowling around our table, wanting to dance with her. I thought this was pretty rude, and said so.

One of these guys came up with the idea of pacifying me by buying us a round of drinks before asking Avis to dance. She gave me an anxious and pleading look. I nodded for her to go ahead and dance with him. The other hounds, observing the success this pioneer had achieved, started buying us drinks as well.

It soon occurred to me that I had the beginnings of a profitable racket here. I was catching a nice buzz without spending a dime. Avis had become the center of attention on the dancefloor. I hate to dance. I'd rather jam with the band. We were both having a great time.

Of course, buzzed or not, I understood that these men were doing their best to steal her from under my very nose. The trick was to get her out of there before things went too far. This I did rather slickly, making up some excuse or another.

The biggest payoff came when we got home. All those sweet words they'd been whispering in her ear, plus all the hugging and groping during the slow numbers, got Avis into a very excited state. When we went to bed, she took it out on me. She was really on fire. Our sex life was pretty good anyway, but this was phenomenal!

I started pulling this trick in different bars all over the place. It turned out to be one of my better ideas.

Another long-forgotten Avis story just came back to me. I'm beginning to think that all aspiring writers should have an "Avis" somewhere in their past. As I already mentioned, this girl was a bona fide, natural blonde. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those guys who fixate on blondes, not by a long shot. But here I had the real deal. An extremely rare trophy. I was working on the boat six days a week. No matter how tired or irritable I might be when I got home, the sight of my beautiful blonde waiting for me always cheered me up. I guess it's a guy thing.

One evening I walked up the front steps and reached for the doorknob. Before I could touch it, the door swung open and there stood Avis, beaming at me.

"Well, how do you like it?" she asked, striking a sexy pose.

My knees buckled.

The sensation was somewhat like falling through a trapdoor. I grabbed the doorjamb with both hands to keep myself from tumbling back down the steps. When the blood returned to my head and her face came back into focus, I gasped, "Wh...wh...What have you done?!"

Her smile instantly vanished, and her eyes welled up.

"You DON'T like it!" she pouted, and stormed off to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

My dear, I would have liked a knee to the groin better.

She had dyed her luminous, golden hair a mousey brown. One of our neighbors, a woman I thoroughly detested anyway, had put this idea into her head. The two of them had spent the morning vandalizing one of God's most glorious gifts to the common man.

Men and women are different. We both have our strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, the female of our species possesses a defective gene which prevents them from hearing and mentally digesting a certain old saying, that being, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" This has been true for centuries, in all the various languages and dialects around the planet. The ancient storytellers who passed down the myths of Eve and Pandora weren't just whistlin' Dixie!

"The Voice" only visited me twice, many years ago. I suppose there are people who hear voices in their heads all the time. Thankfully, I'm not one of those people. Folks who've heard these stories have offered opinions as to the source of this voice. Some say it was some deep-seated psychological urge coming to the surface. Others think it was a demon, or maybe even Satan himself. Back in those days, after giving the matter a lot of thought, I figured it might be the spirit of my womanizing father, who died in 1962. From his vantage point in some other world he probably couldn't stand to see his idiot son blow a golden opportunity. So, he just couldn't resist butting in. Who knows?

* *

This next story isn't about sex. I'm not sure what it's about.

I was once in a five night a week house band run by a guitarist/singer I'll call "Bobby Dorky". He was a humorless know-it-all who I found hard to be around. But, seeing how it was steady work, and just a few blocks from home, I stuck it out for a year.

Bobby had just bought a beautiful new pickup truck with a topper on it, a two-toned paint job, and all the extras. He was justifiably proud of it. This truck was always the nicest thing in the bar parking lot.

One night, as I was arriving for work, I spotted a group of four or five punks breaking into Bobby's truck with a coat-hanger. They all walked nonchalantly away as I pulled in, but as I walked toward the club, I could see them out of the corner of my eye, sneaking back to finish the job. I pretended not to notice them, and went inside.

I put my instruments on the stage and went looking for Bobby. I quickly found him, standing amid a small circle of people on the dancefloor. From their rapt expressions, it appeared he was telling another one of his self-aggrandizing tales.

I rushed up to him and grabbed his arm.

"Bobby! I just...",

"Brute!" he admonished, in a somewhat Oliver Hardyish tone, "It's very impolite to interrupt when someone is talking!"

I said, "Yes, I know, but I just...",

"BRUTE!" he roared, holding up a reproachful finger and glaring at me like I was a naughty child. He held that pose until he was sure I'd been silenced.

He then turned back to the group, shaking his head and rolling his eyes, to continue his story. I stood by while he pontificated for another minute or so.

I was now beginning to see the humor in this situation.

Eventually, he got to the moral of his story and the crowd dispersed. With a satisfied gleam in his eye, he turned to me and asked what was so important that I should so rudely interrupt him like that.

Now, it was my turn to have some fun.

Playing the chastised social blunderer to the hilt, I looked down at my cowboy boots and said, "I'm sorry, but, uh... I just thought it was... uh, well, important to tell you. It's just that... well, uh, mumble...mumble...mumble."

" _Will_ you speak up?" says Bobby. "What _are_ you talking about?"

I started shuffling my feet, eyes downcast, and mumbling some more, desperately trying to keep a straight face. The blaring jukebox wasn't helping any. When the song ended, I slowly said, "Well, it's just that... uh... when I was coming in... uh, I saw... some... uh... kids... well,... I guess they were... uh... teenagers,... well... uh... they... were... uh... sorta... breakin' into your truck."

As my words sunk in, his eyes grew so wide I thought they'd pop. The look on his face was priceless. He threw his arms into the air and wailed, "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME!" and rushed to the bar, where some of his middle-aged cronies were drinking. He quickly formed a posse of over-the-hill vigilantes, and out the door they went, with me bringing up the rear, still struggling with my face.

The juvenile offenders streaked away like antelope, leaving the howling pack of outraged inebriates far behind. The young burglars should have worked faster. They didn't get the stereo or anything, even with all the time Bobby had given them. All they managed to do was bust the door lock. Nowdays they just smash the windows with a brick. Back then they were more delicate about it.

* *

WARNING: Some of our more sensitive readers may find portions of this next story disturbing.

Hey! Just like they do it on TV!

Seriously though, in this chapter I'm going to try to describe the most hideous and heart-rending scenes I've ever witnessed.

Today, probably due to the expense involved with funerals and burial plots, cremation of the dead is a popular option.

Have you ever wondered how it's done? That is, the actual mechanics of cremating a dead human body?

I can tell you. I've done it.

In the summer of 1987, I once again found myself "between bands". Seeing as how I was still making payments on my van, I searched the want ads for a job to get me by until another band position opened up.

I found an ad that read, "Deceased Transport", and called the number. I was told that a strong stomach was required for this job. I replied that since I was a longtime big game hunter, used to slicing open freshly-killed deer and pulling out huge masses of warm guts, I could probably deal with whatever this job required.

Boy, was I clueless!

Believe it or not, a business suit was required. So I went out an bought one. Then, they assigned me a late model van and an electronic pager. This was years before cell phones came into common use.

This van was then parked at my apartment and the pager was kept within reach twenty-four hours a day, six days a week.

On television, when you see news footage of a murder scene and a well-dressed man wheels a covered corpse on a gurney to be loaded into a plain, white van, you would probably assume that this guy is from the official Coroner's Office.

Well, in most cases you'd be wrong.

Granted, this might be the case in some big cities like New York or Los Angeles. But in most other places, this fellow would likely be an employee of a local "removal service", a private company which transports deceased persons from where they died, to another location, such as the county morgue, a funeral home, or in our case, a walk-in cooler at our descreet little shop hidden deep in an industrial zone out in the boonies.

I was on 24-hour call, six days a week. I never knew what hour of the day or night that damned pager would beep. When it did, I had to immediately stop whatever I was doing, whether it be eating, sleeping, getting laid, standing on the firing line, with drawn bow, at an archery tournament, or attending a Dwight Yoakam concert at Ruth Eckerd Hall.

Yes, those last three interruptions really happened! The main reason I ended up quitting that job was because I didn't have a life anymore. Chronic lack of sleep actually brought on hallucinations. On one occasion, I stomped on the brakes when a huge flock of crows flew in front of the van, almost hitting the windshield.

There were no crows. It was the middle of the night!

When the pager sounded, I then had to make my way to the nearest telephone to receive my instructions. The company demanded a quick response, no excuses. Naturally, the company van, pager, and business suit went with me everywhere, even to the grocery store.

In the van was kept the largest ring of keys I'd ever seen, before or since. It must have weighed ten pounds. These were backdoor keys for almost every funeral parlor in Pinellas County. Seeing as how this area was large, urban, and heavily populated with retirees, there were a _lot_ of funeral parlors.

Letting myself into the back door of a mortuary in the middle of the night was always an eerie, surreal experience. The creepy tones of a wailing theramin was all that was missing.

Most folks probably don't know it, but losing every stitch of your clothing is the first thing that happens to you after you die. Then, you pass, buck naked, through many hands, through many situations, for several days.

More often than not, when I entered the "prep room" of a funeral home, I'd be greeted by the sight of several pitiful-looking, naked corpses lying on stainless steel tables, in various stages of the embalming process. It looked hideous and smelled even worse. I'd leave my passenger and paperwork and get out as fast as I could.

I once read somewhere that there are people around who enjoy sexually molesting corpses. I have trouble even trying to imagine such a pastime. Fortunately, such sickos must be an extremely rare breed because I've never met one or even heard a reliable report of such activity. Maybe it's some sort of urban legend.

My boss sent me on my pickups by myself. Time after time, this became a challenge when I encountered obese corpses. More on that, later.

My first murder victim was an interesting case. I stood around the crime scene for a while, then the detective turned to me, just like on TV, and said, "Okay, he's all yours".

Apparently, the victim's roommate killed him with a shotgun loaded with double-ought buckshot in his bedroom. The victim was lying on the floor, nude and absolutely covered with blood and gore.

He had been shot several times from across the room, so the pellet holes were spread out all over his body.

The cops had left the room, and now my struggle began. This guy was slippery! No matter how I tried, I couldn't get enough of a grip on him to lift him onto the gurney. He slid out of my hands like an eel, and I was getting blood on my suit.

Then, when things were getting desperate, one of my fingers accidentally slipped into one of the buckshot holes and touched a bone.

That gave me an idea.

I found that by probing into buckshot holes at various points of his anatomy, I located bones which I could then hook my fingers around. After most of my fingers had found a bone to hook, I hoisted him off the floor and plopped him onto the gurney. It was sorta like lifting a giant, greasy, two-handed bowling ball.

Then, there was the nearly-naked young black man who had been run over by a semi-trailer truck. It seems he was dragged and bounced under the vehicle for a considerable distance, shredding his clothing and turning him into an interesting specimen.

Every major bone in this guy's body was broken several times over. Legs, arms, pelvis, backbone, ribs, everything. He had essentially become a skin filled with mush.

Attempting to load this boneless corpse onto the gurney was exactly like handling a six-foot long plastic bag filled with 180 pounds of water. I'd get one end on, then when I reached for the other end, the first end would pour off the gurney onto the pavement. On and on it went, with grinning cops standing by, watching this gruesome wrestling match. By this stage of my career, I knew better than to even ask these wiseguys for help.

One time, I was called to a hospital to pick up the body of a forty year-old heart attack victim. When I saw him, my heart didn't feel so good either. He was the fattest man I'd ever seen. He easily weighed 400 pounds. They had already stripped him and covered him with a sheet.

I knew at a glance that I was never going to singlehandedly transfer this load from the hospital's gurney to the one I had brought with me. I started flagging down passing male hospital employees, and not one of them would help me. Finally, a hard-hatted construction worker lent a hand, and I was so grateful!

I was instructed to bring this body back to the company crematorium. I could feel the difference in the way the van handled with all that weight in the back. It sorta heeled like a sailboat.

When I arrived at the shop, I was disappointed to find that my boss was away on another call. I still had one more gurney-to-gurney transfer to perform before I could put this guy into cold storage.

So, I enlisted the help of the only two people available, the bosses' wife, and the office secretary.

After a quick strategy session, we all assumed our positions, and with a loud groan, attempted the impossible. The gurney shot out from under us, and the giant corpse fell to the concrete floor with a sickening thud. The sheet covering him sailed away with the runaway gurney, and there he lay, naked, with a peaceful look of slumber on his face, at the feet of two slim young women and myself.

After more discussion, we ended up shoving mop handles under him and levering him up onto the gurney set in it's lowest position. That worked.

This job had one interesting and unexpected effect on me. I suddenly experienced a great thrill in the simple act of shaking a stranger's hand. I could actually see a light in their eyes and feel electricity, or some sort of life force, coursing through their skin. It's easy to take life for granted, until you've looked into the eyes of enough dead people.

Speaking of dead people's eyes, many, if not most, people die with their eyes open. Contrary to what you see in movies, murder victims do not die with wide eyes and expressions of terror frozen on their faces.

The closest I can come to describing the look of a dead man's eyes is like when you unexpectedly walk up to somebody who's lost in deep thought and you tap them on the shoulder, and their eyes re-focus on you. Well, dead people's eyes look like their minds are "a million miles away", and all the shoulder-tapping in the world won't bring them back.

Elderly recluses have a bad habit of dying and remaining undiscovered in their houses for long periods of time. One old boy fell dead off his toilet while trying to take a crap. When I arrived, he was face-down with his knees drawn up, pajama bottoms around his ankles, his bare butt sticking up in the air, and about six inches of turd protruding out of his asshole, pointed at the ceiling like a little brown rocket, ready for takeoff.

Rigor Mortis made it impossible for me to straighten him out, so I wheeled him away just like he was.

Another time, an old lady wasn't found for several weeks. It was hard for me to move her while keeping her in one piece. Her blackened, slimy skin slipped off like a sweater. The stench was indescribable!

I had a secret weapon for moments like these. A paper sander's mask and a nifty little spray can of a product called Ozium, which, if inhaled, apparently kills one's sense of smell. I sprayed some into the mask, donned it, and one of my problems was solved.

Smell? What smell?

Anyway, the trip to the shop was rather interesting. It was the evening rush hour, and me and a thousand other drivers were creeping from one red light to another. Even though I was safe behind my little Ozium-soaked mask, it soon became apparent that this hideous odor wasn't allowing itself to be contained inside my van.

Pandemonium broke out among my fellow motorists at every traffic light. They made all kinds of faces, looked wildly around, quickly rolled up their windows, gagged, and generally thrashed about. I don't think those poor souls knew what the hell was going on!

Pickups at nursing homes often made me nervous, because to me, the living and the dead in these places looked exactly alike.

I would walk past bed after bed filled with ancient, emaciated people lying absolutely motionless, with heads thrown back and toothless mouths agape. Then, the nurse would lead me to a bed containing a person who appeared to be in the same condition as everyone else.

I would lift this person onto the gurney and he or she would still be warm. This would always spook me, and I'd ask the nurse if she was certain that this person was really dead, and would she please double-check for me?

The nurses usually rolled their eyes and walked away. The thought of accidentally putting a live, unconscious person into the cold-storage locker utterly terrified me.

I was always surpised at how many stillborn and dead infants I encountered. Calloused as it may sound, my favorite corpses were babies. No, I've got nothing against babies, it's just that, from time to time I needed a break from 400-pound whoppers and blood-soaked, rotting carrion. Nobody ever got a hernia carrying babies, living or dead. Four-pound corpses paid exactly the same as four-hundred pounders.

When I wasn't out collecting in my business suit, I would often be dressed in shorts and a tee-shirt in the back room, cremating bodies.

The "cremation machine", as we called it, was a large oven, powered by natural gas. There was a long ramp, covered with rollers, that led up to the door. Outside the shop window stood a mirror on a post in the yard, angled upward to provide a view of the chimney. From time to time we had to peek out at the mirror to make sure our chimney wasn't producing too much smoke.

Television and movies might have given you the impression that well-dressed, nicely-embalmed deceased people, lying in expensive rosewood caskets, complete with ruffled satin linings and gold-plated handles, are rolled into the oven during a cremation.

I'm here to tell you that this just doesn't happen.

The naked bodies were always cremated in long cardboard boxes made specifically for this purpose. The body would be brought out of the cold-storage locker, transferred to the box, and placed on the roller-ramp. When the oven was hot enough, we would get a running start, pushing the box quickly up the ramp, and heave it into the door with one last mighty shove.

Then, we waited.

In the center of the oven door, there was a little door we could open to see how thing were coming along. We had to be careful when doing this because heart pacemakers will explode like hand grenades once the flames reach them.

When the process was finished, we'd let the oven cool for a while, then reach inside with a long-handled broom. Nothing would be left except a few small pieces of bone, usually a small part of the top of the skull and a hip joint, and a few inches of thigh bone.

I was always impressed by the number of stainless steel hip joints, skull plates, rib cages, and other surgically implanted hardware occasionally left behind.

Now, to put a certain urban legend to rest. Those were not Grandma's "ashes" you scattered into the sea.

People don't burn like wooden logs, leaving "ashes" behind. What you had in that little box was powdered bone.

Once the bone pieces were swept out of the oven, they'd be placed in a small, round wire cage attached to an electric motor. Inside this cage, along with the bones, were several small, heavy steel bars.

When the motor was turned on, the cage would slowly rotate, causing the steel bars to bounce violently around inside, breaking and pulverizing the bones.

This powdered bone would then sift out the bottom of the cage into a tray.

The finished product, what we refer to in the business as "cremains", was then boxed, tagged, and taken to the front office for the next-of-kin to claim.

As hard as it was to deal with the daily horror and gore that went with my job, there were certain occasions I dreaded even more.

That was my encounters with next-of-kin.

From time to time, some young father would suddenly fall dead with a massive heart attack right in front of his family. The paramedics would pronounce him dead at the scene, and it was up to me to take the body out of the house.

There were never any grinning cops or paramedics standing around at this particular death scene. They quickly got the hell out of there and left me to my fate, because they knew what was coming and didn't want any part of it.

This is going to be a hard paragraph to write. The memories have come rushing back, and I'm not handling it very well. After all these years, tears are now in my eyes as I sit here at the keyboard.

Here's how it usually played out. While the paramedics were working on the victim, the family would stand by in stunned silence. This condition lasted for quite a while, even after being informed by the paramedics that he was gone.

Then I would arrive and the paras would make a run for it. The ordeal would quickly begin the moment I moved Daddy's body onto the gurney. I don't quite understand how this movement served as the trigger, but it always did.

Suddenly, there would be an ear-splitting shriek, sometimes emitted by the brand-new widow, sometimes by one of the kids. Then, all hell would break loose.

Shrieks, sobs, and wails would fill the room as they all lunged forward and threw themselves on the body, clutching and clinging, and stopping any progress I had made toward the door.

"WHERE ARE YOU TAKING HIM?" they'd scream.

"WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO TO HIM?"

In my kindest, most soothing tone, I'd try to explain that we're merely going to store him away until funeral arrangements can be made, and that we are not going to actually DO anything to him.

Of course, nothing I said was really sinking in, and the tug-o-war was now in full swing. They would hysterically try to hold onto him, and I would desperately try to get the gurney out the door while employing a strange combination of calm, reassuring words, and adreneline-fueled brute force.

I dreaded these calls more than any other. They left me an emotional wreck for the rest of the day. This job required me to get used to some horrid things, but try as I might, I could never harden my heart enough to deal with these particular incidents.

Over the decades, I've tried to forget the things I experienced during my brief employment with the removal service/crematorium. This last story is the only exception to the rule.

A while ago, I briefly mentioned dead babies. One day, at a hospital bedside in Tampa, I took a dead newborn from the arms of his mother. She was a beautiful young woman. Her demeanor was heartbroken and exhausted, but somewhat stoic. She remained calm and dry-eyed as she handed the tiny bundle to me. The birth had injured her and the doctor said she'd remain there a few more days.

As I turned away, she suddenly grabbed my arm, squeezing hard. Her sad, tired brown eyes now had a flash of panic in them.

"Sir, can I have my baby's ashes? You'll save them for me, won't you?"

I assured her that her baby's ashes would be waiting for her when she got out of the hospital, and that I would tend to the matter personally.

She asked my name, and I told her.

About a week later, after I had cremated the baby, I was working in the back room when the secretary came in and gave me a very odd look.

"There's a lady out front asking to see you. She says you have her baby's ashes."

I told her to say I'll be right there, and rushed to the van, where my suit was hanging. I then dashed into the bathroom, and quickly changed.

When I stepped into the lobby, attired in my business suit and carrying the box of cremains, the young woman rose to meet me. I handed her the box and she clutched it to her chest, looking down at it, stroking it. She looked back up at me, her brown eyes luminous and glistening. She smiled.

"Thank you so much! Now, he'll be with me forever. God bless you, sir!"

"God bless _you_ , ma'am."

After she walked out the door, I could see the secretary staring at me out of the corner of my eye as I turned to go back into the crematorium. In fact, she had been gawking the whole time.

She followed right on my heels as I went into the back room.

"Brute! What on earth was that all about? What did you do? You know as well as I do that bab..."

"Yes", I interrupted, "I know. But, I had to try to do _something_ for her!"

I had started out by lying through my teeth at the girl's bedside the previous week.

You see, cremated babies don't leave "ashes", or anything else behind. They go straight up the chimney to Heaven. There are no bones to sweep out of the oven.

So, as I cremated other bodies during the week, I'd liberate a little pinch of cremains from each one until I had her "baby ashes" saved up.

Did I do wrong? Was it unethical?

I don't know.

But, I do know one thing.

The beautiful smile of a brave young mother, clutching that little box, still shines today in the memory of an old man.

When I was a kid, I loved fishing. All of my spare time was devoted to it. I had no interest in girls, drugs, alcohol, fast cars, team sports or any other youthful pastime. Just fishing. I didn't have many friends. But the handful I had were fishermen as well.

Before I became old enough to drive, I fished lakes and canals within bicycle range of home. Often, Mom would drive me out to the old John's Pass Bridge, near St. Petersburg, around sunset on weekends and summer evenings. She would leave, and I'd remain, fishing like crazy until she picked me up around noon the next day.

In the 1960's the saltwater fishing was good, especially at night. Under the lights of the bridge lurked snook, trout, flounder, and redfish. Once morning arrived, so did the spanish mackerel. I caught them all, and often had a huge stringer of fish to take home. Not only enough to feed my family, but several neighbors as well.

Once I got old enough for a drivers license, Mom bought me a small Honda motorcycle. Now, I really ranged far and wide!

My teenage fishing buddies also had motorcycles, and one night a group of us rode out to Gandy Bridge, on Tampa Bay.

This bridge was usually illuminated by streetlights, but a near-miss by a passing hurricane a few days previously had somehow disrupted the electricity. Power was on all over town, just not at this bridge.

Now, on this moonless night, the bridge and surrounding area were pitch-black. Seeing as how we had counted on those lights to attract fish, we briefly discussed going home. We decided to give it a try. Attached to the bridge were these wooden catwalks, about eight feet above the water's surface, built to accomodate fishermen, that went out into the bay at least a half a mile. Our little group, despite our best efforts, wasn't getting any bites.

I became bored and wandered down the catwalk a couple of hundred yards. There were very few fishermen there that night, and I soon found myself alone, far from the group.

Now, before I continue this tale, I must try to explain a natural phenomena that plays a big part in what was about to transpire.

Certain times of the year, the saltwater around Florida is filled with something we called "phosfluorescence". What this is, as far as I could tell, were tiny jellyfish, about the size of a fingernail. I guess the proper name for it is photoplankton. They clogged the water in their trillions, and when something bumped into them at night, they briefly lit up and glowed a brilliant purple.

When the water was filled with this stuff, one could not only easily follow the progress of anything swimming at night, but correctly identify the creature you were looking at.

As I wandered along the catwalk in the pitch-darkness, I noticed some movement in the water. Looking over the railing, I was shocked to see the fluorescent-illuminated forms of five huge bull sharks directly below. They were lined up, side by side, just beneath the surface, maintaining a stationary position in the swift tidal current with easy sweeps of their powerful tails. They were all of similar size, about ten feet in length.

It soon became apparent what they were up to.

About thirty feet in front of the sharks was a tightly-packed school of small fish we referred to as "saw bellies", who were also trying to maintain their position in the current. Although they struggled furiously, little by little they were losing ground, and were ever so slowly being swept back to where the sharks were waiting.

When the prey was judged by the sharks to be finally within striking distance, all of the sharks suddenly lunged forward into the school and for a few seconds, all hell broke loose.

It actually looked like fireworks in a night sky. Every move by every participant resembled a bright purple skyrocket, complete with a flaming trail.

With huge tails lashing and splashing, spraying glowing foam for several yards around, the predators cut swaths through the panicked school. The smaller fish scattered wildly in all directions, leaving brilliant squiggling streaks, and many of them leapt clear of the water, splashing back in with bright explosions.

After this assault, the sharks regrouped and once again assumed their ambush positions. The surviving saw bellies reformed their school upcurrent, and the whole drama was set to repeat itself.

And it did.

Several times, while I watched, utterly amazed.

One interesting and unexpected feature of this spectacle was the sound the sharks made when their snouts broke the surface during the attack. Apparently, they were sucking air into their gaping mouths, and this produced a loud, snorelike grunt. It sounded exactly like a pig. Until that moment, I had no idea that sharks were capable of making any noise at all.

After the third splashing, grunting, fireworks display, it suddenly occurred to me that this was _way_ too cool to keep to myself. I raced back to my buddies as fast as my seventeen year-old legs could carry me. Naturally, when we all came rushing back to the spot, there was no sign of sharks, saw bellies, or anything else of interest to be seen.

My friends thought I was bullshitting them. I just couldn't convince them of what I had witnessed.

* *

The "Cat Man" was a fellow with a one-of-a-kind lifestyle. He was a familiar figure on Tampa's waterfront, although these days he seems to have been forgotten by everybody but me. I've done internet searches, hoping to find anyone who remembers him, but to no avail.

Immediately after dropping out of high school, I got a job as a deckhand on a fishing boat. I truly loved this job. Every day was a new adventure. The boat was called the Miss Pinellas II and was piloted by an old salt known as "Captain Bud".

One morning, as we cruised toward the mouth of Tampa Bay, I spotted something odd about a half a mile ahead. I examined this floating object with binoculars, and as we got closer, I was beginning to have trouble believing my eyes. It was a rectangular-shaped barge, made of weathered wood, about fifty feet long and perhaps twenty wide.

Standing atop the cabin was a skinny, weatherbeaten old man with a long gray beard, holding a very long oar nestled in a large oarlock. Around this strange craft, at least a dozen cats played or lounged in the sun. There was no motor or sail on this thing. It was simply adrift, miles from any shore.

I lowered the binoculars and turned toward Captain Bud, who was leaning back in his seat, feet propped up on the steering wheel.

The look on my face made him laugh.

"I suppose you're kinda curious about that guy, eh?"

Bud then told me that this old hermit had been around for many years, living with nobody but the cats in his homemade floating shack. He would anchor all winter in the mouth of the Hillsboro River in downtown Tampa, taking the occasional odd job as a boat carpenter, but mostly keeping to himself.

When springtime arrived, he would raise the anchor and allow his barge to drift out of Tampa Bay and southward down the Gulf Coast, through the Florida Keys and up the Atlantic Coast, mostly keeping to the Intercoastal Waterway system. His journey would end in Long Island Sound in New York, where he would spend the summer much like he did in Tampa, anchored in some sheltered spot and working odd jobs.

Then, when autumn chilled the air, he would up-anchor and repeat this epic voyage, except in reverse.

Now, for the truly amazing part.

As I've already mentioned, this barge had no engine or sailing system. He simply let the tide take him where he wanted to go. The long oar wasn't for propulsion, it was merely for turning the vessel.

This old man had an encyclopedic knowledge of tidal flow for thousands of miles of coastline. When the current was going where he wanted, he allowed his craft to drift with it. When the inevitable tide change occurred and the current was no longer in his favor, he dropped anchor and waited for the next tide change.

The patience this must have called for boggled my young mind in those days. If you study tide tables, you'll see that there are two-tide days, and there are four-tide days.

On "two-tide" days, a weak current would have slowly run in his favor for about twelve hours. Then, he'd be forced to anchor and wait _another_ twelve hours.

On a "four-tide" day, a stronger current runs favorably for about six hours, then a six-hour wait, followed by a six-hour drift, and another six-hour wait, and so on.

Can you imagine the patience, seamanship, and stamina required to travel this way? These currents don't move very fast, perhaps two or three miles and hour. I would guess that storms, leaks, and various maritime emergencies kept things interesting as well.

To me, this man's wandering lifestyle represented absolute freedom. I had just bailed out of an unhappy, unproductive existence in high school and understood that Uncle Sam would soon come calling. At the time they were drafting kids like me and sending them to Vietnam.

Why couldn't they just leave me alone?

For the first time in my life I was really happy and felt like I fit in somewhere. I worked hard and was learning the seaman's craft, with hopes of someday owning my own shrimp or grouper boat. Or maybe even signing aboard one of the giant seagoing freighters or tankers I saw plying the Tampa ship channel every day. Sometimes I'd exchange waves with the men on deck and wonder how much of the world they had seen. I wanted to be like them.

Captain Bud informed me that my chances of shipping aboard these globe-trotting ships were rather slim because the seaman's union had priced American labor out of that market. He told me, while the ships were owned by American and European companies, and indeed the captain and top officers were white men, the crews were exclusively made up of third-world types who would work for almost nothing.

He also explained what a "Flag of Convenience" is.

Almost every ship we encountered had the words Monrovia or Panama painted on its stern. These were supposed to be their home ports, but Bud said that the odds were good that none of the vessels had ever even visited these places. They were registered there to avoid paying taxes to American and European countries where their home ports _really_ existed.

Here's a little "story within a story" that I felt like inserting, just because I can.

I did indeed end up in the military. The U.S. Navy. In boot camp, they had a class called Marlinspike Seamanship. This covered tying knots and otherwise working with rope.

My training company was in this big classroom with lengths of rope sprawled across tables. While the instructor explained the basics, I was sitting there, rapidly constructing and deconstructing a whole series of knots, hitches, bends, lashings, splices, and plaits just to amuse myself.

The instructor spotted me and came over to my table. He asked me where I'd learned that stuff and I explained that I had been a commercial fisherman for the last two years. He then loudly announced that I was hereby "four-0ed" (passed with a perfect score) from his class, and was free to sit quietly and study something else for the remainder of this course. The rest of the recruits were greatly impressed. These rare moments of personal glory tend to stick in my memory.

Back to my story.

As already mentioned, I was fascinated by the way the Catman lived. I wanted to know more. In fact, I wanted to know _everything_ about his life. If he would have indulged me, I would have sat spellbound, listening to his tales for hours.

Unfortunately, this old guy wasn't interested in making new friends, especially the scrawny teenaged kind. My bashful, awkward attempt at introducing myself was coldly rebuffed.

Years later, after my discharge from the navy, I landed a job on a sightseeing boat called the Captain Anderson. It's home port was a dock in the mouth of the Hillsboro River.

Upon reporting for my first day on the job, I was surprised to see the Catman's barge anchored about a hundred yards from where my boat was tied.

Wow! He's still alive and doing his thing!

Now a little older, bolder, and more worldly, I again attempted to befriend him.

No dice.

Oh well.

While we were in port, I was able to observe the Catman's daily activities up close and personal.

Maybe a little _too_ close.

I did mention all those cats, didn't I?

Sometimes when the wind from the wrong direction, the stench coming from that anchored barge was unbearable. My God! Did he _ever_ empty that fouled kitty-litter? How could he live with that smell? Did he also live with other filth and vermin?

It was about that time that my infatuation with the Catman's lifestyle faded.

Then, in 1975, I heard that the Catman was dead. The sad part is that his remarkable life's story died with him because he wouldn't talk to me.

I'm sure I could have written a better story about him if he had.

Today, nobody could get away with living like he did. The authorities would be all over such an adventurer like a cheap suit. He'd be constantly harassed over things like water pollution, creating a navigational hazard, and anything else they could dream up. Also, shoreside condo dwellers would hound him mercilessly everywhere he went as being an eyesore.

No, there will never be another "Catman".

Rest in peace, old man.

You are not forgotten.

* *

Here's an ever-so-rare "Underdog Prevails Against All Odds" story.

On a bowhunting trip for deer in the Florida Panhandle back in 1985, I was driving along a little two-lane country road on my way back to camp after procuring a restaurant meal and some groceries to take back to the wildlife management area I had been hunting in.

It was early afternoon on a beautiful, sunny, cool October day, and I was cruising along about 45 miles per hour, the speed I prefer if I'm on a scenic road and not being pressured by traffic. Not only was I not being pressured by traffic, I think I was the only vehicle on that road. My driver's side window was open, and I enjoyed watching the mix of pine forest and agricultural fields roll by.

Suddenly, I was startled by a loud _"POP!"_ to my left. I turned my head and saw a man's head and shoulders sticking out of a hedgerow about 100 yards away, swinging a shotgun at a speeding mourning dove. _POW!_ He missed again! Let me describe the scene. This was a huge soybean field, perhaps a half a mile deep, and a mile long, surrounded on three sides by pine forest, and on the northern border, the road upon which I was driving. This field had been harvested down to stubble, and there were hedgerows cutting across it about every two hundred yards, running from the far treeline to the highway.

I then focused my attention on the dove. It was flying in the same speed and direction as I was driving, about a 100 yards from the road. It was keeping perfect pace with my van. I didn't have to speed up or slow down to keep this bird in plain view. I glanced ahead and saw several pickup trucks parked at the far end of the next hedgerow that the dove would reach in a few seconds. I remember thinking, "He's gonna get it now!"

Then, two men popped up and blazed away at the bird. _POW! POW! POW! POW!_

To my astonishment, they missed, and the dove continued on its course, only reacting to these gunshots by slightly zigging and zagging because of the sudden noise.

Again, I glanced ahead. There were vehicles parked at the far end of each and every hedgerow! There were at least five more hedgerows ahead, and every one of them concealed hunters. How many guys were in this field? More than a dozen, I suppose. A Southern dove shoot tends to be a social event.

Of course, all this rolling thunder drew all eyes toward the oncoming target, and everybody was ready when it arrived over the next hedgerow.

By now, I was cheering for the dove.

Yeah, yeah, I grasp the hypocrisy of this statement. After all, wasn't _I_ in that part of the state with my bow and arrows, doing my best to get deer blood on my hands?

I could also relate to those guys in the field, because over the years, I myself have knocked dozens of mourning doves out of the sky with my own shotgun.

However, on this occasion I was pulling for the dove.

I held my breath as my fellow traveler approached each hedgerow.

This is it! He'll get it now!

Time after time, the speeding bird was greeted by an earsplitting barrage of shotgun fire, only to continue on its unshakeable course. It somewhat reminded me of those World War II newsreels, with every anti-aircraft gun on every ship firing at a lone Kamikaze. It sounded like a battlefield out there!

I was dumbfounded. How could all these hunters keep missing this way?

Then, we reached the end of the field. As the dove flew to safety into the forest, I found myself shouting for joy and waving my hat out the window. For a hair-raising minute, a spiritual bond seemed to exist between me and that humble, frightened bird. I couldn't believe what I had just seen. At least twenty shots had been fired at this dove, and nobody had even cut a feather!

* *

Most wildlife enthusiasts have never seen a mountain lion in the wild. Even old time hunters who'd grown up in lion country have told me these animals are so secretive and alert, you might as well be looking for a ghost. I've seen three. The one I'm about to describe was the first and most impressive.

During the deer and elk archery season of 1991, I was camped in the mountains of Idaho. My alarm clock was set for two hours before daybreak and the rising sun would find me several miles from my camp, ready to hunt. In the pre-dawn darkness one morning I heard some elk chirping ahead of me as I walked along a ridgetop. The females and calves make that noise, and it sounds very much like some sort of bird. This was my first elk hunt, and months before I had bought an elk call and instruction tape. I practiced a great deal and could do a very good imitation of all elk vocalizations, ranging from bull bugles to cow and calf chirps.

This elk herd I was listening to moved off the ridge and down into a ravine. I circled around downwind and waited until there was enough daylight for me to safely climb down into the ravine as well.

At the bottom of the ravine I found a tiny stream running through some very lush knee-high grass. There was a game trail following this winding stream, and I eased slowly along, all my senses straining for any sound or movement. The elk could be anywhere, and I wasn't taking any chances on spooking them. I was dressed in full camouflage, including a mask. I had an arrow ready on the string and the wind was in my favor. After a while I started getting nervous because I hadn't heard any elk sounds in the hour since they crossed the ridge. Were they silently bedded down nearby, about to explode into flight? Had they already left the ravine and were miles away? I decided to call a little to see if I could get them to answer me.

I slipped the little rubber call into my mouth and made a few calf chirps. The moist black dirt and the soft, tall grass allowed me to sneak along in perfect silence. The ravine turned this way and that, and I was especially careful coming around these tight bends. About every fifteen minutes I'd give a chirp and listen. I was going so slowly that it took me almost an hour to cover two hundred yards.

Suddenly, a cougar's head popped up in the grass about ten yards ahead. In a flash, it spun around and raced away, its long tail lashing from side to side. The lion then jumped up on a large boulder and stared at me for a couple of seconds. It was a huge male, with a wide, jowly tomcat face. I was struck by the way his muscles rippled under his tawny hide. Then, in three incredible leaps, he bounded up the near-vertical side of the ravine and was gone.

I was amazed at those jumps. If he had sprouted wings, I couldn't have been more impressed. It would have taken me at least a minute to claw my way up there, slipping and dislodging rocks every inch of the way. I walked to the spot where his head first appeared and found the grass pressed down where he laid in ambush for the "elk calf" he knew was headed his way. Poor critter! He thought he was going to score a nice, easy breakfast. I'm glad he wasn't a man-eater.

* *

Here's another mountain story for you. When I was overseas in the navy, my mother married a good-natured hillbilly from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia. After I got back to the states and was discharged, I was invited to come along with them on a visit to his birthplace. It was summertime and those mountains and quaint little towns were beautiful.

There was some sort of family reunion going on at this pretty little farm, tucked away in a brilliant green, misty, hay-scented hollow. Dozens of kinfolk were in attendance. It struck me as odd how the sexes segregated themselves. All the women and girls were in the kitchen, talking and preparing an incredible feast. The guy who owned the farm asked all the men to help him with a chore. Again, I was surprised. This guy was putting his party guests to work? I had a lot to learn about mountain folk.

So, this crowd of men started up this steep pasture, clearing brush away from a barbed-wire fence. The weather was so cool and pleasant, and these fellows were so friendly, that I didn't mind pitching in. A little boy about five or six years old was tagging along.

About two hundred yards up the fenceline we were all suddenly warned to step back. One of the wooden fenceposts had a large hornet's nest on it.

While the rest of us kept a safe distance, the farmer quickly doused the nest with gasoline, tossed a match, and scrambled back to join us. The way this paper nest flared and burned brought to mind the Hindenburg Disaster.

Oh, the hornetity!

Suddenly, this little boy steps right up to the nest, unzips his pants, and begins urinating onto the fire. He immediately uttered a yelp, danced backward a few steps and doubled over, clutching his crotch. He remained in this bent-over position, his face as red as the proverbial beet, tears welling in his eyes. I braced myself for the loud bawl I knew was on its way. At the moment though, he was so stunned and paralyzed with pain he couldn't catch his breath.

His dad walked over to him and said, "Here, let me see," and gently pried the boy's hands away. Suddenly, the father burst out laughing! We spectators exchanged puzzled glances, then stepped forward to see what on earth he had found so funny.

Now, the mountainside was reverberating with hysterical laughter. Every man was doubled-up and stumbling around like he'd been gut-shot. We were actually howling! The kid's expression changed from a twisted grimace to open-mouthed astonishment.

The thing that started this riot was the kid's penis. I have no idea what his little weenie looked like before the hornet stung its tip, but I'll never forget what it turned into. It wasn't something that belonged to our species. And definitely not on a little boy, at least not on this planet. This lad now had the dubious honor of sporting a throbbing erection of equine proportions. Had this monstrosity been achieved painlessly, I would have been envious. However, at the time I just couldn't envision a jar of live hornets next to the baby oil on my nightstand. These days, I'd keep a more open mind.

Incredibly, the boy was now grinning! He seemed to enjoy being at the center of this storm. Just as the laughter began to subside, he suddenly grabbed his freakish hard-on and shook it at us. This set off a fresh wave of convulsions.

Then, with perfect comic timing, he literally floored us.

His announcement that he was going back to the house to show the others caused the entire crowd to collapse into the grass, rolling and shrieking. He set off down the hill, his bizarre trophy waving and bobbing before him, and got a pretty good head start before his father could recover enough breath to get to his feet and stumble after him.

# Chapter 4

### How To Live In The Woods

Sometimes I'll hear some homeless person say their current plight was the result of one mishap or bad decision. I usually nod in solemn agreement, while knowing deep down that it takes bad breeding, a lifetime of bad habits, and a dash or two of bad luck to produce a typical homeless person. When they finally fall through the cracks, its often because they've been prying at them with a crowbar for years.

Well, in my case, one bad break did indeed cause me to hit the skids. Of course, it's true that I'd lived irresponsibly for years and perhaps would have ended up homeless eventually, but until the engine blew on my old van, I felt I was living pretty well. I was a member of the best country band in Southwest Florida, had plenty of mobility, ate in restaurants every day, and generally had no complaints.

In retrospect, my big mistake was not taking a second job until I had about $3,000 in the bank, never to be touched for any reason except to replace the van or its engine. I'd never had any experience with blown engines and had no idea how suddenly it would occur, and how devastating the consequences would be.

It happened on I-75 between Punta Gorda and Ft. Myers. I rolled to a smoky stop next to one of those motorist call boxes one sees every few miles on interstate highways. I'd never used one before and had always assumed there was a telephone inside, with which I could speak to a live person. Instead, I found a choice of three buttons, labeled, POLICE, MEDICAL, and ROAD SERVICE. I hesitated, because I already had a AAA one hundred mile towing package, and didn't want a non-AAA tow truck involved. I had no idea who would show up if I pushed that button. This occurred long before I got my first cell phone, so I ended up hiking several miles until I could find a pay phone. It was a huge ordeal, but I finally got towed to Ft. Myers.

I didn't have anywhere near enough money to have the engine replaced, so my old van ended up in the junkyard. It was one of the worst days of my life. I had the thing 17 years and put a quarter-million miles on it. It was like an old friend had died. I actually cried.

Although I knew I was in trouble, I still thought this problem could be solved. I had only $132 to my name, but I still had my job in the band and wanted to keep it, come hell or high water.

So, I called the bandleader and explained what had happened. I also put forth a proposal. He lived in the town of Englewood and had to drive down Highway 776 to reach every gig we played. How about if I camped in the local woods and met him on the roadside on nights we worked? He would merely have to pick me up and drop me off. It wouldn't be out of his way at all. He agreed, and that's the way we did it for a while. My fiddle, amplifier, harmonicas, microphones, and stage clothes would be stored in the trailer with the band's PA system. We only worked on weekends, so we weren't making much money.

I figured it would be a matter of, perhaps, six months, and I'd have enough money saved up to get a decent used van and work my way back up the food chain. Hey, I've always loved camping anyway. After all, how hard could this be for an experienced outdoorsman like me?

I would soon find out how hard it could be.

Now, I was truly "homeless". As long as I had my van, I felt I had a "home". At least I could go anywhere I wanted, anytime I wanted. Now, I was stuck.

Earlier in this book I mentioned how easily people take their own private indoor bathrooms for granted. The same is true for private automobiles. Try getting by without one in most areas of this country today! Your world will become real small, real fast. With nothing to depend upon but a bicycle,the simplest errand will become an exhausting trek. As the years crawled by, I found this to be the absolute worst part of being homeless. I'm sure I could have lifted myself out of poverty a lot quicker if I would have had a car. Those of you who can simply turn a key, start an engine, and go anywhere you want had better count your blessings!

I never realized how much stuff I was hauling around in that van until the time came to quickly dispose of it. While the tow truck driver waited, I frantically transferred my worldly belongings from my van to a friend's pickup truck. Then for the first time in seventeen years, me and that good old Ford van went our separate ways.

I had to divide my belongings into three categories. Stuff to be thrown or given away, stuff to be safeguarded by my friends, and stuff I kept for day-to-day survival. This wasn't much. Just what would fit into my canoe.

Me, my canoe, and camping gear were dropped off in El Jobean, a small community on the Myakka River. The sun was going down and all I had time to do was paddle a short distance and anchor for the night. Years before, I had invented a rather ingenious hammock system which could be erected right in my homemade sailing canoe.

Homemade Sailing Canoe and Hammock

That night, I got the first of many lessons on how small mistakes can have big consequences. All I had with me was a wool blanket. What I needed was a sleeping bag. Because body heat escapes out the bottom of a hammock, my cool, pleasant spring night became a shivering, sleepless ordeal.

When daylight finally arrived, I discovered the tide had gone out and left me high and dry. My canoe sat on a mud flat at least a hundred yards from the water's edge. I ended up waiting half the day for the tide's return because the loaded canoe was too heavy to drag and the mud was too deep to walk through.

Things were so tough in the beginning that I lost twenty pounds in three weeks.

There is a stand of australian pines on the riverbank in El Jobean. I made my first camp there. Knowing what I now know, I would have steered clear of that place. While it's true that a grove of mature australian pines makes the most pleasant campsite you could ask for as far as comfort goes, from a security standpoint, it's the worst choice you can make.

Nothing else can grow under these pines. There is never any brush to clear when preparing your campsite. Just a nice carpet of pine needles. There are also plenty of stout, straight tree trunks on which to hang a hammock and tarp. Also, on hot summer days it's always about twenty degrees cooler among those pines. The only problem with the place is you can't hide your camp like it should be hidden. During the six weeks I was there, a constant parade of intruders came into my camp. One of them finally stole a fishing tackle box while I was away. I had accumulated many years worth of expensive lures in that box. It was a big loss. I moved the next day.

# Chapter 5

### Camp Security

The El Jobean experience taught me a lesson which I'll now pass on to you. When setting up a homeless camp, security is your first priority. Not only is there a risk of losing your possessions to theft or vandalism if your camp isn't well hidden, but eventually the local police _will_ show up and evict you. Remember what I said about security in the first chapter? Well, it's twice as important now. Cars can be locked. Camps cannot. I've personally known several homeless guys who came home after a hard day's work to find their camps completely destroyed. All they had left was the clothes on their backs. Imagine this happening to you on some cold, rainy night. Where will you sleep? What will you do?

During the four and a half years I was homeless, I went through four camps in Charlotte County, and one in neighboring Lee County. One by one, the first three were discovered by intruders. I finally got it right with Camp #4. After being run out of Camp #3 by the cops, I simply moved across the highway and established my fourth camp. It was so well hidden that I had three trouble-free years there.

It took about an hour of pushing through very heavy brush to find two stout trees just the right distance apart on which to hang my hammock. I always slept in a hammock because the ground in this part of Florida is infested with too many creepy-crawlies for my taste. The spot I chose was a tangled mass of palmettoes, thorn vines, and heavy woods surrounded by a swamp. It was only about 50 yards from Highway 776, but because of a swampy thicket, it may as well have been ten miles as far as intruders were concerned. Nobody even tried to come in from that direction.

Before I continue, let me say a word about palmettoes. Remember the nice things I said about australian pines? Well, the exact opposite is true about palmettoes. In South Florida they form wretched, tangled thickets filled with all manner of loathsome vermin. I hate to say it, but if you're setting up a homeless camp down here, a palmetto thicket is exactly where you want to be.

Want to hear some more kind words about palmettoes? During our springtime dry season, if the woods catch fire, these palmettoes burn so hot and fast that you'll be damned lucky to escape with your life. I can't think of much palmettoes are good for except as a hiding place for your camp.

It took me a solid week to clear a little campsite and roundabout trail to the highway. That place was crawling with ants, scorpions, and those big, flying cockroaches lovingly referred to as "palmetto bugs" here in the Sunshine State.

A homeless camp must essentially be a strange combination of isolation and convenient access to urban amenities. Because your only mode of transportation might be a bicycle, you can't very well camp way out in the wilderness and expect to find employment in town. On the other hand, it just isn't safe to sleep on the sidewalk right in the middle of a city. You need to be in some sort of vacant, wooded area.

One fact you'd better understand is that it will take you a lot longer than you think to lift yourself out of homelessness. You are in this for the long haul. Don't make a shoddy camp. It must be as safe, clean, and comfortable as you can possibly manage.

First, choose a wooded area too thick, thorny, or swampy to attract casual visitors. It doesn't have to cover a lot of acreage. It just has to be impenetrable. Don't even _think_ of camping next to a lake, river, or anyplace else that fishermen or neighborhood boys would wish to explore. Take it from me, they _will_ show up in your camp eventually.

While security must be your first consideration, another important factor in choosing a campsite is the availability of clean water for camp use. I'll cover this in more detail in the Camp Comfort chapter.

Now that you've found a brushy hidey-hole with a nearby water source, it's time to scout it out. First, you need a hand saw. The sporting goods department at Wal-Mart has these snaggley-toothed camp saws, complete with a carrying scabbard. They don't cost very much and they make great machetes. For thicker branches, it is used like a conventional saw. Swinging it like a machete will have vines and thinner vegetation toppling before you very nicely.

Before you make the very first cut, you must thoroughly explore your newfound brush patch. Sure, it'll be hot, dirty, and exhausting work thrashing around in that jungle, but it must be done. You've got to know every inch of it before you start clearing your campsite. Certain questions will need answers. Will your camp be visible to low-flying aircraft? Is there already a path running through it which will bring intruders? Are there any good shade trees available? Now that you've picked your spot, go ahead and start hacking out enough room for your tent, hammock, or whatever you need to do to spend the night. If this job doesn't take hours, then the brush isn't thick enough. What you want is a camp where someone can pass a few yards away and not see it. Security is everything!

Eventually, you'll want to cut a path to the nearest road. Feel free to cut as much vegetation as you like near your camp to make travel easier, but as this path approaches a road or open space, it should become very inconspicuous. You must _never_ cut this portion of your trail in a straight line! Always incorporate one hairpin turn after another. And only cut enough brush to allow you to pass without tripping. Be sure to leave some limbs to duck under, step over, and push aside. Keep it looking natural. You don't want passersby to realize they're looking at a man-made trail.

When walking your path, it's good to get into the habit of never stepping in any soft spot which will leave your footprint. This is an old deer poacher's trick. It really becomes second nature. Except at the beach, I don't think I've left a footprint anywhere in at least thirty years.

The most important rule you must observe in keeping your path hidden is to never roll your bicycle back and forth over it. Those tires will have it looking like an interstate highway in no time. If you must bring your bike into camp, pick it up and carry it. Otherwise, make a special hiding place for it out near the road. That's what I always did. All of my bikes were painted dull greens and browns. When stashed in the brush, they were nearly invisible.

In the beginning, before you get to know your path well, you might have trouble returning to camp after dark without getting lost. This problem can be solved with some of that reflective tape from the auto parts store. Merely cut some small pieces of tape and pinch them over twigs here and there along the trail. These little markers will be invisible during the day, but at night, your flashlight will cause them to light up like neon signs.

A neat trick to detect whether anyone has been snooping around your camp or walking your trail in your absence is to stretch pieces of olive-drab sewing thread about knee-high in strategic places, such as a sharp bend in the trail. Tie one end firmly to a tree or something, and loosely wrap the other end around a twig on the other side of the trail. With the exception of tall animals like deer, the critters will pass underneath without disturbing it. Human intruders will always disturb the thread.

The advantage to placing your thread across the trail at a bend is that your intruder will be more likely to peer around the corner to see what's ahead, instead of looking down, perhaps discovering the thread.

Also, wrapping one end lightly instead of tying it firmly ensures that the intruder won't feel any tension against his leg before the thread gives way.

Every creature in nature has at least one predator out to get it. Ours happen to be roving bands of teenage boys. There is nobody lower on society's pecking order than "bums", and these kids know it. Of course, your average teenager isn't particularly malevolent when he's on his own. But there is something about youthful mob mentality that takes on a life of its own. Boys like to explore woods. If they stumble upon your camp, and you are not there to defend it, you've got big trouble. There is not enough needle and thread in the world to repair your tent if even one of these wayward lads is carrying a pocket knife.

Even if you are there, you still might have problems. Although rocks and clubs are still popular, the latest sport involves frozen paintballs fired at great velocity at close range.

On two occasions I had to fend off groups of young raiders. The incident in Ft. Myers involving black hoodlums was rather scary. The only way I could secure this camp was to build a large barricade of piled-up tree branches across the only dry approach through a mangrove swamp. Then, in my everyday comings and goings, I would wade through the swamp. At a spigot behind a nearby warehouse, I would wash the mud off my feet and continue into town. This system worked for five months.

One day I heard the dreadful sound of my barricade being ripped apart. Highly alarmed, I went to investigate. I was met by a group of young black men shouting profanities at me. Their apparent leader was particularly vicious. He told me he dealt drugs in these woods and that I would have to leave.

Of course, I'm giving you a highly sanitized version of his message. I, on the other hand, was roundly denounced, in that unique African-American contribution to the art of adversarial debate, as being someone who partakes in a sexual relationship with his own mother.

It also struck me as odd that in my five months of camping there, this was the first time I'd seen him. He must have been in jail.

During our encounter, he kept reaching under his oversized shirt into the waistband of his baggy pants.

It was obvious he was, or wanted me to think he was, fiddling with a pistol he kept there.

I don't know if he had one or not.

However, I did.

My hand was in my pocket, wrapped around a snubnose .38 revolver. It's a damn good thing for both of us that he didn't produce his weapon. Over the decades I've mentally conditioned myself to open fire without hesitation the moment anyone pulls a gun on me. No talking, no threatening, just shooting. I've practiced my quick-draw endlessly. God only knows how many shots I've fired at game and targets. These days I seldom miss. Fortunately, nobody has ever pushed me past the point of no return. They've come close, but I always stay cool. Alert and watching my adversary, but cool. With that hidden gun in reach, I know how things will turn out should my enemy make the wrong move. I never become angry or frightened during these events. There is still plenty of time for negotiation and for things to turn out well for everyone.

And so it went with our young drug dealer. He strutted, cursed, and ranted. I quietly, but firmly refused to give up my camp. Both of us knew he couldn't afford to lose face in front of his crew. After much posturing and making street faces at each other, a compromise was reached. My barricade would be re-erected. He would conduct business on his side. I would live unmolested on mine.

Of course, I had no intention of living with that deal, even while it was being hammered out. I started packing the moment they left. At daybreak the next morning, everything was loaded into the canoe and I was gone. Once security is breached, that's the end of that camp. Period.

Ft. Myers, November 2003

Another thing I was always careful about was my wardrobe. No, I didn't want to look flashy. Indeed, the exact opposite was true. Just about every item of my clothing was a dull green, brown, or gray color. I wouldn't be caught dead in a red, white, or yellow shirt. Even my bath towel and washcloth were olive green. During good weather they remained on the clothesline, airing out. Around my camp, everything was green or brown. If it wasn't, it got painted that way. No sense in attracting unwanted attention.

Sundays were generally the only times I hung around camp all day. Otherwise, I headed for town every morning to work, shop, or visit the library. I spent a lot of time at the library, reading and surfing the internet. If you become an urban camper, you'll probably follow the same routine.

That's a lot of coming and going.

Which brings up another firm rule: Never just come busting out of your woods without checking to see if the coast is clear!

When I reached the highway, I would pause just inside the woods and scan near and far for any possible trouble before coming into the open. I never allowed anyone even a glimpse of me exiting my woods. Even perfectly innocent types like highway construction workers, mail carriers, schoolkids, or passing motorists. No one. They all have eyes and mouths, and most of them have cell phones.

This rule applies to your return as well. If there is anyone in a position to see you disappear into the woods from the road, it could spell trouble. There were many times I'd arrive to find someone loitering, for whatever reason, near my trail entrance. It might be a work crew, a stranded motorist, a cop using his radar gun, or whatever. I would always keep riding my bike down the highway until I was a good distance away. Then I'd watch and wait. Sometimes it took an excruciatingly long time, especially when the mosquitoes were out, but those people would eventually leave. Then, and only then, would I return to camp. Remember, you don't have a "right" to be there. You're trespassing.

Once in a while you'll meet some intruder while walking through your woods. How you should react depends on the circumstances. Remember, you don't want anyone knowing about your camp. If the person is still some distance off and has not seen you, but is obviously headed in your direction, and, if you stay where you are, a meeting is inevitable, the best thing to do is flee. Do this by bending over as far as you can and dashing to the nearest cover. Even if he does glimpse you, your bent-over position might trick his eyes and brain into thinking you are some kind of animal.

If the person you've spotted isn't headed your way, you might want to follow at a safe distance to see what he's up to. I always did. It's best to know what's going on in your neighborhood.

Sometimes the best move is no move at all. As you gain more experience in this sort of life, you'll instantly know when to simply freeze in place. The intruder is just too close for you to move without being seen. If you've taken my advice about wearing dull clothing, you'll be amazed at how many people will walk by just a few feet away and never realize that you are standing there. It has happened to me many times.

Unfortunately, there may come a day when you're suddenly face to face with an intruder in the woods with no chance to evade detection. In that case, just be friendly and make up a story about a lost dog or something. Don't admit you're camping nearby. If your camp and trail are as well hidden as they ought to be, there's a good chance this guy will wander off without discovering anything.

This last example reminds me of a run-in I had near Camp #4. Here in South Florida, the palmetto produces a berry which is used in the manufacture of prostate medicine. Evidently, there's pretty good money in collecting these berries. At certain times of the year you'll see Mexicans and Black Caribbean Islanders combing the woods and loading their vehicles with big plastic tubs of palmetto berries.

One day, I became aware of two black men working the palmettoes across the highway. The next day, I watched them in the woods on my side of the road. When they finished at sunset, they had worked their way to within a hundred yards of my camp. They left some of their plastic tubs behind, so I knew they'd be back. At the rate they were picking, it was obvious they would blunder into my camp the next day. I couldn't let that happen.

But, what to do?

I came up with an idea I wasn't too wild about, but I couldn't think of anything better.

The previous day these guys had left two empty soda bottles on the ground. I knew this because I could always spot the smallest change in those woods instantly. I picked the bottles up, put on my best, cleanest clothes, and walked right up to them while they worked.

In a solemn, dignified tone, I expressed my profound disappointment that they would throw litter on "my" property. They denied leaving those bottles there. We argued back and forth a little, then I told them to get off of "my" land. With sad looks and heads hung low, they complied. Chalk up another injustice from mean old Whitey!

I felt terrible, lying to them like that. But it had to be done. This was an emergency. I hate telling lies of any kind to anyone, and seldom do.

The following season, I made it a point to cut every palmetto berry cluster off of every stalk I could find, long before they ripened. Apparently, the pickers figured their competitors had beaten them to the area. Nobody bothered me that year.

On a related note, did you know that your sense of smell improves dramatically the longer you live in the woods? At least mine did. My nose would tell me if people had passed that way recently. Men smelled like locker rooms. Children smelled like freshly-baked gingerbread or something. All sweet and yeasty. Women smelled like, uh, well, ahem... _you know!_

One spring night I was coming home from work, and when I reached a certain spot in the trail, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and my heart began racing. _ALLIGATOR!_ my nose shouted. I frantically pointed the flashlight in every direction at once and carefully made my way back to camp.

If you've ever smelled a big gator up close, you never forget that smell. It reminds me of a string of catfish, rolled in mud and left out on the porch all day.

The next morning I went back to that spot, and sure enough, there was his drag mark crossing the trail. At that time of the year the big males hit the road in search of love.

I tell you I'd rather struggle with horny gators any day than the nuisance I'm about to describe.

Rats and mice!

How can such big trouble come in such a small package?

When I first started camping out, I had a live-and-let-live attitude toward these little darlings scampering in the night. Once they got around to introducing themselves, however, it didn't take long for me to become the most enthusiastic rodent exterminator you'd ever want to meet. If allowed to, those varmints would eventually destroy everything in the camp. I'm not exaggerating! It makes no difference if it's clothing, mosquito netting, plastic, nylon, leather, or whatever. Everything is fair game to them.

I don't know why they want to spend so much time gnawing on non-food items, but they do.

My advice to you would be to declare total war on rodents the very first night. Poison certainly gets the job done, but there is a drawback. Those hidden corpses will attract coons and possums. Then _they_ become the pests. One night I was awakened by a strange, persistent crunching sound. I rolled out of bed, turned on my flashlight, and there, about six feet away, crouched a possum happily munching the head off a dead rat. The possum hissed its displeasure during the ensuing tug-o-war, when I took possession of its midnight snack and threw it into the creek.

Traps, on the other hand, while preventing carrion from lying around, do create another problem. The loud snap and the struggles of the dying rat will wake you up at the craziest hours. Then, it's up to you to get out of bed and dispose of the carcass before any of your nocturnal neighbors take an interest in it.

# Chapter 6

### Camp Comfort

As you know by now, my entire homeless camping experience took place in southern Florida. Outdoor conditions here might be a bit different than where you are. Down here, summer is the miserable season for camping. Unrelenting heat, humidity, daily violent thunderstorms, mud, and at least ten varieties of biting insects combine to make you wish you were somewhere else.

Winter in South Florida, on the other hand, brings back the joy of living. Cool starry nights, mild sunny days, bone-dry surroundings, and best of all, no bugs!

We've already gone over finding a safe place to camp, now I'd like to offer some suggestions on making your hideaway a decent place to live.

Hopefully, you'll have several trees in your newfound campsite. You'll need them for hanging your tarp. These plastic tarps are among the most important pieces of gear in your camp. When you buy your tarp, don't scrimp on size. Get the biggest one you can afford. The one at camp #4 was 12'x24' and I needed every inch of it. If you settle for a small one, you'll regret it when a surprise storm arrives in the middle of the night and blows rain sideways into your bed. Believe me, been there, done that!

After much painful trial and error, I finally came up with the best way to hang a tarp for maximum effectiveness. First, go to your local home improvement store and buy some small-diameter PVC pipe and the little straight-line fittings which link the pipes together. Getting this stuff back to camp on your bike will be a challenge, but it can be done.

What you'll be trying to create are several criss-crossing arches with your pipe between the trees. The ends of the pipe will be planted at the base of the trees. They will be lashed in place with rope, wedged in place between nails driven into the trunk, or some combination of the two. Anything you have to do to get these pipe arches to form a "cathedral ceiling" of sorts. I went through all kinds of tribulations to get this right, but when it was finally finished, it gave terrific service for years.

Now, take your big tarp out of its package. By the way, how DO those Chinese get those things in there in the first place? Okay, now get your tarp all untangled and laid out next to your arches. You should have plenty of small-diameter rope on hand. Tie a weight of some sort to your rope and lob it over the highest part of your arch. Be sure to give it a mighty heave. You want it to go all the way over. Tie the end you're still holding to the grommet in the center edge of your tarp. Fasten other lines to other grommets. One by one, toss them over. It'll take some pulling from the other side and prodding with a long pole, but eventually you'll get the tarp draped over the arch. Then, cut your lines to appropriate lengths to secure the tarp to solid objects. Make sure every grommet is connected to a tree limb, bush, root, rock, or whatever. These lines should go out in all directions. The finished project should be somewhat dome-shaped.

The first challenge to your system will come with the first rain. Hopefully, you'll be in camp when it happens. You must carefully observe how the rainwater is draining off the tarp. Be especially aware of any pooling going on up there. These tarps are pretty thin, so you'll be able to see the tarp sagging under the weight of the water. This cannot be tolerated. It will only take a few minute's worth of rain to provide enough weight up there to bring the whole thing crashing down on you.

Been there, done that too. It ain't fun!

The problem can be easily corrected by moving the arches around a little until the water can't find a place to accumulate and will run smoothly off the tarp no matter how hard it rains.

Also, take a moment to observe where the water goes after it leaves the tarp. You may have to build small dikes and trenches to direct this water away.

About this time you may be asking, "If I'm homeless and down-and-out, where will I get the money to buy all this camping stuff you recommend?"

Well, you might consider tapping into the beer and cigarette fund. Over the years I've personally known dozens, if not hundreds of homeless folks who constantly cry poverty, but who never seem to run out of these aforementioned commodities. There were times when I literally didn't know where my next meal was coming from, but I kept my priorities straight. During my four years of camping out, my first priority was getting a good night's sleep. If I have to spend my beer money on making my camp comfortable, then so be it. I don't know about you, but if something torments me all night, I can't do anything right the next day. Speaking of torment in the night, let's talk about mosquitoes. In your part of the country they may or may not be a problem. Down here, they're unbearable for about five months out of the year. Clouds of them are on the move, day and night. I can honestly tell you that I couldn't have lasted four summers in these woods without my trusty mosquito fogger. This rather expensive contraption is found in hardware stores. I paid about sixty bucks for mine. Then, in addition, you must keep buying these little screw-on propane tanks and a special insecticide for it. Running one of these things ain't cheap. But to me, it was worth every penny I paid. A couple of applications of that toxic white smoke daily, and my camp became an oasis of tranquility in a mosquito-infested hell. The one thing I disliked about the fogger was that it only worked on mosquitoes. Flies, gnats, no-see-ums, and other pests frolicked through that cloud of poison without the slightest ill effect.

I always slept under no-see-um netting. I found it better than standard mosquito netting. There are a few types of insects that can squeeze through the larger holes. No-see-um netting also keeps out ants.

My sleeping arrangement was pretty bizarre. Although I wouldn't dream of expecting you to duplicate it, I'll go ahead and describe it anyway.

It starts with a 6'x4' piece of 1000 denier nylon fabric with two sleeves sewn lengthwise down each side. Into these sleeves were shoved two halves of a windsurfer mast. Any stout poles would have worked, but I just happened to have these on hand. At this point the thing is beginning to resemble one of those old-fashioned canvas stretchers the medics carried in war movies. Several holes are then cut into the outside edges of the nylon, revealing small sections of the pole inside. Around this pole, a small rope is looped several times. This rope is fastened to a larger diameter rope, which is in turn, tied to a tree. This is done on both sides of the hammock.

Notice please, I said _sides_.

With a traditional hammock, the tree ropes go out from the head and foot ends, causing your head and feet to ride high, and your poor middle-aged back to sag in the middle. With my design, the poles cause the hammock to be as straight and firm as a cot. Your back stays nice and straight. You can sleep on your side, or even your stomach, if you want to. Try that in a normal hammock!

Once this basic platform is suspended between two trees, then the "bivy shelter" is placed on top. This is sort of a one-man tent with a full-length zipper running down one side. It is mostly constructed of no-see-um netting with a removable rain fly. My bivy was a mail-order piece of Chinese crap that wasn't anywhere near waterproof. But, it didn't need to be. The big plastic tarp overhead kept me dry.

Since a hammock allows body heat to escape out the bottom, summer nights are not a problem no matter how warm and humid they are. I never suffered from the heat. In fact, morning usually found me wrapped like a burrito in a fleece blanket, even in August.

Naturally, things are quite the opposite during the coldest nights of winter. I found that one sleeping bag stuffed inside another kept me nice and warm. Keeping a fire going is popular among some homeless folks in wintertime. I never did, for fear of attracting the attention of police helicopters.

As time goes by, you'll find yourself furnishing your camp with other people's trash. By that, I mean discarded lawn chairs, tables, shelving, outdoor carpets, and all manner of stuff.

The fairground had a wonderful trash pile. When I first created Camp #4, I was faced with the problem of crossing a tiny feeder creek on my way back and forth to the highway. This creek was just a little too wide to jump across, and the bottom consisted of extremely deep, stinky mud. Wading through this filth was completely out of the question.

The solution to this problem was already waiting on the fairground's rubbish heap. I found two long, heavy angle-irons and dragged them to the creek, laying them across, side by side, as a sturdy little footbridge.

A surprising amount of useful items occasionally bounce off of moving trucks. Tools, shovels, posthole diggers, work gloves, and once I even spotted a nice pair of Doc Marten work boots lying in the roadside grass. I was always happy to see wooden pallets on trash piles. No matter how much effort it took, I would drag these things home at every opportunity. They would be arranged under the tarp and all my stuff would be piled onto them. Everything stayed high and dry. Some of the smarter homeless guys would lay scrounged plywood on the pallets and pitch their tents on it.

One item picked off a trash heap deserves mention. One of my most valued camp fixtures was a six-foot length of steel pipe I found and carried home. I thrashed around in the palmettoes until I found two trees, of similar size, exactly the right distance apart. I then lashed the pipe firmly with rope, horizontally, between the trees about as high as I could reach. A path was then cut back to camp, and my brand-new exercise gym was ready for use.

That's right, a gym. By now, it must be apparent to you that I wasn't your average drunken homeless guy. I believed in staying in the best physical shape my lifestyle would allow.

Every morning without fail, I went through a series of stretching excercises, followed by 20 chin-ups on my steel bar.

Mile after mile of bicycling provided plenty of aerobic conditioning.

Earlier, I briefly mentioned having a source of clean water near your camp. By that, I mean a working water spigot.

Sure, you can bathe and wash your clothes in a creek or use rainwater runoff from your tarp. I've done that, but only in dire emergencies.

What you really want is that spigot. They are found behind most buildings, in parks, boat docks, or wherever you can locate one.

Whatever you do, never take water from a house with people living in it, especially at night. That's a good way to end up with a face full of buckshot.

Don't even think of building your camp without a spigot within reasonable walking distance. Water is a heavy item to carry very far. Also, wherever your spigot is located, make sure this building or area is unoccupied at night. That's when you'll be visiting, washing your clothes and fetching water for camp. You'll be making a lot of noise, running water and splashing around. You don't want anyone there to catch you. Always remember to turn off the water when you're through, and don't leave any sign that you've been there. If you're careless, the building owner might figure out that someone is making unauthorized use of his spigot. He might take the handle off. This happened to me at the Charlotte Sports Park. I then used pliers. However, there is also a lock which can be installed on spigots. I've seen them. If this happens, your one and only water source might be cut off for good. So, be careful!

Camp #4 was a few hundred yards from the Charlotte County Fairground. After the caretaker went home for the night, I would walk over there to get water or do my laundry. I carried a five-gallon bucket and some dish liquid. Washing clothes by hand is quite tiring, so I made it a point to never let too much dirty laundry pile up. Usually just a couple of shirts and a pair of pants. Clothing was washed at least three nights a week.

I always fashioned a shower in my camps. Being homeless is a dirty life, and I hate being dirty. The camper's solar bag showers found at the sporting goods stores are okay for the weekend camper, but if you try to depend on it for very long, you'll be disappointed. Those seams will start leaking, and once that happens, there is no way to repair them. I preferred a heavy-duty, rigid container which holds about six gallons. I fashioned a short hose and clamp arrangement to fit it. It was then hoisted up in a tree. A plastic trash bag was laid out for me to stand on, and I was ready for my shower. There was even a little shaving mirror wired to the tree trunk. During cool weather I would heat my shower water on my camp stove. In the summertime, I didn't bother.

Those little Coleman one-burner gasoline stoves are great. I've found them cheaper to run than the propane or butane kind. I never did do a lot of cooking in camp, for fear of attracting coons. Mostly, I just warmed up some canned food, brewed tea, and heated shower water with my stove. All my major meals were in town, at the soup kitchen or fast food joints.

Now, let's discuss the matter of your latrine. You'll need a shovel, hatchet, posthole digger, or some other implement. Some folks dig large holes and fill them in a little at a time after each use. It seems to me that method draws too many flies. I prefer small, single-use "cat hole" latrines. I also prefer paper towels to toilet paper for a reason I'll explain later.

Naturally, you'll want your latrine some distance from your camp. Your cat hole doesn't have to be very big. About six inches deep by six inches wide, or however much work you want to put into digging it.

Now comes the tricky part. Hitting your hole when you poop!

Modern Man has long since forgotten how to do this. There is a world of difference between squatting over a hole and sitting on a toilet. Believe me, you'll miss quite a few times before you get the "hang" of it.

Once you've dead-centered your hole, wiped, and dropped the wads of paper towel into the hole, it's time to set fire to the paper. I got into the habit of doing this in response to a problem I encountered. Animals would dig up my latrines at night and scatter the turds everywhere. Why? I don't have a clue. You'd have to ask the critters. Once I began burning the paper before re-filling the hole, this problem stopped. Paper towels burn more thoroughly than toilet paper. I'd raid public restrooms in town to keep a steady supply of paper towels in camp. The buried poop decomposes surprisingly fast. You'll be able to use that exact spot again in about a month.

Another animal mystery had me puzzled for the longest time. While I was sleeping, some varmint would eat the paper labels off my canned food. It wouldn't strip the entire can, but it would eat a large portion of it. This went on for months, until one of those rare occasions I got up to use the latrine in the middle of the night. I happened to shine my flashlight at my stack of cans, and the mystery was solved.

Snails!

That's right, I couldn't believe it either. I never would have guessed snails in a million years. Maybe they were attracted to the wheat paste holding the labels on the cans?

If you would happen upon me leaving my camp on any given morning, you might think I'd lost my mind and was conducting an imaginary orchestra.

What's with waving that wand in front of me as I walk down the trail?

Not to worry. That's just my "spider stick", a thin switch about four feet long, used to keep last night's freshly-woven webs out of my face and hair.

Here's another animal story for you. This one seems to be everyone's favorite. It's been several years since this incident and I can now tell this tale with a little humor. My post-traumatic stress has faded with time.

Camp #2 was located in a very large forest populated by all kinds of wildlife. Wild hogs were among them. I grew up hearing lurid tales, spun by oldtime Florida Crackers, about the supposed ferocity of these creatures. However, over the years I sometimes encountered them on deer and turkey hunts and they always fled the moment they became aware of me. So, in August of 2002, I wasn't especially worried when freshly-rooted hog sign began appearing closer and closer to my camp.

One morning at first light, I rolled out of my hammock and started walking down to the creek for my first chore of the morning. I always urinated into the water because I didn't want to stink up my camp. Half asleep, barefoot, and dressed only in shorts, I headed down the narrow trail through the palmettoes. When I reached the small clearing by the creek, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye.

The ensuing action took place in milliseconds, although it tends to replay in nightmarish slow-motion in my memory.

I turned my head and found myself looking at the huge black rump of some animal about eight feet away. It was SO huge, and SO black that my first thought was "bear?"

I didn't have to wait long for my answer.

The owner of that rump became aware of me at the same instant. In the blink of an eye, it spun and lunged at me. I was now looking at the streaking form of the biggest wild hog I'd ever seen.

Being highly motivated at the moment, I was also in motion. I turned and raced toward camp.

It was a very short race.

I hadn't gotten two or three steps before I was lifted off the ground by a mighty shove from behind. My feet were swept from under me and I fell heavily on my butt.

Right onto the top of the hog's head!

With a loud grunt, it flicked me skyward like a bull would dispatch a pesky rodeo clown.

Before I go on, let me say that turning to flee was the best possible move I could have made. I believe it saved me from a serious goring. Had I been facing the animal when it plowed into me, my knees would have locked, providing the resistance needed for those wicked tusks to drive deep into my flesh. It wouldn't have been a pretty sight!

After being tossed into the air, as luck would have it, I landed on my feet behind two fiberglass canoe pontoons which were stacked beside the trail. I then turned to face my pursuer. Up till that point, things had happened so fast, there was no time to think. Now, the full horror of my situation revealed itself.

It's been fifteen minutes since I finished the previous paragraph. I had to stop and think. I want to describe what happened next, but I also want to avoid melodrama. Well worn clichés like, _"Staring into the face of Hell!",_ and, _"Three-hundred pounds of fury!"_ really do apply here. I just hate to be the one to write that kind of stuff.

Anyway, here I am, standing arm's length from this huge wild hog with only an eighteen-inch high barrier of fiberglass between us. The hair on its back was standing on end. Its jaws were rapidly chomping, causing the gleaming tusks to gnash together with a spine-tingling, fingernails-on-the-blackboard squeak. Glaring little bloodshot eyes were locked onto mine. The damned thing was even foaming at the mouth!

Behind me was an impassable palmetto thicket. There were no climbable trees nearby, and no weapon within reach. It wouldn't take much of a hop to carry that raging monster right over those pontoons.

Then, I had an idea.

OH NO! OH FUCK! OH NO! OH FUCK!

That was it. The only thought in my head. Nothing but pure horror and adrenaline. There wasn't a damned thing I could do. I was screwed and I knew it. I was actually living a nightmare from which there was no waking.

After threatening me for another twenty seconds or so, the beast slowly turned and started up the trail, watching me from the corner of its eye, pausing every few steps, ready to rush back, should I make a false move.

It needn't have worried.

I was rooted to the spot in sheer terror.

As it passed through my camp and disappeared into the woods, I was finally able to take a good look at it. In my opinion, this particular specimen was as big as Florida wild hogs tend to get.

The moment the sound of crackling underbrush faded, I rushed into my camp, fell on my knees, and began clawing frantically at the ground. Soon there was a plastic bag in my hand. Inside this bag, wrapped in an oily rag, was my old .38 revolver. It was buried, in case the cops ever decided to search my camp.

From that day forward, cops or no cops, that gun was never again out my reach.

Once I was sure the coast was clear, I raised my pant leg and twisted around to examine the back of my left thigh. There was a six-inch cut. Rather nasty looking, but in my judgment, not bad enough for stitches. It did occur to me that the hog's tusks might be septic, since they had been rooting in the ground all night. I then went straight into town and bought some iodine. As soon as I walked out the front door of the Wal-Mart, I applied the iodine to the wound. Eventually it healed with no problems.

My mental wound took a little longer.

It was several months before I quit pulling my gun on lizards, squirrels, and birds who happened to rustle nearby bushes unexpectedly.

Fortunately, not all of my wild neighbors had such a bad attitude. One of the few things I actually enjoyed about the camping life was observing wildlife. For some time after you pitch camp, you might think you're the only living thing around. Don't worry, once the critters get used to you being there, they'll start showing themselves.

Your first visitor will probably be a wren. These little charmers are quite bold and cheeky. There were many times I sat still, while they flitted around my chair, carefully inspecting me and all my stuff. I had a pith helmet which hung next to my chair when I wasn't wearing it. One day I reached for it and was surprised to find it full of pine needles and dried leaves. At first I thought a rat had done it. After it was emptied and hung back up, I later spotted a wren sneaking in with a beakful of debris to stuff into the hat. At the library I read that wrens will build two nests. The one they are actually going to use, and a "false" nest. Presumably, this one is to throw off predators.

During good weather I always left my clothing and towels on the clothesline. It kept them fresh and stretched their usefulness between washings. One evening at sunset, a wren began creeping all over one of my hanging shirts. After a while, it disappeared inside and apparently settled down for the night. I found this highly amusing. This went on night after night. Since this bird never soiled the article of clothing it had chosen for its nightly roost, I did nothing to discourage this activity.

One night I got home from work well after dark. My ass was dragging and all I wanted to do was to go to bed after a visit to the latrine. The wren was the very last thing on my mind. As I passed the clothesline, that stupid bird blasted out of a shirt, struck me full in the face, and streaked away into the night. I honestly thought I was going to have a heart attack! On shaking legs, I stumbled to my chair to regain my composure for a few minutes. I guess the wren was shaken up, too. He never spent the night in my clothes again.

Another amusing little visitor is the ovenbird. They only appear for a short time in the fall and spring, during their migration through this part of Florida. If anything, this bird is even more fearless than the wren. As long as I remained still, they would forage around on the ground inches from my feet. If I moved, they'd only retreat a short distance. One morning I was doing a stretching exercise. As I bent down to touch my toes, I spied an ovenbird walking up from behind me. I froze, feet wide apart and head hanging down, while he kept coming, his attention completely focused on turning leaves for whatever insects might be under them. To my amazement, he passed right between my legs without even an upward glance. One morning a bobcat came strolling through. Very unusual behavior. I made a squeaking sound by kissing the back of my hand. He briefly found this interesting, but then continued on his way. There was a nearby sandy spot on the trail which I always swept free of any debris. I would check this place every morning to see what had passed my camp in the night. More often than not I found bobcat tracks. I tried to encourage him to hang around by putting out some catnip, but he never touched it.

During warm weather, my camp was often frequented by large snakes. When I spotted them gliding in, I would instantly freeze, allowing them to pass unmolested. Sometimes they even slithered under the chair I was sitting in. These were mostly black rat snakes, corn snakes, and on two occasions, an enormous everglades rat snake, which I understand to be very rare. With the exception of pythons at the zoo, this was by far the largest snake I've ever seen. It was a uniformly dull orange color, and I would guess about 8 feet in length and as big as my forearm at its thickest part.

I always knew when a snake was coming, several seconds before it arrived.

The lizards told me.

In warm weather my camp was crawling with Cuban anoles, green anoles, and several varieties of skinks. I watched generations of them come and go, starting with the males fighting for dominance, then mating with the females, who in turn would lay their eggs under the pine needles. Then, would come dozens of the tiniest lizards imaginable. These lizards grew up with me around, and were so used to me that they barely avoided being stepped on as I moved about the camp.

However, as casually as they treated me, they certainly knew real danger when they saw it.

From time to time, all lizard social interaction would suddenly stop and every one of them would race to the nearest tree, scramble to about five feet above the ground, and assume an alert, motionless, head-down position on the trunk. The snake that spooked them would soon come into view.

The squirrels and birds kept me informed as well. Every species of predator elicits a different alarm call and body language from the concerned citizenry of the forest. Once you know what to listen for, you can tell if they're hollering about a cooper's hawk, bobcat, fox, owl, or whatever. The squirrels really went ballistic when a bobcat was on the prowl. Listening from my camp, I could track the cat's progress through the woods by the uproar the squirrels were making. Every day and night, I knew exactly what was going on in the woods by what my neighbors were saying. The only time I became alarmed was when they all shut up at the same time. They only do that when humans are walking in the woods.

Here's a bit of wildlife lore that you can impress you friends and family with. If you ever hear a mockingbird make a weird, metallic "SPROING!" sort of sound, pay attention. This sounds exactly like a silly little musical toy called a Jew's Harp. The bird will probably be on a low perch or the ground. Take note of where this bird is looking, then, carefully sneak over to that spot. You will see a snake. It's the only time a mockingbird will make that sound.

I've always found it strange that in my entire four years of living in the woods, I never encountered a venomous snake. No diamondbacks, pygmy rattlers, or cottonmouths. This habitat was perfect for them. I don't understand why they weren't there.

In the nearby creek, lived a large alligator. I seldom saw him except in March and April, when he became quite rowdy because of mating season. Then, he would serenade me with his roars, mostly at night, but sometimes during the day. He also served as a pretty good garbage disposal. I had a zero-tolerance policy concerning nocturnal pests. There were many nights I would slip out of bed, revolver in hand, to deal with a marauding coon or possum. The rat traps stayed busy as well. All of my victims were then tossed into the creek. As I returned to my slumbers, sometimes the sound of crunching and splashing could be heard. Mister Gator would live large that night. He was probably the only gator in Florida who looked forward to the sound of a gunshot.

Since I've already mentioned my personal sidearm three times, maybe we should discuss the issue of whether or not, as a homeless person, you should have a handgun in your camp. Some folks get pretty nervous about guns in general. I've been around firearms all my life and am quite comfortable with them. To me, they're just another tool. At one time or another guns have put food on my table, money in my pocket, and saved my life, or at least saved me from a serious ass whippin'.

That part about guns putting money in my pocket needs explanation.

No, I didn't rob anybody!

As a young man I briefly lived on a farm in Louisiana. To supplement my music income I hunted, skinned, and sold the pelts of various furbearing animals. I didn't want to run a winter trapline like the folks on neighboring farms did. So, I went out in the woods at night and blew on a predator call. It sounded like a dying rabbit, and when a coyote, fox, bobcat, or coon approached, looking for an easy meal, it usually ended up eating 22 caliber's worth of lead.

So, do you think you need a pistol for protection? I'm not going to tell you yes or no. Only you know that. How much trouble you can get into for having one probably depends upon where you live. I wasn't home when two cops arrived to run me out of Camp #3. While they were there, they searched my backpack and found my revolver. Miracle of miracles, they put it back! My God! How often in real life does something like _that_ happen? On their return visit they told me about finding the gun. They said they didn't see a problem with me having it. So, for you, maybe it's a matter between you and your local police. Our Charlotte County Sheriff's boys tend to be a pretty tolerant bunch.

If you keep a gun in your camp, there's one thing you must remember. Your gun is homeless, too. By that, I mean it will be exposed to the elements 24/7, just like you. That's not good for guns and it's even worse for ammunition. Moisture, humidity, and radical temperature changes will eventually kill the primers in your ammo. Primers are those little round things on the back of the cartridge which are struck by the firing pin, setting off the main powder charge. If your primer is dead, when you pull the trigger you'll get a sickening click instead of a lusty bang. If you've neglected your ammo long enough, every round in your magazine or cylinder could be a dud, and if you happen to be fighting for your life at that moment, you're in deep trouble!

One way to avoid this is to buy brand new ammunition from time to time, and when you do, also buy a bottle of nail polish. Slather this stuff all around the primer and let it dry before loading your gun. The nail polish does an excellent job of sealing the primer against moisture.

If this book ever gets published, some nervous lawyer will probably advise me to put disclaimers into this chapter. Okay, I'll go ahead and "jump the gun" on this one.

First of all, always keep your gun pointed in a safe direction. It's not a toy. Always keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot. Practicing your quick draw is a worthwhile activity, but always do it with an unloaded gun. Personally, I prefer a revolver to a semi-automatic pistol. No delicate springs, safety catches, or pulling the trigger on an empty chamber because you forgot to jack in a round during all the excitement.

If you haven't been suddenly jumped, but find yourself in a confrontation with dangerous people, don't show your gun until you absolutely must. There is still time to talk your way out of your predicament. Never lose your temper when you're armed.

And finally, if you drink too much, all the preceding advice doesn't mean a damned thing!

Insects were always a big problem. Especially ants. In its natural state, these woods were literally swarming with them. Every vine and tree branch had an endless column of them, coming and going. It was like some kind of 1950's horror movie. Keeping my camp ant-free was a never-ending task.

I found that the most economical insecticide was the 50% malathion concentrate from the garden supply store. I would mix it with water, as potent or as sparingly as I thought the pest situation warranted. The ropes and trees supporting my hammock got regular treatments, as did the clothesline. All leaf litter and pine needles were swept down to bare ground, and this area was treated as well. From time to time the storage pallets would be lifted and sprayed under. All of these precautions, plus the liberal use of the propane mosquito fogger, helped make life bearable during the summer.

I don't know if you have scorpions where you are, but down here it's good to get into the habit of banging your upside-down shoes together before putting them on in the morning. You'll be surprised at what sometimes tumbles out. Shaking out your clothes is a good idea as well.

Just about every homeless guy I know has got a portable radio in his camp. Mine was very important to me and was turned on nearly every waking hour. Depending on your particular tastes, you've got two choices in radios. Will you be using it for background noise, or will you actually be listening to it? If it's the former, then by all means go ahead and purchase the typical AM/FM radio. Then you'll be able to choose among offerings such as Good Time Oldies, Golden Oldies, or Classic Rock on the FM band. On AM you'll get to hear a nonstop procession of half-baked idiots shooting off their mouths on call-in shows.

Since you're going to be consuming handfuls of expensive batteries anyway, may I suggest getting an AM/FM/Shortwave combination radio? With the exception of some NPR programs on FM, nearly all my listening was done on shortwave. The various European english-language broadcasts held my undivided attention for hours. The quality of the news, entertainment, and current affairs programming was consistently good. Radio for the thinking man!

Listening to shortwave might seem daunting at first because of all the effort involved with trying to keep up with the daily frequency and programming schedules. You'll be running all over the dial, asking, where the hell is everybody? However, once you learn how shortwave works, all that chasing around will become easy. If you go with shortwave, I'd recommend that you find a long piece of wire to use as an antenna. Just run it from your radio to some nearby trees, and you're good to go.

This reminds me of the worst day I ever spent in my camp. It was on a Sunday. That meant no work and the library was closed. Normally, I would hang around camp and catch up on chores. However, that day it happened to be raining like hell. A nonstop downpour. So, I spent the day trapped under my tarp with nothing to do but listen to the radio. Hey, no problem. I've done that before. But, dear friends, today would be different.

I had awakened to the news that Saddam Hussein had been found hiding in a hole and captured. For the first couple of hours, all the nonstop yammering from all the talking heads, offering every conceivable angle to this story was rather interesting. No matter where I turned the dial, I found talking heads yammering about Saddam Hussein. All-day, nonstop Saddam! No escape for me, whatsoever. By the end of that long, long day my nerves were frazzled. I didn't even have any alcohol in camp, so that escape route was also cut off. By then, I would have gladly sold my soul for a bottle of whiskey and some Good Time Oldies!

If you're as impoverished as most homeless folks, your main mode of transport will probably be a second-hand bicycle with rotten tires and tubes. If you don't replace those inner tubes with the heavy-duty "thornproof" kind, you will live to regret it. Believe me, been there, done that! You won't have long to wait for your first flat tire. This _will_ happen on your way to work or some important appointment. Count on it. So remember, reinforce those inner tubes right off the bat no matter how much it costs. You'll be glad you did!

Now that circumstances have reduced you to an adult trying to get around on a child's toy, there is something I want you to understand. It makes no difference where your station in life was before, you are now at the bottom of the highway food chain. As a bike rider, you are now a prey species. There are thousands of predators in your town, ready to kill or maim you in a split second. That soccer mom in the huge SUV, talking on the cell phone while trying to deal with whining kids in the back seat at fifty miles an hour is a stalking lioness. That toothless old geezer who can barely see past the steering wheel is, believe it or not, a crouching tiger. That text-messaging teenager who just got her license and is driving a carload of giggling friends to the mall is a lurking crocodile.

Now, I'm sure these are perfectly nice folks who would never wish to harm you or anyone else, but when they are behind the wheel, they are every bit as lethal as any carnivorous jungle killer. Them predator. You prey. Got it?

America is a car nation. Our streets and highways were built to accommodate cars. Furthermore, until gas prices get so high that the middle class can't afford to drive, America will always be a car nation. As a bicyclist, you take your life in your hands every time you venture out into that Roller Derby. You don't belong there. Some skinny guy in a silly little helmet and spandex leotards would have you believe you have the same "right" to the road as those rumbling steel monsters. You see his type out there, earnestly bent over the downturned handlebars of his ridiculously expensive titanium racing bike, furiously pedaling mile after mile, while a never-ending procession of cars and trucks breeze by, eighteen inches from his left elbow. Be assured that his luck will run out someday. Out of thousands of passing vehicles, it only takes one.

I always did whatever I could to stay off the main streets. I mostly kept to the sidewalks, cut through parking lots, detoured through residential neighborhoods, that sort of thing. It took longer, but I felt safer.

Your bicycle should have as many baskets as you can manage to fit onto it. One on the front, and two on the back. You'll need them, plus your backpack, to haul your life around.

Since this bike is your only transportation, count on getting caught in the rain a lot. A two-piece plastic rainsuit is a necessity.

While I'm on this subject, I should mention the "Bike Ministry" at the Edgewater United Methodist Church in Port Charlotte. This project helps make homeless life a little more bearable. It was originally started by a fellow named Charlie Rodriguez. He died several years ago, and a couple, Paul and Linda Lawrence, are carrying on his work admirably. They take in donated used bikes, repair them, and give them away, free of charge to anyone who asks. Homeless adults and poor children are the main beneficiaries. I wish every town had a bike ministry!

# Chapter 7

### House-Sitting

As I've already mentioned, the most miserable time for homeless camping here in Florida is summer. It was also rough living in the van in that heat. One strategy I came up with to survive summertime was house-sitting. This always involved caring for people's pets while they were away on vacation.

Animals hate kennels. They'd much rather be at home, in familiar surroundings. More and more people are beginning to realize this fact. This creates a wonderful opportunity for homeless people to escape the grind of street life for a while. Unless you've lived without it, it's easy to take everyday things for granted, like lounging in front of a TV set in air-conditioned comfort, taking a shower anytime you want, and of course, our good old flush toilets.

Most of my house-sitting was done in the years I lived in my van. Back then I could easily reach the most far-flung assignments. Some of my clients, upon returning home and finding their place in satisfactory condition, would offer me money. I seldom took it. Some would offer to stock the refrigerator with my favorite foods before they left. I usually jumped at that deal. Sometimes I got really lucky and they'd let me use their car while they were gone. One rich guy in a waterfront mansion told me I could take his big, powerful boat out fishing anytime I wanted. He and his wife were touring Europe for an entire summer. Unfortunately, this boat was such a gas-guzzler that I only took it down to Boca Grande Pass one time. It remained tied up for the rest of the summer.

So, does this sound like something you'd want to do? Are you ready to begin your house-sitting career?

Well, maybe you are, and maybe you aren't.

First you need to ask yourself if you are 100% trustworthy. These people are going to trust you with everything they own. They love their pets like children. It's a very scary thing to leave it all in the hands of a stranger. Especially a stranger who admits he's homeless. In my experience, about 70% of my prospects backed out of the deal. They simply lose their nerve. I don't blame them one bit. Of course, I always made sure that the other 30% who went through with it never regretted their decision. Some of them are my friends to this day.

One woman I spoke with on the phone told me she had three Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs living in her house. She said they were completely housebroken and would let me know when they wanted to be let out. Now, this was something I really wanted to see with my own eyes! Unfortunately, she backed out before we met face to face. Oh well!

Like I said, if you're going to be a housesitter, you'd better make sure you're fanatically responsible. There is absolutely no excuse for letting these people down. Always see to it that the place is squeaky clean when the folks return. If the dog is used to being walked twice a day, then dammit, walk the dog twice a day! Don't smoke in the house. And for God's sake, never invite any of your homeless buddies over! In fact, don't even tell them where the place is. The last thing you need is to have your client's property damaged or stolen by some drunken fool. You'll be held responsible, no matter what excuse you try to give the homeowner.

If you decide to start this enterprise, the first thing to do is make up some notices. These can be handwritten, but I think it makes a better impression if they are created on a word processor. If you don't know how, your local librarian will be happy to help you on the library computer. To save printing costs, I used to limit my message to a few sentences and squeeze five or six on each page. Cut them apart with scissors, and you're good to go.

As I recall, my fliers were worded something like this:

HOUSE-SITTER AVAILABLE TO CARE FOR PETS, PLANTS, LIVESTOCK, PROVIDE SECURITY, AND TAKE MESSAGES. HONEST, RELIABLE NON-SMOKER. LONG OR SHORT TERM. THIS SERVICE IS FREE OF CHARGE. GOOD REFERENCES.

I would then provide a third-party phone number, pager number, e-mail address, or some way to contact me. I've used them all at one time or another.

Most veterinarian's waiting rooms will have a bulletin board in it. These are fabulous places to post your fliers. The same is true for most pet shops. If livestock is your thing, the feed store is where to hang your notice. To avoid the problem of people taking the entire flier home with them, I would make those little tear-off tabs at the bottom, each tab containing my cell phone number. It also pays to make the round of bulletin boards once a week to make sure your notices are still up.

It won't take long for the responses to arrive. One thing you'll be asked is why you are doing it for free. Go ahead and be honest. Tell them you're homeless and do this for an occasional place to stay. Don't feel insulted if they back out. Most of them do. You'll hit pay dirt sooner or later. There is a big demand for this service.

Most of the pets you'll be dealing with will be dogs and cats. Sometimes it will be parrots and other birds. My advice to you is to pass on the birds. I have some parrot horror stories I'll share with you later. Your clientele will range from filthy rich to filthy poor. From beachfront condos to rundown trailers, and everything in between. Looking back, I'm struck by the way I was treated by clients from different income levels. The rich were unfailingly polite and respectful, even though they knew I was homeless. The poorer ones often treated me like some sort of peon, and were sometimes downright abusive. I guess there is such a thing as "class" after all.

When I first started out, I wasn't too discriminating. I'd house-sit for anyone. Maybe that's the way to accumulate a lot of reference letters. These are very important. As soon as the homeowner returns, and assuming that person is happy with your service, ask them to write you a reference letter. Make copies and build up a folder of these things. They'll open doors for you. Literally.

Though all of my reference letters spoke highly of me, I do have a personal favorite, which I'd like to share. Here it is, word for word:

To Whom It May Concern: I am writing this letter to recommend Brute Bruttomesso as an exceptional housesitter. I recently required the services of Brute when I needed to leave my home for 1 month. Upon his prompt arrival at the time I requested, he was completely helpful in getting my things into my vehicle and assisting me in many other ways in order to get on my way. He was very thorough in his preparations for staying at my home and took great care in understanding all my personal needs.

It is the first time I have ever used a house sitter other than a family member and I was delighted with the way he maintained everything while I was away. My dogs were well taken care of and my home was exactly as I had left it except it was actually cleaner. I am very particular about the way my things are in my home and I was just thrilled that I could come home to everything in perfect order. I can without hesitation recommend him for his honesty, responsibility, and overall care and consideration for my property and animals.

While I was away he did not call or require anything from me which left me with a very good feeling. He handled everything on his own without the need to interrupt my vacation in any way. I was uneasy about being gone from my home for such a long time but his sensitivity to my needs made my trip much more relaxing than I could have imagined.

Brute took such good care of my home and kept it so clean and spotless that I would not know that anyone had even been in my home. I just cannot say enough good things about this experience. I will refer him to all my friends as well as my many clients that have very high end homes in the most exclusive neighborhoods in the area. I would trust and recommend him to anyone who is in need of the security of a responsible person looking after their home while they are away. Please feel free to contact me at any time with any questions, as I would be happy to take the time to answer any inquiries.

Sincerely,

Molly Anderson

* *

Hey, now do you see why it's my favorite letter? Good Golly, Miss Molly! You're makin' me blush! I loved watching Molly's place. It was way out in the boonies, at the end of this long, bumpy dirt road at the edge of the everglades. She was a professional artist and her house was colorful and decorated with many interesting artworks and artifacts. Kind of like living in a museum. That gig came to an end when my van blew up. I was then stuck three counties away from her with no transportation.

Not all of my house-sitting experiences were sweetness and light. Some of the folks who answered my ads were pure white trash. One family left me a sink full of dirty dishes to remember them by. I got mad and vowed that they would find those dishes exactly as they'd left them upon their return. After a few days I couldn't stand it anymore and washed them.

When I first arrived at this house, I got excited because there were two satellite dishes in the front yard. I figured I was going to be in TV watcher's heaven. As it turned out, Heaven did figure into it. Every channel on the television was religious programming. No news, no entertainment. Nothing but religion. No matter where I surfed, I was met by starry-eyed preachers, howling and thumping on their bibles. I'm guessing that this family got all these channels for free. Their house was a pigpen and their dog was a spoiled little monster. After all that, and considering the fact that I drove them to and from the airport in the middle of the night, I couldn't even get these people to write me a reference letter. JESUS!

I don't know what it is about bird lovers, but in my experience they tend to be a pretty squirrelly bunch. They never stop at just one or two parrots. They have to literally fill their houses with them. I'm not kidding! Every room in the house is filled with bird cages. I've been involved with two such households.

The absolute worst-case scenario occurred during the Christmas holiday of 2002. This was definitely the house-sit from hell. This family drove their motorhome to Kentucky for a couple of weeks and left me to care for 25 parrots and three dogs.

That in itself would have been bad enough, but things were soon to become very interesting. Before I get to the kicker, let me describe what it's like to deal with 25 parrots. Every morning at first light, you must cut up enough fresh fruit and vegetables to feed a Third-World village. The kitchen counter would be piled high with corn on the cob (each ear cut into quarters), carrots, apples, grapes, squash, green beans, broccoli, and seeing as how it's been a few years, I'm sure I'm forgetting to mention some item. In addition to this stuff, each bird got a bowl of parrot seed and their water bowls were changed every day. A sickening amount of this expensive produce ended up, uneaten, on the bottom of the cage, to be discarded with the shitty newspapers at the end of the day.

Cleaning cages was always a time consuming and dangerous chore. In any group of parrots there is always a percentage that are utterly psychotic. If you've never been bitten by a crazed parrot, macaw, or cockatoo, let me describe what it's like. Try to imagine an angry bodybuilder on steroids grabbing your finger with a pair of pliers and refusing to let go.

A breed of parrot called the african grey is the best talker. They sound exactly like the people or things they are imitating. They don't sound like parrots talking like people. They sound like people talking like people. One bird sounded exactly like a ringing telephone. The cordless phone in this house produced a strange little beep when you picked it up and put it down.

Every day I was treated to the following monologue: _RING! RING! beep. HELLO? YES. OKAY. OKAY. OKAY. THANK YOU. GOODBYE! beep._ This was done in perfect imitation of the woman who lived there.

Now, if your think you're going to invite your friends over to hear this stuff, think again. Those same little bastards who talk your ear off all day will instantly clam up and stare at the stranger you've brought into the room. The moment that person leaves, they'll all start yammering again. God, I hate parrots! Anyway, here's the kicker I promised you. This guy had three dogs. One black lab, one miniature collie, and some little mixed-breed runt. It is significant to point out that the two little dogs were males. The lab was a female, _GOING INTO HEAT!_ That wretched family left me with a bitch in heat and two little dogs who couldn't seem to service her no matter how they tried. And believe me, they tried! There was a never-ending uproar of barking, chasing, snarling, fighting, shitting, and pissing. Oh, and I guess I should mention one more little detail. All of this activity took place... _INSIDE THE GODDAMNED HOUSE!!_

There was a fenced-in backyard, but something was wrong with the fence and the dogs could slip under it at will. The very first day I was there, the lab made her escape, with the other two in hot pursuit. I chased them all over the neighborhood. I only had to catch the lab. The two sex fiends eagerly followed us home. From then on, I had to keep all three indoors, except for brief outings when I stood guard next to the defective fence.

December in south Florida is the perfect time to turn off the air conditioning, fling all the windows open, and enjoy the fresh air. Not at this house! It seems the teenage stepson was some sort of delinquent who would sneak out in the middle of the night to do dope with his friends. So, the stepdad bolted every window in the house shut. At bedtime he would set the burglar alarm to sound off if anyone tried to _leave_ the house.

Good grief! What a family!

Anyway, here I am, trapped in a stuffy, stinky hellhole with non-opening windows, refereeing a nonstop dogfight. No matter how I tried, I couldn't get any of the dogs to relieve themselves outside. However, they certainly had no problem relieving themselves on the floor after I'd gone to bed. Every morning I had a huge mess to deal with. And I haven't even mentioned what I went through with the 25 parrots!

On second thought, I think I _will_ mention one incident with this family's parrots. I was warned that I might have trouble with a particular pair of birds sharing one cage.

Trouble doesn't begin to decribe it!

These two would lunge at my hand in full attack mode the moment I opened the cage. There was simply no way I could clean their cage while on my rounds.

However, it didn't take me long to figure out a solution.

I would go ahead and clean all the other cages and leave this cage alone until after sunset. Then, I would enter the pitch-black room wearing a headlamp, which I would shine directly into the faces of my antagonists while I cleaned their cage in perfect safety. This bright light utterly dazzled them, and they sat motionless on their perches as I worked around them.

There were many times I felt like deserting my post, but did not. After all, a promise is a promise. When this trashy family finally returned after the longest two weeks of my life, I didn't even ask for a reference letter. I just wanted these people out of my life forever.

All in all, however, the nice house-sitting experiences far outnumbered the bad ones. I truly enjoyed the company of most of the dogs and cats in my care. I did have an occasional problem with pets wanting to sleep with me. They were used to sleeping in the bed, or at least in the room with their owners. I didn't permit that. This led to some friction in the beginning of my stay. I always slept alone behind a closed door. For the first few nights there would be some thumping, scratching, whining, and mewing at the door, but most of these animals would get used to the new arrangement after a while. Then, peace would prevail. I always tried to sleep in a guest bedroom so the animals could sleep in the master bedroom, if that's what they were used to.

I always enjoyed teaching dogs and cats new tricks. And, in the case of parrots, new phrases. My favorite was _"WE WANT BRUTE!"_ in a loud voice. I reckon folks will never forget 'ol Brute. Parrots live a long time. Am I sadistic, or what?

# Chapter 8

### The Ordeal And The Miracle

When I started writing this book, I was still homeless. It was supposed to be a how-to book with a few amusing anecdotes thrown in. I never dreamed it would become a memoir. I started it on a five-dollar, 1947 Smith-Corona portable typewriter in my camp, and finished it on a thousand-dollar computer in my house. You may recall, in the Forward, how I described my path out of homelessness as "improbable" and "spectacular". Now, after all this time has passed, I still shake my head in awe at how it happened.

This chain of events began the day I became aware of the existence of the Charlotte County Homeless Coalition. I had been camping in Charlotte County for a year and hated the place. If you were a retiree who likes golf and fishing, then you were home. If you were anybody else, you weren't. There was nothing here! The only reason I stayed was to catch a ride to our band gigs by camping next to Highway 776.

Then, in April 2003, I was suddenly fired from the band. Now, I had no reason to stay. I came up with a plan to acquire a Class B CDL "Learner's Permit" and move to Ft. Myers, where they had a pretty good scheduled bus system, which would enable me to search far and wide for a truck driving job.

I suppose I should explain what a CDL is, for those of you who don't know. It's a Commercial Drivers License. Back in the 1970's and 80's, truck drivers had a thing called a Chauffeur's License. They weren't too hard to get. I even had one. I sometimes drove trucks when I was between bands.

Around 1990, the government switched to the CDL system, which is a complete pain in the ass, full of chickenshit regulations and expensive, petty harassments. These licenses are much more difficult to get. In 2003, it seemed to me that the "Learner's Permit" would be my steppingstone to a full-fledged CDL. Getting one of these permits proved to be an utter waste of time, but I didn't know it then.

Anyway, one day I was sitting in the Port Charlotte library, reading the local newspaper. I saw an article describing the local homeless coalition's effort at conducting a homeless census. Volunteers came barging into the camps at two o'clock in the morning, accompanied by, of all things, sheriff's deputies, presumably brought along for protection. People were rousted from their sleep and interviewed, thoroughly intimidated by this police presence.

At the library, where homeless people tend to congregate, I certainly got an earful from some of these interviewees. They were all pretty outraged at this heavy-handed treatment. My strict policy of camping in isolation had vindicated itself once again. Nobody had disturbed my slumbers that night!

I felt like gloating a little. I looked up the coalition's website and found their e-mail address. Then, on the library computer, I sent a zinger entitled: _YOU MISSED ME!_ In this message, I mockingly suggested they should have tried a little harder to find my well-hidden camp, and how I was now feeling passed-over and unloved.

Much to my surprise, I got a quick reply from Ana Romillo, the head honcho. She said she enjoyed my letter and would like to meet me sometime. Their office and soup kitchen were on the other side of town, too far to ride my bike. Later on, while on that side of town visiting the drivers license bureau, concerning the CDL learner's permit, I had my chance to drop in at the tiny soup kitchen. When I told my name to the door attendant, Ana, who had overheard me from her nearby office, rushed out to meet me. The rest, as they say, is history. We became great friends. And, as I eventually met the rest of the office staff, volunteers, and kitchen personnel, my collection of great friends grew.

Ana Romillo, a tiny Filipino-American, is one of those personalities who can persuade anybody to do anything. I wish I had half her energy. It wasn't long before she had me volunteering as a driver/bodyguard for their female "Street Outreach Worker". We visited the camps, handing out supplies and sometimes transporting residents to a doctor or some other service.

New friends or not, I still wanted to try my luck in Ft. Myers. So, I packed my hammock and personal effects into my canoe, and set sail. This trip took several days because I didn't have an outboard motor. I depended entirely on sail power and paddling. After prowling up and down the Caloosahatchee River for a couple of days, I finally chose a swampy area on Billy Creek for my campsite. This is where I had my run-in with the drug dealer five months later.

It was in Ft. Myers that I learned my CDL Learner's Permit, for which I'd studied and tested, wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. I was hoping to get a job, and later take the CDL road test in my employer's truck. The law says that a learner's permit holder, while at the wheel of a truck, must be accompanied by a CDL holder. Of course, no employer in his right mind would pay two guys to do what one guy should be doing. My plan never got off the ground. I couldn't get my foot in the door anywhere.

After five wasted months in Ft. Myers, an e-mail arrived with an offer I couldn't refuse. It seems the Charlotte County Homeless Coalition's headquarters had burned down and they were about to open a new, larger facility. They also had acquired a donated 10-passenger van which they were planning to use to bring homeless folks to dinner. They needed a driver for this van, and they wanted it to be me. This job would pay $6 an hour, three hours a night, seven days a week.

I told them I was on my way.

The trip down the Caloosahatchee and up Pine Island Sound went without incident. I camped at Pineland, and the following morning, set out to cross the open waters of lower Charlotte Harbor between Bokeelia and Cape Haze, a long, risky journey for motorized craft, and almost unheard of for canoes. It was now December, bringing with it strong cold fronts. As soon as I got offshore, I realized I'd bitten off more than my heavily-laden canoe could chew. It suddenly got windy and raised a never-ending series of steep, brutal waves which pounded the boat mercilessly. I couldn't turn back, the wind was from the wrong direction. I was forced to go on, toward the thin line of land, miles away on the horizon.

The waves continually crashed into the boat, soaking me and my cargo. I had to bail furiously with a cut-off clorox bottle. As loud as the wind was, my screaming and cursing were louder. I was doing my best to ease the pressure on the rigging and still make forward progress.

Then, about halfway across, I heard a loud pop. Then, more pops, one after another. To my horror, I saw the gunwale rivets being ripped out on the starboard side. The stay wire on the mast was pulling a big chunk out of the side of my canoe! The mast began heeling at a freakish angle, nearly touching the water on the port side.

Now, I was in big trouble. I knew that if I were dismasted, there would be no way to control which way the boat was pointing and I'd be swamped. Naturally, there wasn't another boat anywhere to be seen.

The ripping and popping stopped, and I was relieved to see the stay wire still attached precariously to the starboard side. This prevented the mast from falling completely overboard. The sail was still catching some wind and I could see that if I was very careful to keep the bow as far into the wind as possible, I could still crawl in the direction I wanted to go. So, ever so slowly I struggled on in this fashion, still bailing and keeping a sharp eye on what was left of the rigging. Hours later, I slid ashore among the deserted mangroves of Cape Haze.

After resting and drying my sleeping bag in the wind and sun, I jury-rigged a mast stay out of rope, passing it under the canoe and tying it in place. I then continued up the "west wall" of Charlotte Harbor, across Tippecanoe Bay, up Sam Knight Creek, and finally reached my old friend, Camp #4 in the middle of the night. It was sure good to be back on dry land. The camp was exactly as I'd left it five months before, undisturbed by human intrusion. Do I know how to hide a camp, or what?

During my maritime ordeal, everything in the boat got soaked with saltwater, and my old camera, a Chinon Bellami 35mm, was ruined. That broke my heart, because many of my favorite memories of the last twenty years had been recorded with that great little camera.

With Ana Romillo and Leslie Martin

For the next eighteen months the Charlotte County Homeless Coalition became the center of my universe. Their new building turned out to be a fifteen-minute bike ride from my camp. I wasn't making much money driving their van, but then again, I didn't need much. I would eat every evening with the passengers I'd brought to dinner. The food was donated by local restaurants, so the meals were usually very good.

I learned a lot about chronically homeless people during my employment there. Before I got that job, I camped by myself and avoided socializing with many people. Now, my job forced me to associate with large numbers of homeless people every day of the week. In addition to the nightly supper run, I was often called upon to carry folks and supplies around town on one errand or another. I saw and heard a lot.

Male homeless run the gamut, from nice, sober, reliable fellows who just happen to be down on their luck at the moment, to the criminally insane who need to locked in an institution somewhere. Most fall somewhere in between. The vast majority are harmless sorts who've just given up. Alcohol is all they've got left.

Female homeless, on the other hand, are almost always profoundly mentally ill. They tend to be your stereotypical "bag ladies". They sometimes created a great deal of excitement. There was no way to predict when they would suddenly go hog wild, for reasons known only to themselves and their demons. There was also no way to calm them down once they went berserk. These women scared the hell out of me.

It appears to me that among the chronically homeless, men outnumber women by at least a hundred to one. The reason, I believe, is that men tend to be too proud to ask for help. When I hit the skids, it never occurred to me to ask my friends to take me in. I felt this was a problem I could solve myself and I would start losing friends if I began acting needy. Women will do anything it takes to avoid ending up on the street. I'm sure there are thousands of them sleeping on couches belonging to friends and relatives across America tonight. I value my friendships too much to wear out my welcome that way.

Remember how scary my wild hog story was? Would you like to hear another scary story?

Good!

Donny and Warren were a couple of guys who nobody in their right mind wanted to camp with.

For good reason. It was dangerous.

Donny was as psychotic as they come. Warren wasn't quite that bad, but he wore this huge bowie knife on his belt and was fond of pulling it out and intimidating people with it from time to time.

Donny would harass me while I was driving the supper van, poking me and saying stuff like, "Hey Brute, can I wear your hat?" or, "Hey Brute, can I drive?" That sort of nonsense. I just laughed it off. One evening I was trying to drive in a violent thunderstorm during rush hour. The van contained at least 15 passengers and the windshield was all fogged up. I was really tense and trying to concentrate on my driving. Donny started his routine. I told him to leave me alone. He kept it up, and I informed him that he was in danger of being barred from the supper van. He then proceeded to cuss me up and down for the rest of the trip.

When Ana was informed of this, she barred Donny from the van and dining room for a week. To say he didn't accept his punishment very well would be an understatement.

A couple of days later, while making my rounds, one of the homeless guys climbed aboard the van and immediately said, "Brute, I think there's something you should know. Donny and Warren have been visiting all the camps and asking if any of us know where your camp is. They say they're gonna get you!"

A couple of miles down the road, I picked up another guy. The first words out of his mouth were, "Brute, there's something you oughta know..."

I certainly appreciated these warnings. I then understood I was in great danger.

When I came to work the next day, the revolver was in my pocket. If they made their move, I had a pretty good idea where and when it would be. After dinner I hauled everybody back to the different points around town where I'd pick them up. By the time I got back to the coalition, it was nighttime, the place was closed, and no one was around. At the time, this building was the only one for blocks around and completely surrounded by woods. A very lonely place. I then had to park and lock the van, unlock my bicycle from the rack, and ride three dark, desolate miles back to camp. If there was going to be an ambush, this would be the time and place.

Night after night, I cautiously made my way back to my camp by taking all kinds of detours and stopping at intervals to watch behind me. I knew that if I were jumped by these two, I'd have to shoot fast and straight. Donny first. I knew both men. Warren would probably dive for cover at the first sound of gunfire. Donny would keep coming, even if he were mortally wounded. He'd be very hard to stop. This was the only time I recall wishing that I owned a more powerful handgun holding more rounds than my five-shot snubby.

Several weeks went by without any sign of them. Then the whole town was rocked by some big news.

On Thanksgiving night of 2004, some fool stopped by Donny and Warren's camp for a night of drinking. Donny killed him with a baseball bat. Smashed his skull so badly that the eyeballs popped out of his head.

With Donny safely in jail, I could finally relax. Without his fearless leader, Warren became a shadow of his old self. As meek as a lamb. When you'd look into his eyes, he seemed lost and confused.

By the end of 2004, I had been camping for nearly three years and was damned sick of it. My stupid "Learner's Permit" expired after one year and I still hadn't been able to get a truck driving job. Also, being around all these backsliding homeless people was beginning to take a psychological toll on me. I was becoming terribly depressed. I wanted desperately to see just one success story. I wanted to see that one _could_ work his way out of homelessness. Was I really destined to become one of these hopeless people? This was not supposed to become a permanent lifestyle! Everything I tried had failed. This was no life. I might as well just put a bullet through my brain and get it over with.

This despairing remark about shooting myself happened to be uttered out loud. Leslie Martin, the "Street Outreach Worker" with whom I was working that day, heard it. That moment changed my life. The next thing I knew, she'd made an appointment for me to see Dr. Gerald Ross, the head honcho at the local mental health crisis center. I went along with it, figuring it couldn't do any harm.

I really enjoyed my sessions with Dr. Ross. It was nice to finally get some things off my chest. He put me on Lexapro, an anti-depressant which helped me quite a bit.

But, the real breakthrough came when I expressed my frustration at my inability to work my way out of the woods, no matter how I tried. He asked me if vocational training would help. I supposed so. He then said, "We can make that happen. We can send you to school." I told him I was listening. He made a quick phone call, and a guy named Tony came in from another part of the building. Tony was the vocational rehabilitation counselor. He asked me what I like to do and I told him drive trucks. I was then informed that they could send me to truck driving school, free of charge. Now things were really getting interesting!

Tony then warned me that this would take a while. There would be a lot of signing papers, jumping through hoops, and waiting. Followed by more signing of papers, jumping through hoops, and waiting.

So, for the next six months I signed, jumped, waited, camped out, and kept driving the supper van. In the meantime, somebody had donated a 1983 Subaru to the coalition. It sat in the parking lot for months and I never paid any attention to it. The closest truck driving school was all the way over in Palm Beach County, on the other side of the state.

It occurred to Ana Romillo that if I was going over there, I would need my own car.

She said I could have the Subaru if I could get it running. I went outside and looked it over. The paint job was perfect. The upholstery was perfect. The tires had plenty of tread on them. It only had 70,000 miles, and it had only one owner, a little old lady who hardly took it anywhere. Plus, it was free! Hey, how could I go wrong?

Ahem... I could, and I did. Fifteen hundred bucks in repairs and a million bucks worth of heartache later, this car had earned its nickname: "The Subaru From Hell". I've never seen anything like this car! It never failed to let me down when I needed it most. Of course, if you make it to the end of this book, you'll understand that this Subaru was sent from Heaven, not Hell, and it had an important mission to perform. But, I'm getting ahead of my story.

Well, the big day finally came when I walked through the front door of the Sage Truck Driving School in Riviera Beach. Not only did the State of Florida pay for my schooling, but they also put me up in a nice hotel for six weeks. This second chance in life meant everything to me, so I really busted my ass and graduated with a 98.3 GPA and a brand-new Class A CDL with all endorsements.

My 98.3 Grade Point Average could have been closer to a hundred if not for one particular incident. My written test scores were about 100%. I can't recall any mistakes, because I lived like a monk in my hotel room and studied like there was no tomorrow. However, actually taking the wheel of one of these 18-wheeled monsters presents a whole 'nother set of problems.

Driving one of these things for the first time is very stressful. These huge trailers seem to have a mind of their own! There are several tricky maneuvers one must master in order to graduate.

As I recall, there was backing up in a straight line without your trailer wiggling all over the place like a snake, parallel parking without your trailer wheels squashing orange cones left and right, taking tight corners without your trailer running over those damnable orange cones, and, most nightmarish of all, a hideous contortion called the "Alley Dock".

I'm not even going to try to describe this ordeal. Pushing a giant, unmanageable rope into a garden hose, while holding the rope three feet back, is about as close as I can come.

Anyway, in the beginning, we had this instructor who, as each truck arrived in front of the "Alley Dock", would jump up on the running board, and, while clinging to the side of the cab, offer advice through the open window on how to proceed with this stunt.

There were three trucks, circling round and round this giant parking lot, practicing the various maneuvers, and this guy was running to and fro, waving his arms and shouting instructions.

Everything was going along smoothly. We were making progress.

Suddenly, our instructor suddenly disappeared, to be replaced with an overweight fellow who told us that he had twisted his knee jumping off of a running board a few days previously.

Because of his injury, this guy sat, day after day, on the wooden steps of the trailer parked at the edge of the parking lot, grading papers, or performing some sort of paperwork, while his students ran amok in their trucks.

While we generally had most of the course mastered, when we hit the alley dock, everything went haywire. There was no way on earth we could back those trailers into that confined space without creating havoc among the cones. Then, frustrated, we would put our rigs into forward gear and take off around the course again.

All the while, this guy would sit on the steps and do his paperwork.

Nobody in our class was successful in executing the alley dock parking maneuver at all!

After several days of this, I confronted the school's head honcho and complained.

"I don't like your attitude!" says he.

"I don't like my attitude, either! But, passing this course means everything in the world to me!", says I.

So, it ended up to where, on the day of my final exam, I was allowed to drive around the course several times, docking and undocking, while the fat guy sat on the steps, a hundred yards away, with his papers.

Looking back, I should have sounded the air horn each time I successfully executed the alley dock, that being about one out of five attempts.

But, I didn't. In fact, I was concentrating so much on my driving, that I didn't even think about him. Maybe he noticed, anyway.

So, when he joined me in the cab for my final driving exam, I did everything right, except the alley dock. I screwed it up completely!

The fat guy said, "I'm going to go ahead and give you your CDL", and that was fine with me!

One incident which occurred while I was there serves to demonstrate the caliber of the friends I am blessed with.

The classroom portion of my schooling was finished and it was time for the hands-on driver training. The driving range was located at the Palm Beach International Airport, many miles from my hotel. This phase of my training would begin at 4AM, Monday morning.

The brakes on the Subaru went out on Friday evening.

No mechanic I called could even dream of finding brake parts for a 22 year-old Japanese car on such short notice.

There were no buses running at four o'clock in the morning.

I called Ana and told her I was screwed. She told me not to worry. The very next morning, two ladies from the coalition, Rhoadie Ladd and Connie Thrasher, drove over from Port Charlotte, picked me up at the hotel, and took me to Enterprise Rent-a-Car. The coalition rented a car for me to use!

I kept this rental car for the week it took for my next set of friends to come through for me in my hour of need.

Bob and Pegi Sonquist, former house-sitting clients turned good friends, found some brakes and made the trip across the state to install them in the hotel parking lot.

Hey, has ol' Brute got friends, or what?

Upon returning to Port Charlotte, I started sending online applications to various long haul trucking companies around the nation. Since I was still homeless, I figured the traveling life was right for me. I could live in the truck's sleeper cab and save a lot of money for the future. I could also realize my dream of living in a mountain state like Montana or Idaho.

So, I sent some applications out that way.

I soon got a response from a flatbed company in Montana. They wanted me to come to orientation.

All of the valuables Bob and Pegi had been storing for me were packed into the Subaru. Musical equipment, sporting goods, stage clothes, family photos, all of it.

There was hardly room for me!

At the last minute, I got a bad feeling about that Subaru, and asked Ana Romillo for a loan. Without hesitation, she gave me a thousand dollars in cash. Then, with a great deal of fanfare and teary farewells, I drove off to start my new life in Montana.

As you might recall, the title of this chapter mentions an ordeal.

My lifelong habit has been to suppress the memory of particularly hideous life events. The way I see it, living it the first time was painful enough. Why keep bringing it up?

I'm not going to enjoy writing the next few pages. Oh well, here we go! Let's get on with "The Ordeal".

The Subaru blew a head gasket in Leesville, Louisiana. I didn't want to spend my last dime replacing this gasket, and besides, there wasn't time. I was expected in Montana in a few days.

So, I rented a storage unit big enough to hold the car, and walked away with only a duffle bag filled with clothes. I left all my musical equipment, sporting goods, and other non-essentials in the car.

I was surprised to find there was no Greyhound bus station in the area, because Fort Polk, a huge army base, was located there. The closest one was in Alexandria, a ninety-five dollar taxi ride from Leesville.

Maybe I was just young, tough, adventurous, or stupid, but I don't seem to remember cross-country bus travel being such an ordeal in 1971, when I was a twenty year-old sailor on leave.

Now, in July of 2005, changing buses was a horrid, surreal experience. At every station, frenzied throngs surged toward the awaiting bus like it was the last helicopter out of Saigon in 1975.

I truly hate being swept along by a mob.

The last leg of this trip was the worst part. Something went wrong with the toilet, and the whole bus absolutely reeked. Then, the air conditioner quit. Shortly after that, the bus broke down in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming. Nothing but rolling prairie as far as the eye could see.

At first, the driver was going to make us all stay on the bus until help arrived. Then, he thought better of it when he saw that a riot was fixing to break out.

We all stood around in the hot sun for a while. Then, one of the passengers announced that he was a diesel mechanic. The driver must have figured he had nothing to lose by letting this guy diddle with the engine.

Damn, if this fellow didn't somehow get the bus started!

If we all weren't so hot and tired, I'm sure we would have hoisted this hero onto our shoulders and paraded around the bus, bedecking him with garlands of cactus flowers before reboarding.

I finally arrived in Missoula after enduring the most wretched 48 hours I can recall in my life. And to think, I paid good money for that experience!

The trucking company put me up in a motel, and I spent a week at orientation, waiting for my trainer to come in off the road.

Every new hire had to travel six weeks with a trainer before he could be assigned his own truck.

It turns out I drew the proverbial "Trainer From Hell".

One of the foulest, most ignorant men I've ever met.

Ugly, mean, hideously obese, filthy on the outside, and as I would later learn, within. He never tired of telling me of his sexual prowess with his twelve-inch penis. It got to the point where I dreaded sharing a booth with him at truckstop restaurants.

I could pretty much count on him making some crude, suggestive remark to the waitress.

It's a good thing we weren't wearing shirts with the company name on them!

He told me the company had him on probation for sexually harassing one of the office ladies.

He was only allowed to keep his job if he didn't speak to her at all when he visited the office in Missoula.

What a charmer!

He was also the only full-grown white man I've ever seen pick his nose. When my turn came to drive, I felt like spraying the steering wheel and gearshift knob with Lysol.

This guy also regaled me with tales of how pathetic all of his former trainees were. "That asshole was fucked up!" and, "This guy wasn't worth a shit!"

One by one, they had all washed out of his program in disgrace.

If anyone actually made the grade, I didn't hear about it.

In driving school, they taught us to keep accurate logbooks. The law doesn't look kindly on truckers falling asleep and wiping out large swaths of local humanity and highway infrastructure. There were only a certain amount of hours we were allowed to drive each day. We had to log these hours.

My trainer had all kinds of logbook tricks to get around this inconvenient regulation, so we could keep driving, when we were supposed to be sleeping, in order to maximize the company's profits, regulations be damned!

When I tried to do it the way I'd been taught in school, he'd yell at me and bemoan the fact that I couldn't seem to figure out how to do my logbook "the right way".

One time, I went without eating a bite of food for thirty-six hours. He simply refused to stop anyplace where I could even buy a takeout sandwich. He said I could eat stuff out of his smelly little cooler. I'd rather have eaten road kill.

I guess he was trying to teach me something.

As bad as putting up with this character was, I was about to encounter an even bigger problem.

When I accepted this job, I had no idea what flatbedding was about.

I just wanted to move to Montana.

This company hauled mostly lumber, aluminum, and steel on open flatbed trailers.

Well, not quite open.

Every load had to be tarped, to protect it from the elements.

So, you might say, go ahead and throw a tarp over it and stop complaining!

Okay, fine, but let me explain something about flatbed tarping.

Each truck carried three tarps. Two lumber tarps, weighing 125 pounds each, and one "top tarp", weighing 175 pounds. These tarps were made of rubberized canvas and studded with dozens of sewn-in steel rings, to be snubbed down with dozens of bungee cords. If the forklift operator at the lumber yard didn't lift your tarp onto the load for you, then it didn't get lifted at all.

So, you'd better be polite to the forklift operator!

Once they were unrolled, these things were enormous!

Trying to secure these tarps, while perched on top of a huge load of lumber on a windy day, you may take up hang-gliding whether you want to or not!

Our company had a policy that no driver could stand upright and walk around on top of his load. We were told to crawl on our hands and knees, back and forth up there for the several hours it took to tarp a load.

Seeing as how I had just celebrated my 54th birthday the day I got this job, I'll bet that chiropractors and knee specialists for miles around were having wet dreams about me.

Oh, let me tell you a little more about the 175-pound "top tarp".

This was part of our "side kit", which we also carried on racks under the trailer. This consisted of a bunch of plywood slats, aluminum supports for these slats, and steel hoops, over which the top tarp was draped and lashed down.

All of this, when assembled, formed a cocoon around the huge rolls of aluminum and steel we often hauled. Once this kit was up, it somewhat resembled the covered wagons of the old pioneer west.

Break out the side kit.

Set up the side kit.

Tear down the side kit.

Stow the side kit.

Unroll and tarp the lumber.

Roll and stow the lumber tarps again.

On and on it went, load after load. Rain or shine.

Oh yeah, shine.

As rough as all this physical labor was on a guy my age, the sun was my real enemy. In my enthusiasm to be a flatbedder, I had forgotten about a lifelong health problem of mine. If I try to work in the summertime sun for very long, I get real sick, real fast.

So, in Chinese Camp, California, temperature 107 degrees, and a little town in Wisconsin whose name I've forgotten, temperature 100 degrees, and elsewhere, I started having heat-induced fainting spells while tarping loads.

Drinking gallons of PowerAde, wearing a hat, taking frequent breaks, nothing helped.

It was the beginning of the end.

After six weeks of this, things came to a head.

My trainer discarded me onto his heap of failed, untrainable, fucked-up alumni. I was summarily fired and dropped off in Nashville, Tennessee, there to find my own way home.

I'm certain that the cautionary tale of my downfall is being passed on to today's trainees, even as we speak.

However, I do have one consolation. I've heard that in sub-zero weather, the tarps freeze into the shapes of the loads they're covering and only a Herculean effort can make them stowable again.

I suppose it's best I got fired when I did. I'd rather not deal with frozen tarps. Summertime tarps were bad enough!

What to do now?

I quickly decided to go back to Louisiana, fetch my car, somehow get it running, and high-tail it back to Florida, where, among friends, I could nurse my wounds and regroup. Since my dear trainer never allowed me to turn on the truck's radio, I was completely out of touch with the breaking news that the rest of America was already aware of. So, when I boarded the bus for Louisiana, I had no idea that someone named Katrina was on her way to meet me.

After another series of hideous bus rides back to Alexandria, I had to pay another $95 for a taxi over to Leesville. I got a motel room and set to work on my car. I found some stuff at the auto parts store, which is poured into the radiator and is supposed to seal gaskets.

Much to my surprise, it worked.

With the Subaru now running, but confused and demoralized by my recent career setback and all my other bad luck, I made the stupid decision to start back to Florida the day after Hurricane Katrina struck. _THE DAY AFTER!_

What the hell was I thinking?

This should be a lesson to everyone. Never make major decisions when you are exhausted and heartbroken.

As I slowly picked my way across a ravaged southern Mississippi, steering around fallen trees and powerlines, and searching for detours down back roads when the way became impassable, I began to realize my mistake.

I couldn't turn back.

I was almost out of gas. When I stopped for the night, I found myself in a Mad Max apocalyptic end-of-the-world-looking landscape.

The devastated town was pitch black, no lights to be seen anywhere, no cell phone service, no land line, and of course, no gasoline.

I once again found myself caught in another panicked, swirling mob. Instead of trying to catch a bus, this raging sea of humanity was trying to find food, water, and gasoline.

Here in America, we've had it too good for too long. We've developed the classic "it can't happen here" attitude. Our television screens show us social chaos and governmental breakdown in places like Somalia and Haiti, and we go on assuming that we're too progressive and civilized to let that sort of thing happen to us.

Then, out of nowhere, a hurricane.

Now, as we wander among the ruins, we stare in disbelief at how many of our fellow citizens are acting. Hey! Put that back! That doesn't belong to you! Where the hell did these guys come from? Where the hell are the cops?

Sure, the authorities would be happy to deal with these rampaging scum, but how are you going to summon the police if there isn't a working telephone or cell phone tower in the entire county?

Where the hell were the cops? I don't know, but wherever they were, they probably had their hands full.

And so it went, for the two days I was stranded in the ruins of what used to be a thriving town. I was stuck there until I could find some gasoline.

Welcome to Mogadishu, Mississippi y'all!

For two sleepless nights, I cowered in my sweltering car, listening for the next passing band of looters, and hoping that they wouldn't notice me.

I was sure glad when I was finally able to acquire three gallons of precious gasoline and make good my escape across the line to Alabama!

Eventually, I arrived back in Port Charlotte. The Subaru died the moment I pulled into the coalition parking lot. There it would sit, not doing anyone any good.

And here I was, back in the same camp I thought I had left forever. After all those months of being left unattended, it was still undisturbed by human intruders.

Do I know how to hide a camp, or what?

The worst part of being homeless and jobless again was knowing I owed dear Ana Romillo a thousand dollars. How the hell was I going to raise that kind of money? I was back to riding a bicycle and had no idea where I would find a job. After all I'd been through, here I was, right back where I'd started.

In fact, if anything, I was now in worse shape than when I started.

Six months had passed since I'd had a drink. During my homeless years I wasn't exactly a raging alcoholic, but I was known to bend an elbow now and then. However, now I wanted to stay sober and clear-headed so I could execute "The Plan", leaving no loose ends.

The Plan?

The plan, was to shoot myself.

Up till this point of my life, you couldn't quite call me an atheist, but I was pretty close. My mom used to say that you didn't know anything before you were born, and you ain't gonna know anything after you die. We never went to church when I was growing up. It had always seemed to me that all the religious people I knew had it drummed into them when they were little. They may have turned away from it once they became teenagers or adults, but the seed was already planted, and most of them came back to it later.

That seed was not planted in me when I was a kid. I never gave deities or devils much thought.

I couldn't say there was a God.

I couldn't say there wasn't.

I just didn't know.

Now, I knew.

There was indeed a God, and He had placed a curse on me.

I had given this effort everything I had, and it all blew up in my face.

Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

I was completely defeated.

I had nothing left to give.

There was definitely something supernatural going on here.

Life is a mix of good luck, bad luck, and so-so luck. As long as life consists of such a mix, I can deal with it.

But, what I was now living was some sort of curse, some sort of punishment.

Oh yes, there is a God and He apparently wants to drive me to suicide.

Who am I to keep stalling?

I will go ahead and accommodate Him.

About then, Bob and Pegi asked me to watch their house while they went to Orlando for a couple of days.

Perfect!

It's all falling into place!

They were again keeping my valuables for me while I camped out. While they were gone, I'd put price stickers on all this stuff. My pre-CBS Fender Twin Reverb amplifier, with its JBL speakers and custom built flight case would easily bring $1,500. My made-to-order electric fiddle and 1930's vintage crocodile-skin case would bring about the same. There were also rifles, archery gear, fishing tackle, another fiddle, more musical equipment, and other stuff. All of it would get price stickers. They would know exactly what to charge for each item once I was gone.

Of course, I would make it clear that the first thousand dollars of the proceeds were designated for Ana Romillo.

I also owned an old video camcorder. With it, I would tape my final farewells and instructions. By the time it arrived in the mail and they got around to watching it, I would be long gone. The plan was to paddle up a creek, drag my canoe deep into a mangrove swamp, cover it with brush, and blow my brains out with my old thirty-eight.

No one would ever find my bones.

Looking back on it now, I'm struck by how cool and businesslike I was about what I was going to do. My main concern was that my friends benefit from the sale of my valuables, especially my musical equipment, which I refused to part with in life.

The suicide itself was like an afterthought. I wasn't particularly upset or emotional about it.

It was just time to go.

Well, gentle reader, so far I've walked you through the "Ordeal" part of this chapter. Now, what do you say we cover the "Miracle" part? Things are fixin' to get really strange!

A couple of days before my scheduled suicide, I stopped by the soup kitchen for dinner. At the sign-in desk there was a note, addressed to me. It was from the husband of one of the volunteers. This guy knew me and my situation. He wrote that he had a friend who was looking for a dump truck driver. The employer was told about me, that I was homeless, with no transportation. He said that didn't bother him and he would pick me up at my camp at 6:30 the following morning.

I called the phone number on the note and gave this fellow directions, then met him out at the highway at the appointed time.

He gave me brief instructions on how to operate a tri-axle dump truck, then turned me loose to fend for myself. Thus began my new career as a dump truck driver.

It wasn't long before Ana gave me permission to park the truck at night on the coalition property. This saved my boss the trouble of picking me up and dropping me off. I would merely shut the truck down, bike back to camp, and return the next morning to begin a new day. The best part of it was that I was able to pay off my debt to Ana with my first two paychecks. Suicide? What suicide?

Driving a dump truck is not a stressful job. Just go to the mine and let them dump dirt, shell, gravel, or whatever into the bed. Then go to a construction site and dump this stuff where they want it. Then, it's back to the mine for more. Back and forth all day, listening to good old country and bluegrass music on your satellite radio. Not exactly rocket science. The main thing is to drive carefully and not abuse the equipment. You hardly ever see your boss and you spend your days out and about, just truckin' along. My niche had found me!

I had been doing this for a few weeks, working every day, saving my money, and generally feeling pretty good about everything.

Then, the dreams started.

Vivid, intense, Technicolor dreams which caused me to wake with a gasp and a pounding heart. Then, I would lie there, thinking about it until my alarm clock rang. Every night. The same dream. Followed by several sleepless hours in the hammock until it was time to get up.

What, you may ask, was this horrible nightmare that had me so shook up? Only my kid sister, Dawn. She and our late mother, standing together, smiling and waving, calling to me.

Dammit! I've never been able to tell this story verbally without bursting into tears. Now, here I am, seated at my computer, wiping tears off my cheeks between keystrokes, and wiping my wet hands on my pants. Dammit!

In this dream, Dawn and Mom invite me to see their new home. I would then be given a tour of this storybook-looking cottage, situated under big leafy trees, birds singing, a white picket fence, flowers, a cozy fireplace, and everything just as idyllic as can be. The entire scene was bathed in this sweet, hazy light. Happiness radiated everywhere.

I can now hear you asking why such a lovely recurring dream should disturb me so? Here's why. This is the very same sister who told me, back in 1996 to get out, and stay out of her life forever. I was more than happy to oblige her. We never liked each other anyway. Not even as children. Especially as children.

All siblings fuss and quarrel occasionally. Our almost-daily altercations were just that, altercations. So violent and hateful, it gives me chills to recall it after all these years. When we weren't actually at war, a stony tolerance took hold for a while, allowing our poor mother some breathing room. She actually had to quit a much-needed job with the St. Pete Police Department in order to stay home and keep an eye on us. At the time, Dawn was twelve, and I was a year older.

Certainly old enough to be left unattended for the day. However, Mom was afraid we would kill each other if given the chance.

Although there was certainly nothing funny about this sick state of affairs, the memory of one event does make me smile.

Back in 1968 we both went to the same high school. I was old enough to drive and sometimes I'd take us to school.

I can't recall what got Dawn started that day, but apparently something I said had set her off. On the trip to school she never stopped yammering about how she was going to report this offense to Mom the moment we got home.

For the rest of the day, each time we'd pass each other in the hall between classes, she'd glare at me and silently mouth the words, "I'm gonna tell Mom!"

Same thing at lunch. I looked up and there she was, several tables away, still giving me the business.

The trip home was a repeat of that morning's commute.

"Don't think for one minute that I've forgotten about this! Just wait till I tell Mom!"

After we'd pulled into the driveway and I'd turned off the engine, she reached for her door handle and popped it. At that moment, I grabbed her hair, jerked her head around, and gave her two hard slaps across the face, one of them a backhand. This move surprised me as much as it did her.

Dawn went wild and tried to claw my eyes. That didn't work, because in those days, even though I was skinny and smaller than her, I was as quick as a cat. I caught both her wrists, and while she struggled furiously to reach me, drew my right foot up between us. I planted this foot against her ribs and gave a mighty shove. She sailed out the door, landing on her butt in the driveway.

She then stormed into the house and slammed the door behind her. I started in that direction, unaware that she still had plenty of fight left in her.

We came face-to-face in the doorway, with her brandishing an empty 16-ounce coke bottle. In those days, soda pop came in glass bottles and we usually had a collection of these, waiting to go back to the store to redeem the two-cent deposit.

She lunged at me with her newly-acquired weapon, and I took off running. Our mother was babysitting in an upstairs garage apartment next door. With Dawn raging after me, I ran around that building, shouting, "Mom! Help! She's trying to kill me!"

As I raced around front, I didn't know she had turned back and was running around the building to meet me. I came around the back corner, and there she was, right in front of me. Mom had heard the uproar, and was coming down the rickety back stairs. When I had unexpectedly come face-to-face with Dawn again, I tried to stop, but the combination of slick leather school shoes and wet grass from an earlier rain shower caused my feet to slide out from under me. At that moment, Dawn launched her missile. As I fell, the bottle whistled by, a few inches from my head.

The bottle then hit the iron rail support with a terrific bang, right at Mom's feet as she arrived at the bottom of the stairs.

Mom was furious! She snarled at us and charged back up the stairway, reappearing a moment later with a whiskbroom and dustpan.

She handed this stuff to Dawn and made her clean up the greenish powder. Notice please, that I didn't say broken glass. No, what was once a coke bottle had completely disintegrated into powder.

While she swept and picked around in this stuff, with me watching over her shoulder, we were both fascinated by the fact that there were no solid pieces left of this bottle. The fight was forgotten and I can't recall whether or not Dawn ever told Mom what was bothering her all day.

If this story has left you with the impression that I made a habit of beating up females, let me set the record straight. As a kid I was very shy and introverted. I mostly wanted just to be left alone. Dawn seldom accommodated me in this desire. Every day she started some sort of trouble with me.

We had nothing in common and I generally tried to ignore her. I would have been quite happy living in another household and never seeing her at all. Our relationship remained this way into adulthood.

Now that I think about it, it would appear that me and Dawn did have something in common after all.

A great love for our mother.

In 1994, we kept a vigil beside Mom's deathbed for the entire five days it took for her to wheeze and gasp her life away. Cots were placed on either side, and we almost never left the room.

After Mom died, a truce was formed. It seemed like a breakthrough moment, but it didn't last. We soon went our separate ways again.

So, why on earth was I now dreaming about Dawn? For all these years I've never even _thought_ about her! Believe me, this thing had my full attention, day and night. Crazy thoughts ran wild. Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she trying to contact me? Should I go see what she wants? Does she even want anything at all? If I show up at her house in Ft. Myers, will she tell me to get lost? I bet she would. I'd look like a fool! This can't be for real. Dreams don't mean anything. It's all a lot of nonsense!

The dreams went on for two weeks. I was really confused. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I didn't know what to do.

However, I did know one thing. I had to get some sleep! That alarm clock went off at Five, and I didn't want to screw up this job. So, I jumped off the wagon. I bought a bottle of cheap whiskey and caught a little buzz just before bedtime. That did the trick. The dreams stopped.

When I first decided to write my "how-to" book on being homeless, the idea that I would end up dragging my family into this never occurred to me. However, it now turns out they've dragged themselves into it by setting into motion a chain of astonishing events that would soon affect my life, which you'll read about later. So, before we go any further, I'd better introduce you to some of the major players in the upcoming drama.

You've already met Dawn. She and I had a wretched, impoverished childhood. I didn't have my own bedroom until I was thirteen years old. Dawn always bunked with our mother. She never had a bedroom to herself until after her first divorce in 1975. My mother and her siblings had an even more wretched, impoverished childhood. I've heard that my father's childhood was no bed of roses, either. It would seem that having babies you can't support is the last real freedom we have left in this country. If you were a reasonably healthy white man in the 1950's and were poor, it was your own damned fault. My father was a heavy equipment operator, driving road graders and bulldozers. This particular skill was in great demand in a rapidly-growing Florida back then. He could have done well in life if it weren't for his personal vices.

I once asked my mother why we were so poor. Her answer was, "Your daddy never had a decent home when he was growing up. He doesn't know how to act. Your daddy isn't ready to be a daddy."

My parents divorced when I was about five. Apparently, my father was angry enough to withhold his child support payments. Back in the 1950's they couldn't put as much pressure on deadbeat dads like they do today. Decades later, my mom told me there were times she didn't know where our next meal was coming from during this period.

My life became a blur of long Greyhound rides, meeting unknown distant relatives, sleeping on the living room floor of these relatives, starting school in a strange town, some sort of falling out with the relatives, being yanked out of school, another long bus ride, meeting more relatives... And on it went, year after year. I went to five different schools in three different states in the second grade alone. I became a professional "new kid in class". There was the tiny mountain homestead in the Adirondacks (complete with a smelly, fly-infested outhouse), the gritty urban streets of Fort Lee, New Jersey. Lots of redneck schools around Florida.

I had to try to fit in at each place until it was time to move again. This recurring culture shock had me confused and frightened. Of course, bullies, both young and old, awaited me at each stop along the way. Sometimes country bullies, sometimes city toughs. And on a couple of occasions, truly sadistic schoolteachers.

Looking back, I now see this nomadic, storm-tossed life was too much for a bright, sensitive little boy to deal with. By the fourth grade I had completely shut down. I became so scared and withdrawn that I couldn't function in school anymore. I failed the fourth grade. From that point, it was all downhill. I maintained an F-average and tended to be "socially promoted" year after year, until I was old enough to drop out of school altogether. Everyone said I was just lazy. Teacher after teacher would write "Not living up to his potential" in my report cards. Several tried to reach me, but the wall had gone up and been reinforced with fresh concrete long before they met me. The apathetic, distant, underachieving persona I adopted was my way of getting do-gooders to give up and leave me alone. I just wanted to be alone. It was the only way I could cope with the everyday horror.

A lifelong pattern of commitment aversion was formed during that long ordeal. I seldom finished anything I started. I never even came close to marrying anyone. To this day I tend to bounce from job to job. Hey, why bother to plunge one hundred percent into something that's going to fall apart anyway? It's best to have an escape route handy. Besides, what kind of role models were there in my family when I was a kid? Every adult I knew was a failure in life.

On the other hand, Dawn developed into a mean, bullying control freak. No one could stand to be around her for very long. Especially men. Everything had to be in perfect order. I guess that was her way of coping.

The toll all of this took on my mother was awful. I recently found an old photograph of her during that time. What I saw was a thin, pale, tense, old young woman. By that time she'd forgotten how to smile, even when a camera was pointed at her. She almost never laughed. If she did, the sudden shock of it caused me to stare at her.

After about three years of this wandering, my parents made an attempt at reconciliation. Just long enough for him to impregnate her. Then, it was time to get back on the bus. When my cousin/brother Robbie was born, Mom's brother Al, and his wife Millie adopted him. Al was sterile, and he and Millie were thrilled to have this baby. Then, it was time for us to get back on the bus.

Out of the extended family that I knew, Al and Millie were the only ones who had their act together at all. They were solidly middle class. They even owned a 35-foot cabin cruiser docked at an upscale marina! Uncle Al lived in New Jersey, too far away to do us any good. The rest of my clan was a collection of impoverished drunks, freaks, and fools. The worst of the worst was probably my grandmother. She was not welcome in the homes of four of her five children. Except for Mom, they all shunned her like the plague.

There was certainly just cause for this castle drawbridge-raising. She was an evil spirit. Nobody who married into this family could hope to escape her sadism.

I hadn't intended to write about this particular entity at all. The very thought of her makes my blood run cold. My grandmother was utterly impoverished. Everything she owned fit into a single suitcase. Apparently, Mom either felt sorry for her, or needed whatever little money Grandma's Social Security check could contribute to our household. Either way, we were stuck with her. "Nanna" would sleep on the couch, and me, Mom, and Dawn would share the only bedroom in the tiny shacks we rented. It was cold in the winter and sweltering in the summer. In fact, I never slept in an air-conditioned room until my first night of Navy boot camp. Like lab rats in an overcrowded cage, we were at each other's throats constantly.

While me and Dawn certainly had enough ammo to keep our personal war going, "Nanna" did more than her share to keep things exciting. She absolutely adored me, while utterly hating my sister. She could be counted upon to take my side in the almost-daily conflicts. While I was happy to have an ally at the time, I now realize it's not the place of adults to get involved in this stuff. Her presence made our sick lives even sicker.

My father was a real piece of work. It's hard for me to remember him without an alcoholic drink of some kind in his hand. I certainly remember his quick temper. Walking on eggshells became my preferred mode of locomotion around him. I was scared of him even on those rare occasions when he was trying to be friendly to me. He didn't live with us and we seldom saw him. He always had a bevy of barroom floozies at his beck and call. It looks like the acorn didn't fall far from _that_ tree!

I've got to give Mom credit for one thing. She never drank a drop, never ran to bars and brought strange men home, or acted up in the way some of our trashy neighbors did. She kept her nose to the grindstone and tried to do the best she could for her kids.

When I was in truck driving school in West Palm Beach, I stopped by one of the rental shacks we lived in from 1960 to 1963. It's one of the few raggedy-ass hovels from my childhood which are still standing. I just sat in the car, shaking my head. My God, if my children were forced to live in something like that because of my irresponsible behavior, I'd die of shame!

I'm sure glad I never fathered any children. Between my underachieving, hedonistic lifestyle, and the "low-hanging fruit" type of women I ran with, the odds of my offspring experiencing anything other than an impoverished, dysfunctional childhood would have been pretty slim.

My father started throwing up his food on Labor Day, 1962. By Halloween, he was in his grave. Stomach cancer. He was 37. I was eleven.

Here's a little gallows humor for you. My mother's atheism can be understood when one considers what happened once my father fell ill.

In those days, if you came down with cancer, they had to fly you to the Ochsner Cancer Hospital in New Orleans for treatment. The local West Palm Beach hospital couldn't handle it.

He stayed in New Orleans for a month or so, then was scheduled to be flown home. We went to the airport to meet him.

Airports were still pretty old-fashioned back then. The propeller-driven plane would taxi up to the terminal and a stairway would be wheeled into place against the plane. All of this took place outdoors, with the people waiting for the plane standing behind a chainlink fence.

When the door finally opened, we were in for a shock.

Out stepped Margie, one of my father's bimboes and chief drinking buddy. She stood at the top of the steps, attired in a fancy dress, sporting a hat with a big veil hanging down, and a huge bouquet of flowers clutched to her chest. To make the scene even more bizarre, she began beaming and waving to the waiting crowd like we were her loyal fans awaiting her return. I turned to Mom and asked, "What is _she_ doing here?"

Mom didn't answer. She just stood there, gaping.

A moment later, two men appeared in the doorway, gently maneuvering a stretcher bearing a skin-covered skeleton with one week left to live.

It turned out that Margie had flown to New Orleans and married my father in a bedside ceremony at the hospital.

Why bother to marry a guy on his deathbed, you may ask?

Oh, she had a very good reason!

My father was gainfully employed when he fell ill. The company had a nice life insurance policy on its employees.

Margie ended up with all that insurance loot and threw Dad a big, expensive, flowery Catholic funeral. The casket cost more than some cars.

Our pitiful little family got screwed again! Mom led a cursed life, and she knew it. She could have bought a house with that money.

All wasn't completely lost. Daddy Dearest became more helpful to us dead than alive. Government checks soon began appearing in the mail. Two of them, at the beginning of each month.

A few months later, my curiosity about this new source of income led to an interesting exchange between my mother and me. Someone on the television news said something about the welfare system. I got up, went into the kitchen, and asked my mom if we were on welfare. _"WELFARE?!!!"_ she shrieked.

This startled the hell out of me, because Mom generally wasn't the shrieking kind.

She spun on her heel, strode up to me and leaned forward, her face inches from mine, blue eyes blazing, her slim body quivering with rage.

I involuntarily flinched and blinked. I thought she was going to clobber me.

"Welfare is for nigger women and their bastard babies!" she snarled through clenched teeth.

She jabbed a bony finger into my chest. I flinched again.

"Now you listen to me, mister!" she hissed. Her eyes narrowed. "Your daddy fought in the war in Europe. He _more_ than earned those VA checks we're getting! And I'll also have you know he was paying into Social Security ever since he was sixteen years old! You and Dawn are his children. Now, it's the Government's turn to help you out."

She turned back to her pot on the stove. "Welfare, indeed!" she muttered.

Well, my question was certainly answered, and then some!

Okay, that's enough family dysfunction for now. Back to my story.

After the dreams stopped, life returned to normal. Just driving my dump truck ten hours a day, five days a week, eating at the soup kitchen, and sleeping peacefully in my camp. I was living frugally and saving my money.

About two months later, while seated at a library computer, I got a strange e-mail from Gail Keel, down in Buckingham. In it, she asked if I knew anyone named Dawn Bruttomesso. That's all Gail wrote. Nothing more.

I wrote back and told her that was my sister's maiden name before her first marriage in 1971. Gail then said I'd better check the Ft. Myers newspaper. It took some searching through back issues at the library, but I finally found the thing that I was beginning to feel uneasy about finding.

My sister's obituary.

That wasn't even the worst of it. The column also stated that my Aunt Millie and cousin/brother Robbie had, in their words, "Preceded Dawn in death".

I literally reeled in shock! I thought I was going to faint.

I also saw my own name listed as a survivor, "address unknown".

I barely made it out the library's front door before I collapsed in tears. This reaction took me completely by surprise.

By this time, I had the Subaru sort of running again, so I drove down to Ft. Myers to try to find out what had happened to Dawn. I spoke with Dawn's longtime neighbor and friend, whom I had also known many years ago.

She filled in most, but not all, of the blanks. Dawn had been unfairly fired from her longtime job and was having a terrible time of it. She was suffering from crippling migraines and other health problems. About fifty miles north, near the town of Venice, Aunt Millie was battling cancer. I suppose they both figured it would be nice to have someone to lean on, so Dawn locked up her house and moved in with Millie.

I went to Venice and talked with one of Millie's neighbors. She brought me completely up to date. It seems that cousin/brother Robbie got lung cancer and died at the age of 44. Millie willed her entire estate to Dawn, and died shortly thereafter.

Poor Dawn never got to enjoy her newly-inherited riches. Three months later, at the age of 52, she suddenly fell over dead on the bathroom floor. It was four days before anyone found her body. This happened in November, 2005. In less than a year's time, I lost the last three relatives I had left.

Once I had pieced together the timeline on all these events, a sickening thought occurred to me. At the same time I was having those dreams about Dawn, she was trying to get used to being alone in Millie's house, which she'd just inherited. My dreams occurred in October. At that time Dawn had only one month left to live. She must have realized that I was her last remaining relative.. Was she thinking of me? Did she want to be friends? Was God or somebody from the spirit world trying to intervene in those dreams? Of course, Dawn couldn't have found me after all these years, with me living in the woods and all. Why didn't I follow my intuition and try to contact her? Maybe we could have helped each other somehow. Why was I so stubborn? I wish I could forgive myself. This is a terrible heartache to live with.

Dawn died without leaving a will. Florida Law says that in cases like that, the estate goes to the next living relative. That would be me. I hired a lawyer, and for months we slowly muddled our way through the probate court system.

Then, on August 31st, 2006, I spent my last night as a homeless person. The next day I moved into my house. It sounds kind of strange, calling it "my" house. I prefer to call it "our" house. My dead relatives are letting me live in it. There is a lot of family history here. Al and Millie built it in 1974, when they moved down from New Jersey. Ten years later, Uncle Al committed suicide in the back yard. He shot himself because he was in rapidly declining health, and didn't want to be a burden on his family. And of course, Dawn died in the bathroom. This old house has seen a lot of heartache and strife. I know a lot of its secrets. Even so, I still want to spend the rest of my life here. Someday, hopefully far into the future, they'll wheel my corpse out of here on a gurney like so many of my relatives before me.

While this case crawled through probate, I wasn't allowed to enter the house, not even to clean. It was locked up tight. When the judge finally okayed it, and gave me the keys, I let myself in and found two cars in the garage. One of them brand new, and completely paid for. Dawn had bought it for cash and was only able to put 604 miles on it before she died.

I sold Dawn's Ft. Myers house and added the proceeds to Millie's already sizeable bank account. The house I'm now living in, and the two vacant lots on either side, which I also own, sit on a short canal leading into the Myakka River, one of Florida's last unspoiled and scenic waterways. From my back porch I watch dolphins, manatees, and alligators swim in the canal. If I want to see more, I just jump into my new motorboat and cruise up and down the river.

The vacant lots on either side of my house aren't so "vacant" anymore. It's now been three years since I've moved here and I haven't been idle. There are now two large vegetable gardens and twenty tropical fruit trees of various sorts in the ground. With the apparent direction the economy is going, I want this property to produce as much food as it can manage.

Earlier, I mentioned that I used to be a skillful and energetic hunter and fisherman. From what I've seen of the Myakka River and its miles of marshes and forests, a man who knows what he's doing with a rifle and fishing tackle wouldn't lack protein during a food emergency. If it comes to that, I can't think of a better place to ride out a time of economic and social upheaval than where I am right now.

This area is isolated, woodsy, and crime-free. My neighbors are nice. With all this waterfront real estate and my bank account, some might consider me rich. At least the local property appraiser seems to think so, judging by my annual tax bill. I don't have to go out and make a living, and haven't in quite a spell. While I don't have enough money to completely retire, there's enough to allow me to relax. I'm starting to feel guilty about merely using my ATM card whenever I need cash. Although I've been looking for a truck driving job these days, it seems nobody is hiring. Great Depression II has arrived. I'm not too worried because I have plenty of breathing room. Something will turn up.

The probate experience taught me a lesson. My lawyer and I drew up my will immediately. Since I don't have any living kinfolk, the Charlotte County Homeless Coalition will inherit my estate.

So, do I think I've got it made?

Yeah, I guess so.

Do I think I deserve all this sudden wealth?

No way!

In fact, I left my old camp standing. I just walked away from it. It is now falling into ruin. The jungle is taking it back, and I have to hack my way through new growth to reach it.

Why, you may ask, would I even want to go there at all?

I go there to pray.

What's this? Did this guy say _PRAY?!_

Yup, I'm on board now. Now that everything has fallen into place, I can see that the whole thing was a miracle. It's all crystal clear to me now. I think I've become one of those lukewarm Christians Jesus said He didn't have much use for. While I doubt you'll ever see me on your doorstep on a Saturday morning, speaking in tongues, with a live rattlesnake in one hand and a bible in the other, I have become a changed man. I now believe. A day seldom passes when I don't utter a heartfelt prayer. When I do, I can actually physically feel some sort of power coursing through me.

For a while I went "church shopping" every Sunday because I thought that was the way to please God. However, try as I might, I just couldn't shake my lifelong suspicion of professional holy men, or church people in general. I'm told that it's written in scriptures that I won't be able to get into Heaven without being baptized for the remission of sin, no matter how much I believe in Christ. The idea that the fate of my eternal soul depends on attending one particular ceremony greatly disturbs me. But the thought of splashing around with a bunch of church people disturbs me more.

Not many people who've hit rock-bottom get the second chance God gave me. I never forget it for a minute. "Gratitude" can't begin to describe how I feel. Also, the timing of "The Miracle" couldn't have been more amazing. I sold Dawn's house at the very top of the market. The economy crashed the moment I became wealthy. These days you rarely see a dump truck on the road around here. If I didn't inherit all this stuff, I would have still been living in the woods when all the jobs disappeared. I couldn't have worked my way out of poverty no matter what I did. I would have been doomed. The popular term "dodging a bullet" comes to mind. I didn't "dodge" anything. Somebody pushed me out of the path of that bullet. To this day I possess an unshakable belief that I did indeed experience an authentic miracle.

Rhoadie Ladd hit the nail on the head when she recently said, "The Subaru did its job, it didn't let you get too far away."

She's right. Let's just say, for a minute, that the Subaru had made it all the way to Montana with no problems. Once I was fired in Nashville, I would have Greyhounded straight back to Missoula, since that would be where my car was parked. There are two more large, non-flatbed trucking companies in that town, and instead of bee-lining it back to Florida, I would have applied with these companies. Recent truck school graduates were in great demand. If, by chance these people didn't hire me, I still wouldn't have abandoned my lifelong dream of living in the West. I would have found other companies in other Rocky Mountain towns. If everything went well, I would have never come back to Florida. That was the plan when I left.

The news of Dawn's death would never have reached me out there. It barely reached me as it was. She had been dead a month before I heard about it. Nobody was beating the bushes looking for me. I wasn't mentioned in anybody's will. I would have missed out on this whole inheritance thing.

When everything was going wrong during "The Ordeal", I knew God's hand was causing it. At the time I thought He had something against me.

After I had worked so hard, He beat the snot out of me and destroyed my dream of living in Montana. He brought me back to my old camp with my tail between my legs and my spirit broken. He let me get to the brink of suicide and snatched me back at the last moment.

Now I see that God was running me through some sort of boot camp to toughen me up and get me into the right state of mind for "The Miracle". He gave me a place to grow old in safety and comfort. I am home.

At the time of this writing, the economy appears to be unraveling. Hardworking folks who never dreamed they'd become homeless may suddenly find themselves living a nightmare. It might even happen to you.

I just hope this book will help you understand that you can be homeless, without being _"homeless"._ Just because you find yourself stuck in this lifestyle, doesn't mean you have to embrace it. The Depression-Era hobo jungles portrayed in movies, where everyone contributes some ingredient to the mulligan stew while spinning colorful tales around the fire are long gone. The denizens of today's homeless camps are basically just hopeless drunks. You don't need that. Please try to stay mostly sober. Remember too, there's a bunch of wonderful people out there, standing by, prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to help you help yourself, if only you'll let them.

As you've already seen in my narrative, I was prone to react with crushing despair and suicidal thoughts when my circumstances became too dire. Perhaps you are feeling this way right now. You just can't see any way out. Well, whoever came up with these old sayings, certainly knew what they were talking about... "Where there's life, there's hope", "It ain't over till it's over", "A man isn't ruined until he thinks he is", and even, "Hang in there, Baby!"

You might not realize it now, but you are stronger than you think you are. Hold on and keep fighting until God makes His next move. He has a plan for you. One way or another, He'll get you out of this. In the meantime, since you are homeless anyway, why not try to be homeless with grace and style?

Home At Last!

