The Wandering Homeless of Fort Lauderdale

When I worked the Las Olas Bridge as a bridge tender, I had some time on my hands. I tried to use the time to write, to study Spanish and such while I listened for boats on the marine radio, but self-improvement only went so far. Especially self-motivated self improvement. What I ended up doing was looking out the windows a lot. One thing about being in a fixed position like they (the bridge house) was that you saw the repetition of the world, of human activity, rather acutely. An example of that was the people who walked over the bridge on a daily basis. Sure, there were tourists and visitors but there were also a lot of regulars who came over and back on the bridge, headed to and from the beach across the Intracoastal. And of those, the most regular were the homeless.

Evidently, as homeless people, they had to keep moving. I don't know if the police kept them going or this was just something to do or it helped with their survival on the streets but it didn't take long for me to see the pattern. To recognize these men (and a few women) as they did their daily trudging. And then I'd see them other places as well, when I was driving the kids to school or out running errands, I'd recognize these people. At times I was astonished to see them quite far away from the bridge, to understand that their route was much bigger and wider than I would have imagined. I was both kind of appalled that this was their life yet also held a certain admiration that they had the strength and willingness to do it.

Now, of the three I recall most vividly--all men--I think their mental stability had a great deal to do with their homelessness. One guy who walked across my bridge daily--sometimes more than once or twice a day, was an older guy with a severe hunchback. He was stooped, he had a more than obvious hump--bent, face down, one slim bag slung over his better shoulder, this guy would march soundlessly around town. Of course I felt sorry for him. He never spoke and I never spoke to him. Another guy was younger, African-American, who I would often see on US1 standing on a corner and talking to himself. He came across the bridge often, nervous and skittish looking, aware of his surroundings, trying--it seemed to me--to be invisible, or at least to look "normal" and fit in with society. Or hide his affliction. But he talked to himself all the time, not loud, but you could see his lips move, hear him faintly if you were close enough. The third guy I'm thinking of I thought of as The Professor. He was middle-aged and always wore a tweedy sport jacket. He never wore shorts or short sleeves--always the proper jacket--and he pushed a cart. He had glasses and bed-head longish hair. he appeared pretty oblivious to the world about him and made his rounds pushing his shopping cart, maybe mumbling, doing his rounds. I did talk to him once--in fact, he made me angry. I was trying to put the bridge up for a sport fishing boat, I had the cars stopped, the gates down, lights flashing, warnings blare-beeping and dinging, and The Professor walks right past all the warnings with his cart and onto the bridge. I had to call the captain and explain why the bridge was not going up (and the cars had to wait) and he said he saw the guy. I stood outside the bridge house as the guy came across and admonished him. I said: "You're supposed to wait behind the gate. You understand that much, don't you?" or some such. He looked at me, almost astonished, breaking from his inner world to acknowledge that someone was actually addressing him. He didn't say anything, but he had a quick and brief look of guilt in his eyes and expression (though I'm not sure about that). But he kept ambling across, back to oblivion I guess. Yeah. I felt kind of bad. I men, I'm sure he heard worse on a daily basis, but not from me.

Even after I quit that job and went back to teaching, I'd see those people around. I felt like I knew them, in a way. Even after we moved away from Fort Lauderdale and I'd return to visit, I'd see them--a few--and it gave me a certain, I don't know, satisfaction (if that's the best way to state it) while still holding on to my sympathy for them. But, not anymore. No, not the lack of sympathy. They aren't there anymore. At least to the best of my knowledge--I've been back many times but I've never seen those guys. Are they still there? I know I'm not.

Not a KGB Agent: Seagrove Beach 1987

It was Halloween and I was back in the Florida Panhandle living in Seagrove Beach with Dave and painting houses in Seaside for my money. I was back there, living there, I think, because I didn't know where else to go. I'd been in Seattle and Des Moines. But, Halloween: I dressed up as a KGB agent. A trench coat, sunglasses, Cossack hat. I affected a Russian accent and a certain ignorance of American ways. I stayed in character almost the whole night--though people didn't quite get what I was supposed to be (I should have put the letters KGB with masking tape on my back or breast pocket). Yet, I was still a hit among friends and acquaintances--my catchphrase was: "Hmmm. Typical American evening, yes?" But this was before my friends came to pick me up and I had walked down to the little gas and grocery store in Seagrove, in my costume, to buy some cigarettes and beer. The cashier, whose name I don't recall now, but who I was hoping to see was working. I had liked her. I didn't know if she was involved with anyone or even maybe married and I was lonely but didn't have the guts to inquire further but she had a nice smile. I liked her smile. Like most southerners, she was friendly, chatty, pleasant to spend time with and I knew enough not to mistake this for interest beyond that. Nonetheless, I was a little smitten with her. But after my purchase and a few kibitzing words, as I was leaving, she asked what I was supposed to be. I turned around at the door, put on my sunglasses, and said in my Russian accent: "I'm not a KGB agent, that's for sure." This made her laugh.                                                                                                                                

Trunk Full of Beer Cans: Des Moines 1975

I was seventeen, maybe eighteen, still in high school and working at Yonkers at the Merle Hay Mall. I could walk to work from my house (my parents' house) in Urbandale. I worked in the stock room and the loading dock and hadn't been there long before there was a trucker's strike--the truckers picketed behind the dock but I was not the brightest of kids and didn't really understand fully what was going on, even though they called me a scab and put a knife to the tires of the people who tried to keep the goods moving. (Later I was decent friends with most of the truckers.) Anyway, there were a number of men who wore suits that were in charge in some capacity at Yonkers, and they were ferrying things back and forth between stores in Des Moines. One such suit was a guy--nice guy but not my direct boss--who only had one arm. He came and got me and needed help moving some stuff into his car, which was parked out back on the sloping concrete that led to the dock. So I got the boxes or what-have-you and went with him to his car and he popped the trunk and it was full of empty beer cans. I mean completely full. Cans came clattering out as soon as the trunk went up and he quickly gathered them and then closed the trunk. I don't recall what kind of beer it was--not Budweiser or Miller, but of that ilk--but they were all the same brand. I mean, that trunk was chock full of emptied cans. The guy, this one-armed suit guy--he was clearly embarrassed, but I was savvy enough to say nothing, to pretend as though it was normal to have your trunk stuffed with beer cans.

Ants: Fort Lauderdale 2015

So, when I visit Fort Lauderdale--really, my home town in many ways, along with Vancouver, WA and Des Moines, IA--I stay at Billy's. I always take the back, corner room in his house. I love his house, though I suppose some people would not. Anyway. There are two windows in the room that I like to open--unless it is summer--and there are tiled "shelves" at each window. There is an outlet along the bed, which is pushed up against the wall near both windows. I plug in my phone there. I put the phone on the inner windowsill of the north-facing window. I place my glasses, at night, there also.

And when I wake up, I put on my glasses. And I always see little doglike things running across them. Ants. Tiny ants that have their run around Billy's house. And I have to clean them off. And, my phone. Little see-through ants--mini-wiggly-furious-leg-moving-insects are running across its screen.

Everyday.

Thank goodness.

The Ox: Missoula 1990

So I'm thinking of The Ox. In Missoula. Montana. That's The Oxford downtown--liquor, food and poker. And what I'm recalling are late nights, post drinking at Charlie B's and such. Stopping in The Ox for a final beer and an order of Chicken Fried Steak with Lone Star Gravy. Sitting at the counter with friends, crowded, the cook busy busy busy, the people smoking, probably us smoking, the noise of the poker games behind us, the tables full of others, the regular bar down the way full of drinkers. Noise and fried food, smoke and keno games. It would take forever to get your food. Some people would give up. But when you ate it?

The Ox. In Missoula.

Montana.

Childhood Lunches: Vancouver

I've always liked lunch--my favorite meal. I'm not certain why that is, other than I like the informality of it, the noon hour, the foods associated with lunch. Sandwiches, burgers, soups and salads and such . . . But what I'm thinking of, along with lunch, is of my mother. Of my childhood with my brothers and sister, friends and places (South Dakota, Washington, Tennessee (not so much Iowa and beyond)).

I think it was in Vancouver, Washington where most of my notion of childhood lunches comes from, from things my mother used to prepare. I was in school then, so mainly I'm thinking summer lunches, which were the usual fare: peanut butter and jelly, cold cut sandwiches, tuna salad, spaghetti from a can (Franco American), hot dogs. Nothing special, really. My mother did make one dish--Tuna Stuff Over Noodles, we called it--which was essentially creamed tuna over chow mien noodles. I loved it, though, and still make it to this day now and then. And then we had salmon from a can.

That seems strange to me now, that we, as kids, ate salmon. From a can. Sure, living in the Pacific Northwest we had salmon--my dad would grill salmon steaks now and then. But I can't recall being crazy about them. But we all liked salmon from a can (though now I doubt I would, and it--salmon from a can--has not translated to my adulthood like Tuna Stuff Over Noodles has). I think she made salmon salad or other easy concoctions from the salmon--I don't recall exactly. (Oh yes--Salmon Patties: canned salmon mixed with cracker crumbs and eggs and fried with butter and salt!) But what I recall especially is that we kids would squabble over the bone amongst the flesh in the can.

Again, I don't recall why we liked the bone. It was just a soft, very white ring of a bone that got mixed up in the canning. There was always at least one, sometimes two inside. I'm guessing it was a vertebrae-type bone, small and easy to bite through. I guess we didn't really squabble, but it was just something my mother would ask: "Who wants the bone?" It's sort of like who got the salmon patty (or tuna patty, which eclipsed the salmon eventually) that was in the middle of the pan--the one that was always fried the crispest.

Nowadays, I suppose, I wouldn't much care to eat a salmon bone in a can. Or even the canned salmon itself.

I've had the real stuff. And I like wild salmon very much.

Okay. That's it. A salmon bone from my childhood.

The Bearded Arctic Seal: Ft. Lauderdale 2007

I was working as a bridge tender on Las Olas Boulevard, above the Intracoastal and near the beach. I'd been there for quite a while by the time I saw the Bearded Arctic seal.

It was evening--my regular hours, if I remember right, were 4pm to 11pm--and I looked down in the waters below me and saw something swimming. This thing was big, dark colored, and it would come up and down out of the water. It looked like a manatee that swam like a dolphin. It didn't really look completely like a manatee, but I could not figure out what else it possibly could be in South Florida.

At my bridge the dinner cruise boats would pass through each night--ah, what were their names, names like Celebration, Carrie B, others of varying sizes (and dispositions of their captains). One of the those vessels called in (as required) to pass through the bridge and I told the captain that there was a manatee in the waters and he acknowledged that and said he'd be on the look out. I hadn't seen the "manatee" for a little while, though they were creatures who didn't travel very far very fast. And after I raised the bridge and the party boat passed, I didn't think much of it--other than it was a strange-looking manatee that I had seen.

And then, later in the week, it hit me.

That had been no manatee. That was a Bearded Arctic seal.

Now, I didn't come up with this revelation all on my own, out of nowhere, out of the blue, from the recesses of my mind. No. In the newspaper and on the television, there had been reports about a Bearded Arctic seal that had swam way, way, way too far south and was in Florida waters. In fact, they were trying to catch it because it wouldn't survive in the warm waters.

So, I put two and two together and realized that that was what I had seen. Even when I first saw it I had thought: a seal! But I'd never known South Florida to have seals. That's why I had dismissed it and gone with my manatee theory.

But, yes, I saw the lost Bearded Arctic seal.

And, by the next week, it had died.