Funny how a title can be the thing that helps you collect your thoughts around something you don’t really want to remember. I’m not a combat veteran or a hardened first responder or police detective. But I think it’s worth documenting my slow descent from the height of my career in NY into homelessness at varying levels in the early part of the teen decade. I’ve been shot at, mugged, beaten a couple of times, stalked for some years…but that’s just life in New York. In a way this downward turn is harder to look back upon. I know it’s because I’ve buried it deep and really have to perform an exhumation of a sort to see it again in the light of day, now 10 years after.
I had lived in Austin, Texas, in the early 80’s, studying for my Masters in Architecture, after an undergrad degree in Canada. I would end up returning there and becoming homeless in early October 2013. Picture a slightly pot bellied mid 50s hetero white male, 5’10, still not bad looking. Fairly good health except for diabetes 2. Jobless. 30+ years experience as an architect, 20 of it in NYC. 10 as an actual registered architect there. 10 in the South and Southwest. Flying in from San Francisco.
Backing up a bit, it was the ‘08 economic crisis that upended things in my profession. No one was building anything. No one was hiring a 50 plus guy without the CADD 3D experience required to illustrate proposals for work, for any firms still left in business. CADD stands for computer assisted design and drafting, if you don’t know, a huge complex software we use. I had years of 2d working drawing and presentation CADD experience which was still somewhat useful. And lots of heavy duty construction Admin on complex Manhattan institutional projects. But no 3D.
I’d like to introduce my first ‘others’: my mom and my older sister. Let’s call them mom and S1. (Dad had passed suddenly back in ‘87, mom never remarried). I was staying for a 2nd round at S1’s house in Abilene, Texas, with her husband and my mom, after a brief return to my birth country, Canada, which flopped, job wise. I’d returned to Texas from NYC just before 9/11 to help out my mom, who had appeared to be in poor health. Now recovered but aging, she along with S1 were helping me.
From there I took a job in Odessa, Texas, for a year, designing, drawing and supervising construction for low-cost housing, for the City. S1 had warned me about the area, as she had attended a nursing conference there where she’d felt uncomfortable. I should have listened. I was getting half my usual salary, but full-time work was rare as hen’s teeth at that time, so I took a leap. I did not get on with my boss well. I was let go after a dispute with a much younger employee. Apparently I had used some death threats words I shouldn’t have (for a government job) in cussing him out. He’d forgotten to leave the AC on in a house I was to inspect. I developed heat stroke. I was given a severance but it didn’t last long.
I took some part time temp work but these just didn’t pay enough. 6 months later, late Spring of ‘10, I was evicted from my overpriced roach infested apartment, being 2 weeks late with the rent. Landlords were boosting rents in anticipation of incoming oil field workers. The boom of the day was about fracking. For awhile, I slept on the floor in the low-income apartment of a mentally challenged friend from my local bar, through the summer. There were some awful nights with no AC, sharing a room with multiple fish tanks which I was helping him maintain. There was AC, but only in his room, and he’d close his door and lock it at night. Temps were running plus 100 during the day, nights were not much cooler. But the glowing blue light from the fish tanks in the dark gave the illusion of cool, somewhat. The temp work went to pay him the blessedly low rent, and to pay for food and the odd beery evening out.
A second drinking buddy rescued me from this situation, offering me a couch in his 1 bedroom. (By the way let me just add by this time in my life I was a pretty careful drinker). He was an actual Eskimo, born in Alaska, let’s call him B. He’d also been a prison guard, which I found out, down the road so to speak, wasn’t the best thing. B and two Hispanic friends were very kind and patient with me, even taking me out for drinks on weekends to local clubs. All 3 were long-haul truck drivers. We called ourselves the 4 Musketeers. They had cable tv (wow) and sometimes they’d all be out on long trips, leaving me some couch potato quiet time.
B set me up with an employer he’d worked for and I got me a driving job right away. Steady work but still part time. I was moving up in the world, at 10 an hour. I was able to keep some boxes of belongings stored in his closet. I was designated chief cook and bottle washer. Landed a second gig, cleaning and janitorial, some evenings. I was able to hold on to my vehicle for a bit. The day job was mainly driving fracking truck drivers to parked trucks waiting out in the oilfields, using my own car. It was also 10 an hour, but really less with wear and tear to the vehicle. Gas was covered at least. in lasted until March ‘12, when I was told for the last time I was ‘too slow’.
The janitorial gig was 2 evenings a week. We cleaned at the local VA clinic, at some small offices and at a large office/warehouse. I was quite good at mopping. I recall mopping one evening and looking up (probably pathetically) at Obama’s portrait in the VA waiting room. I’d grocked Carol Burnett’s janitor character at last. Easter Sunday ‘12 I was fired. So much for West Texas Christianity. I’d not taken the hint that I was to wipe clean the warehouse men’s toilets.
So jobless again, mid ‘12, relations had become strained between B and myself. He would delight in watching me starve when my money got low (I guess the prison guard thing kicked in). He wanted me out but couldn’t tell me to my face. Then I took my lowest paying job ever. I was taking care of a trailer park part time days. This was the bottom of the 2nd Great Depression Economic Downturn, and desperate times. 7.50 per hour was not cutting it. Sleeping on a couch wasn’t either.
I spent a great deal of time that summer mowing lawns around trailers breathing in the heavy drought dust I was raising. Cutting back some brush one day I found a 20 dollar bill, a real gift, fallen from the heavens! To keep cool mid-day I was painting the interiors of the men’s and women’s public toilets. It saved me from cranky park dwellers and 100 degree plus heat. A refuge during a low point. I found some empty crack vials hidden above a mirror one day, they spoke volumes.
I was fired when the regular guy returned after getting out of prison. I was apparently “too much of a dumb-shit”. I think one night I’d left the tool shed unlocked. Then the car was repo’d. I’d tried to avoid it by visiting car lot after car lot in the hot summer sun, but there were no buyers. My mom was angry because she’d co-signed on it. I was embarrassed but could do nothing about it. Somebody had called me Tom Joad once and I guess that was how I was feeling right about then.
Fall of ‘12 It was my great fortune to meet a woman online with shared interests, (mostly astrology) and went out to stay with her in the Bay Area. Very generously she sent me airfare. She was a hoarder, due to brain damage from a serious car accident it turned out. There were weekly sympathy fucks (I won’t tell which way). I was designated shopper, painter, patch and repair man. There were good meds and therapy from a psychologist. Cali is beautiful, but fragile. There were some lovely walks alone, but I could see the encroaching environmental damage in the landscape. It was a winter respite. Spring of ‘13 I received sad news from S1, my (only) brother in Victoria, BC, had died. About a month or so later, another awful call from S1, mom had passed away from a combination of pneumonia and high bp, at 82, in Abilene. I couldn’t get to her funeral, no money, but employer/lover was very kind in helping me send flowers to drape over the casket.
Fall 13. her 2 boys getting antsy- one walking around the house with a shotgun. Time to leave. By then the hoarding was cleaned up but my reno work had to be left unfinished. Flew in from SF. S2’s place this time, invited to stay for a bit at their Austin house.
To be continued….
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