Stories: Part One

 As I start this, I have no title, because I'm not sure where this is going to go. But I do have a starting point. A few weeks ago while serving dinner in the park, someone mentioned that they'd heard that someone who'd lived outside for quite a while had passed away recently. He's of the first people I connected with when I first started making dinner for the homeless. His street name was 'Rabbit', prompted by the way he streaked around on his bicycle. The first time I met him, he was in line getting dinner, and he asked me if I'd get him a 12 step bible. It seemed like a good request to which I should respond, so I did. I was pretty sure he didn't have it anymore when the week after I gave it to him. That was my first experience dealing with an identified addict (more on that later, either in this post or at some later date). That was about ten (10) years ago. 

I discovered that his given name was Steven, and that's how I chose to greet him. He told me only two people called him Steven: I and his mother. He knew I was interested in hearing his story, and I gleaned bits and pieces of it over the years. Rabbit would show up for dinner for while, promise me he'd tell me more about himself, then he'd disappear for months. He admitted to being addicted to meth, but that didn't define him; he had a reputation for wanting to help people. At the same time, he was in bondage to that dependency; when addicts need their fix, they stop being the people you know as they do whatever it takes to get that fix. They're generally genuinely remorseful for what it was they did, and it was typically something unsavory. I guess the point I'm trying to get to is that if their behavior affects/harms you in some way, it's best to depersonalize it as best as you can. You might as well get angry at a dog marking a fire hydrant - it's what a dog does and in the same way, doing what it takes to get their fix is what addicts do.  Sometimes he showed up for dinner with seriously glazed eyes, which led me to suspect that he was high on something, but he was always polite. He was also a lot more sensitive than I first realized; I'm capable of a bit of snark, and he was genuinely hurt once when I made light of something that was important to him. After that incident, I made it a point to be more careful in my actions and behavior around him. 

He showed up last year after another prolonged absence. He'd dropped some 20-30 lbs after an extended stay in the hospital where he ended up after being found on the street in a diabetic coma.  At that time, I discovered that he was 53. I'm pretty sure he told me that he'd been living outside since high school, so that would have been about 35 years. 

Someone told me what they thought his last name was, so I've searching online looking for some sort of death/obituary notice to confirm the rumor, but no luck.  Until then I refuse to categorize this as a memorial.

However, the fact that I may never hear his story prompts to recall others I've met over the years who've passed on, more or less forgotten.

The first person I'll mention is Jay. He passed away the summer I got stabbed. He was a former military pilot, had a small aviation firm in the valley. but ended up living outside because he had a problem with alcohol. He was usually in the company of a Korean woman named Ono. She spoke little to no English, and I understood that she'd born and raised in Japan. She was typically always smiling and always carried a pair of drumsticks with her. I never found out the reason why. It turned out that they both had problems with alcohol. Jay is memorable to me because of something he did the summer after I got stabbed. Back then, we typically had some sort of devotional time reading a passage out of the Scriptures after the meal was served, and some folks would stay for that. The person who had the responsibility for the topic/subject that week (bless her heart) elected to go kinda secular and brought up the concept of love languages, the main thrust being that people had preferences in how they showed affections and in how they preferred to receive affection. I was verbally prodded to acknowledge that I typically showed love through spending time with people and through physical contact. Afterwards, I was engaged in conversation with some people while sitting at one of the picnic tables, and a crusty army vet nicknamed "Murph" (short for his last name of Murphy - I never knew his first name. Used to sleep in a van illegally parked for three years in an industrial section of Pasadena - and had a number of unpaid parking tickets to document this - before his military benefits came through and he got military housing somewhere in the valley) asked me something to the effect wasn't I still afraid if I was going to get attacked again. Before I could answer, Jay unexpectedly came up behind me and wrapped me up in a huge bear hug. And I said to Murph: "Well, if I was, THAT should have freaked me out!".

There are two main reasons why this stands out in my memories. First, I wasn't sure if I was in denial about any potential aftermath due to how I was attacked. Clearly, I really wasn't afraid that anything like that would happen again. But more importantly, I knew Jay was trying to express his affection & appreciation for me and my choice to continue serving dinner in the park after my attack, and it strengthened my resolve to continue.

Jay died of a heart attack less than a week later.

Video Documentary - ready to view

 Hummingbird Global Media is doing a series on people and their ministries. They saw fit to include what we're doing and here's the final version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN5JSq3gRGU

I'm not sure why they put that 2 minute intro in front. i've skipped head to the 2:00 mark - but then the video seems to have skipped a few times if you do that. I promise that there are no subliminal messages going on - or if there are, they're benign like:

"go to church...."
"tithe! tithe!" 

Update: 09/2020

Last month I persuaded a couple of regulars to apply for work at Fedex where I started working recently. I don't know how much of  difference it made, but I passed their names on to HR through my managers. They both got hired and started orientation last week. As great as that news is, I consider it an even greater achievement that another one of the regulars offered to give them rides so they wouldn't miss their orientation meetings; we've started to build community where people are genuinely concerned about each other's success. I consider this to be a significant milestone.

Rob

"Rob" is the pseudonym i've assigned to a former regular on Tuesday nights. I've posted about him before. I may not have said this explicitly before, but Rob is one of the main reasons I kept on doing this after I got stabbed. For the next 3-4 months, he assigned himself as my bodyguard at the park and was never more than 5-6 feet away, and even when we spoke, his eyes were always constantly scanning the space behind me. He'd originally returned to LA earlier this year with a goal of showing up on Tuesday nights and driving for Uber. But he took a job back on the road driving a truck since the quarantine hit - he just couldn't get enough work to cover expenses.

I got a call from him earlier this evening and he told me he'd be in town next week, but that he couldn't see me. It turns out that recently his company told him to take over a run for a driver that got sick and needed to be hospitalized. They tested that driver and he came up negative for the coronavirus, so Rob took the driver's cab and finished the delivery. The other driver has since tested positive, and Rob is showing certain symptoms consistent with the coronavirus as well.

Rob is going to get tested on Monday, and to be safe, he's exercising as much discretion as possible in terms of minimizing contact with others.

With my father passing away less than two weeks ago from this, this resonates at a deeper level than it might otherwise. But Rob remains hopeful; he's accepted a new route that would allow him to be in town every week, though not necessarily on Tuesdays. I'm hoping we'll be able to see him back with us from time to time in the future.

Video documentary

Last week i started filming of a video documentary where what we do on Tuesday will be included in a series documenting various ministries. Hopefully this exposure will lead to drawing more volunteers as well as funding.

We filmed a little of me cooking as well as answering some questions. This week we'll do some surreptitious filming of dinner at the park.

I've been pretty open about a lot of stuff in what's been recorded so far, Hopefully it will come out to its best advantage, but I retain full control over what material is in the video. More on this as it develops.

This could be huge.

Jambayala

I made my claypot chicken rice last week and included chinese sausage. Everyone enjoyed it except one person who doesn't eat pork - and there was pork in the chinese sausage. I decided to try a different dish with rice cooked in a mix of cooked chicken and sausage and came up with my take on a quick and easy jambalaya.

What make it relatively quick and easy meal to make for 30+ people was using a food processor,  a 10 quart pressure cooker and and 32 cup rice cooker. I combined all the ingredients except the rice in the pressure cooker and cooked it though before adding it to the rice in the rice cooker.

12 cups long grain rice

6 chicken thighs (about 4-5 lbs), skin included

2 lbs. Louisiana style sausage

6 roma tomatoes

2 large yellow onions

6 anaheim peppers

6 jalapeno peppers

1 bunch of celery

1 oz paprika

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon oregano

You need to have celery/onion/peppers as part of your flavor base. Cajun spices typically include paprika, oregano, garlic, red pepper, among other spices.

Run vegetables through a food processor and pulse to a fine dice. Slice sausage into bite sized pieces.
Place all non-rice ingredients in your pressure cooker, seal cooker and cook about 15 minutes.

Remove chicken thighs and debone & chop meat into bitesize pieces. Return meat and bones to mixture.

You will have a great deal of liquid in the mixture. You want a ratio of about 2 parts liquid to 1 part rice. With 12 cups of rice, that'll be about 24 cups of liquid. Add water as needed to approximate 24 cups of liquid in the mixture and transfer mixture to rice cooker. Add rice, stir thoroughly, and start rice cooker.

That's pretty much it.

Sad eyes

In a couple of days, I'll be moving out. Due to the quarantine, my roommates, who are both freelance musicians, had all of their booked gigs cancelled/postponed pretty much through the end of the year. Rather than accrue months of unpaid rent, they elected to give notice and move in with friends/family who can take them in. I had no choice but to give notice as well, and with no job and limited funds, it looks like I'll be prevailing on friends until I can start back to work or find a new job. Fortunately, I've been offered space to store my belongings during this sojourn. Still, I've gone through my stuff and have elected to leave some stuff behind, most of it knick knacks and souvenirs accumulated over the years.

Despite this (or perhaps more so because of it) I remain committed to getting a meal to Central Park every Tuesday since there's no one else serving a meal in the area (shout out to former roommate "D" who's offered to let me cook at his place - on his front porch - social distancing, you know).  Apparently some folks travel out to Hollywood for a meal during the week because it's the only one they know of on that day of the week.

This week, I showed up at the park, got set up and starting serving meals. Most of the people now are regulars, but we're starting to get some new faces. One such person came after I'd served all the regulars. She said something to the effect that because of how we were helping, we were going to be blessed by God. We stuck up a conversation, and suddenly she asked how I was doing. I said I was OK, and she immediately replied: "You have sad eyes." 

I was caught off guard. As I reflect on this, I can see that I've been attempting to motor my way through - I've slept in my car before - and I'm prepared to do it again, but clearly this has and will continue to affect me emotionally. I can't be in denial about this. But another part of me is responding to something I'm not sure I can articulate fully at this point. Having people comment on my emotional state in a caring way, is not part of my normal experience as I tend to keep people at arm's length.  And having experienced it in the context of helping others adds a few more shades of gray I'm trying to differentiate. They say that caring is something you do where you and others both grow in the process. I guess this is how it's going to be for me.