It was a classic case of “when it rains, it pours,” and I will remember that moment for the rest
of my life. Still reeling from everything else that was going wrong, I walked up and down the
street in the vain hope that I’d simply forgotten where I’d parked. Then, with utter resignation
and deep bitterness, I dropped to the sidewalk on my knees and wailed away my anger. A
passing woman gave me a wide-eyed look and scurried to the other side of the street.
Two days later I took the last few dollars I had and bought a bus ticket to Southern Oregon,
where three of my children were living with their mother. I asked if she could give me some
help, maybe let me stay in an empty room she had in the house for a few weeks until I could
get on my feet. Understandably she turned me down—and turned me out. I told her that I had
no place else to go, and she said, “You can have the tent and the camping gear.”
That’s how I wound up on the center lawn at Jackson Hot Springs, just outside Ashland,
Oregon, where the space rental was $25 a week that I didn’t have. I begged the campground
manager
for a few days to get some money together, and he rolled his eyes. The park was already
filled with transients, and the last thing he needed was one more, but he listened to my story.
He heard about the fire, the accident, the broken neck, the stolen car, and the incredible
unending run of bad luck, and I guess his heart went out to me. “Okay” he said, “a few days.
See what you can work out. Put your tent down over there.”
I was forty-five years old, and I felt my life had come to an end. I had gone from being a well-
paid professional in the broadcasting industry, managing editor of a newspaper, public infor-
mation officer for one of the nation’s largest school systems, and a personal assistant to Dr.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, to picking up beer cans and soda bottles on the streets and in the
park to claim the five-cent deposit. (Twenty cans make a dollar, one hundred make a flyer,
and five Livers a week keeps me in the campground.)
I learned a few things about life on the streets during the better part of a year that I spent at
the hot springs. I wasn’t exactly on the street, but I was the next closest thing to it. And I
found out that there’s a code out there in the open air, on the streets and under the bridges
and in the parks, that, if the rest of the planet followed it, would change the world: Help Each
Other.
If you’re out there for more than a few weeks, you get to know the others who are out there
with you, and they get to know you. Nothing personal, mind you, nobody asks about how you
came to be there. But if they see you in trouble, they won’t pass you by as so many under-
roof people will. They’ll stop, ask, “You okay?” and if you need something they can help you
with, you’ve got it.
I’ve had guys on the street give me their last pair of dry socks, or half the day’s can pickings,
when it looked like I wasn’t going to make my “quota.” And if somebody made a big score (a
flyer or a ten spot from a passerby), he’d come back to the campsite with food for everybody
I remember trying to set up that first night. It was already dusk when I got to the grounds. I
knew I had to work fast, and I didn’t exactly have tons of tent-pitching experience. The wind
was whipping up, and it looked like rain.
“Tie‘er down to that tree,” came a gruff voice out of nowhere. “Then send a line back over to
the telephone pole. Put a marker on the line, so you don’t kill yerself in the middle of the night
goin’ to the john.”
The rain began falling lightly Suddenly we were putting the tent up together. My unnamed
friend said nothing that wasn’t necessary, limiting his comments to “need a stake over here,”
and “better get the fly up, or you’ll be sleeping in a lake.”
When we were finished (he did most of the work, actually), he tossed my hammer to the
ground. “That oughtta hold ya,” he muttered and walked away.
“Hey thanks,” I called after him. “What’s your name?”
“Don’t matter,” he said and didn’t look back.
I never saw him again.
My life became very simple in the park. My biggest challenge (and my biggest desire) was
staying warm and dry. I wasn’t yearning for a big promotion, worrying about “getting the girl,”