When his family grew up around him, he set it against all the other families. When communities arose, each one defended itself against other communities. ...we go mad with dissatisfaction in the face of success. We spend our time searching for security... ...to make up for that we play with a violence as suicidal. A man hungry and unemployed through his own stupidity and that of others...a woman forced into prostitution by her own laziness, high prices, vulnerability, and despair - all bow with reverence toward the American Way of Life...puzzled and angry to define it. We fight our way in and try to buy our way out. - America and Americans, J. Steinbeck, 1966
Saturday. On the way to work. The lone camper is back next to the field, on the street along the way to the trailhead. Along the trail, once again I'm behind the guy whom works at Walmart. He isn't wearing his vest. He's dressed completely in black. After work, I stop by my bank in my neighborhood. I draw out money at the ATM there...and leave my card in the machine. I don't realize it until I get to the supermarket across the street. I quickly return, alas to find it no longer in the machine. The bank's customer service lets me know that the last two charges are from liquor stores. Which I never go to. A stolen card used for booze very much strikes me as authentic to my neighborhood. The bank deactivates my card. Directly across the other street is a police station. I stop in to make a report. The following day, I'm off to my sister's for another socially distanced lunch, and to give her almost the rest of the money back which she lent to me. Until tomorrow, I must keep some for myself. Along the short way to her place, I'm climbing a long hill. I'm behind another cyclist. Halfway to the crest, she begins to turn around at an intersection, right in front of me. When she sees me, I recognize that she's Hispanic. She immediately says, "Pardon." I reply, "De nada de nada."
Monday. I leave extra early to work. I need to backtrack across town to the bank, after the gym, all before work. Down the street, the usual homeless camper is along the street just south of my own. The homeless trailer is also here, and a pickup is parked in front of it. Around a couple of bends, and I'm pedaling past the camper parked next to the field on the street to the bike trail. This morning, there are broken down vehicles parked in front of and behind it. These include another camper, and the minivan (belonging to the old guy who sits beside it in a camp chair) from the small lot along the trail, which has recently been popular with homeless cars. Are all these cars from that small lot? Is this a new homeless RV camp? Earlier this month, I took a ride past the site of the old camp, imagining someone sizing it up as a prospective camp. can see how it would appear perfect for a line of RV campers. It has a line of wood beams lining a space back from the road. I hit the gym. My transit system coupons are all time stamped, so I pay cash for fare from a kiosk. I board the train with a guy in black shorts, a black vest and circular shades. We both disembark at the first transfer point, for a train down the other line, and straight to my bank. He's obviously doing what I am, and what many do, racing north to go back south across town. We grab said train and some minutes later, I'm at my bank. I'm then on a mad dash to work. I pass through a small shopping center along the route of my dash. A corner retail space was a long time plant where I floated to off and on for twelve years. It's now a huge nail salon, next to a smaller nail salon. There are a dozen years of memories in this place. The old deathburger is closed. The old supermarket is gone, and new construction on it's site has been struggling. I turn a corner, and down a street, I'm in a neighborhood with trees and trails and open space behind homes. A pair of couples are standing and talking in a crosswalk. They're blocking on lane of a street. All have a dogs. A vehicle approaches and one of the women bends to pick up her dog. "Oh, he's pooping," she says. Some eight hours later, I'm out of work and just across the avenue from work. I'm in a residential neighborhood. Halloween decorations are out on lawns. A full sized human skeleton with a red scarf around its neck is on a porch. It's directly behind a sign with multiple statements about black lives, science, and gay marriage. A few blocks away, a family is each taking turns on riding a scooter. A mom in the driveway declines her turn. "I have her to watch, I have them," pointing out various children under her charge. On Mondays, I stay an hour later at work than the rest of the week, and it's dusk when I pass a lone homeless camper. It's on a curb with homes across the street, and a park on it's side of the street. A light is on inside the camper. A nude man is inside. I'm staring at his butt as I pass along the bike trail. Shortly, I'm passing the street with the potential new homeless RV camp. The old guy's minivan is not there this evening.
On Tuesday's ride home, Naked Man's camper is gone this evening. The new homeless RV camp has dwindled to one camper and a car. Someone stands behind the open driver's side door. Twenty-four hours later, I'm rolling past the small lot with homeless cars. The old guy's minivan is back here. Off the trail and along the street with the empty field. The broken down camper is gone. In its place is a trailer which looks new. The following morning, I'm back past it on the way to work. I recognize now it's a homeless trailer. Someone threw something on the roof. A set of shelves? The old guy's minivan is gone. It's down the trail, in the small lot with homeless cars. Along the way to work, I stop into a Super Target to pick up dressing for my lunch salads, and a snack. I have to break a fifty, so instead of the U-scan, I get in line for the single checker. She's young. She's slow. She notices my bike helmet and lets me know that she doesn't know how to ride a bike. On my way out, I notice that the place has a real optometrist. My primary care physician wants me to get my eyes checked, just a check up. I go out to unlock my bike. It's been just cool enough in the mornings for my balaclava, pants, and windbreaker. A young guy pulls up on his bike...and waits for me to leave. He has another rack where he may lock his own bike. He has stubble and round sunglasses, and he's in shorts. I'm packed up and out of the way. He's still waiting. He looks at me and smiles. He then finally pulls up and locks up his bike, which seems to take him forever. He's still doing I don't know what with his chain when I'm off to the bike trail. At the bottom of a walk from the parking lot is a pair of benches along the bike trail. On one bench a couple of women sit. I take the other and eat my snack. Sitting on some steps which also go up to the parking lot is an old guy I recognize. He has a cane, but walks along and carries it instead of use it to assist his walking. After a minute, he gets up and makes his way down the trail. Carrying his cane.
I'm at work when the owner comes in to update the hard drive. This week, I had been online to shop for a new bike. Someone offered to get me one for Christmas. There are no manufacturers who are not sold out online. For some reason, the United States has chosen this Autumn to purchase every bicycle in the nation. For...the winter? I'm clueless. I've had by back up bike sitting in the store at work. The owner identified the problem. Something about the back rim isn't allowing the bike to stay in gear. This afternoon, he takes it with him to the bike shop of a friend. He also lets me know he will see what his friend has in stock in the way of new bikes. He's confident he can find what I want. ...and get me a discount. He's the only one I talk about bikes and riding with. He dose riding up this the mountains with his lady. We compare notes about going down over icy roads. I mention random details, such as I carry a pair of cheap safety glasses, for when the snow is coming at me in the eyes. He replies that he tried a pair of $300 eye gear for winter wind. He had to return them because the wind was still reaching his eyes. A pair of $5 safety glasses did the trick for him as well. He tells me he has five pairs, tinted for different lighting. Later on, I'm listening to a local radio pundit. He had a hand in making a cheap looking internet documentary titled "Denver in Decay," modeled after a propaganda TV spot in Seattle. That one is titled "Seattle is Dying." The TV station is part of a relatively new conservative empire. The latter is an anti-homeless piece. The pundit plays the audio from a YouTube video made by an activist who sounds as if he's homeless. The video was taken at a rally in Aurora for a citizen who was choked to death by police. The homeless guy records himself confronting the pundit. The pundit asks him if he's a member of Antifa. He says he is not, but he is a member of Occupy Denver. On the way home, I see more campers which I decide are homeless. One is a small camper. It's parked in a corner of a parking lot, between the trail along a creek and condominiums above around the rest of it. It's a secluded part of the bike trail. It's not far down the trail until I come to a junkyard. A shell of an RV sits in another small lot not far from the yard. Closer to home, just off the trail, there's a silver trailer which has been sitting on a residential street. It was against a curb next to an electrical substation, across from homes. I assumed it belonged to a homeowner, as it appears as if it's from the 1950s. This evening, it's moved some yards, off into an empty field.
Friday. I'm on the way to work, at the trailhead. Across the street, there is yet another big RV, sitting in yet another empty field. Down, down the trail and down the connecting one, I'm coming up on the dog park. Ahead of me is a young couple. Each has a rolled yoga mat. The guy has a long bushy beard and a tam on his head, above his puffy pants. Seven hours later, I'm out the door from work. Not long thereafter, I'm rolling past the hidden lot along the trail where a small camper was. It's gone. The camper next to the junkyard is still there. In the small lot with the homeless cars, the old guy's minivan is the solitary homeless vehicle here. It's parked under a tree, hidden as best it may be. He is actually sitting between the tree and the minivan. He really doesn't appear to be "old" but middle aged. He appears to sit in what may be a wheelchair, shaggy hair under a cap and his buttoned down shirt open. When I pass the place I usually enter the trail in the morning, I fail to look toward the spot where I saw the camper this morning. Off the trail, I pass the street wit (most recently) the homeless trailer was parked next to a field. It's not here this evening. The following morning, there is huge news. And it's not about the milk in my backpack which feels as if it's leaking onto my ass. There has been an RV parked on the next street down from my own. It's been there at least since early May, when I first noticed it. Who knows how long before that? The relatively new trailer detached behind a pickup truck remains. Further along the way to work this morning, across from the trailhead, the big RV camper is gone. Past the small lot, with the occasional gathering of homeless vehicles, the guy's minivan is gone. Hours later on the way back home, I'm coming back up the street just down from my own. Now, there is a brand new looking RV camper across the street from where the broken down camper was for five months. This thing shines.
Funny Money
Back when I first applied for health care under the Affordable Care Act, in 2014, I was told that I didn't have to purchase health care. I was told that I qualified for Medicaid. Months later, I was told that the local Social Security office made a mistake, that their computer qualified everyone who was unqualified and vice versa. As a direct result, I had to pay the $800 "tax" to the feds that year. Skip ahead some six years. A few days after I paid my annual dental insurance premium, I got another letter from the same Medicaid office. I had sent them a letter before the summer began, letting them know that I was back to work. This month's letter informs me that I was qualified for Medicaid back in the month that I sent them my letter. Their office is unreachable by phone. I considered writing them another letter, letting them know that I didn't trust them...until I remembered that I need a list of dental work which I may never be able to afford, insurance or no. So instead made an appointment with a dentist who accepts Medicaid. The receptionist clued tells me that I have $1500 available for dental work this year, and next year I will only have $1000. It's professionals, rather than any kind of word out on the street, who give me the impression that Medicaid is some kind of mentally deranged beast. That those who choose to use it do so with the understanding that it may disappear, or the rules may change, or it may tell you that you never existed to begin with. After work on Saturday, I take a roll of film to the camera shop. I don't yet have my replacement debit card, but my branch gave me a replacement ATM card. When I went in to report my card stolen from their ATM a week or two agi, the teller asked me if I had an ATM card. I told her that it had been taken away some years past by another teller. The replacement teller gives me a new ATM card then and there, and it's something at least which I have here and now. Saturday afternoon, I have enough cash for the drop off, but I must withdraw more for a new roll of film. I go to the supermarket next door and am directed to their ATM. It informs me that i cannot draw out their least denomination. I am then directed to a bank ATM between here and the camera shop. This bank's ATM is behind a locked door. The serious competition is from the third ATM I am directed to across the street, which is a drive through. This bank is the same branch as the ATM in the supermarket. Only this ATM has money in it. For I have purchases to keep, and miles to go before I weep, miles to go before I weep.
Sunday begins as another day for a sleeveless shirt. Later in the afternoon, I'm in my winter coat. The leaves began to turn this month, Sunday afternoon saw a strong wind, and the branches are in the process of becoming bare. On Monday, I notice on the way to work that the camper across from the trailhead is still there. It's hidden behind some trees. I wonder if it's the one from the street next to the field. Both RVs had a pair of bicycles on the back. At work, the owner walked in with the back wheel to my backup bike, complete with new gear cassette. On the way home, I notice that the nude man's camper is now parked along the street with the open field. Tuesday. I'm on a bus to work, as I am going to ride home a bike which is at work. The bus is passing an elementary school, which I pass to and from work, across from my own neighborhood. Parked at the curb of the school appears to be nude man's camper. A rubber hose appears to run from a plastic gas can on the back of the camper around the left side. After work, I ride my repaired back up bike home in triumph. I'm just off the trail and coming up the residential street next to an open field. Instead of the previous RV, which now appears to be parked across from the trailhead to work, nude man's camper appears to be parked here. Wednesday. I'm one street down from my own on my way to work. Far from where I make my turn appear to be the camper and trailer which used to reside on this spot. When I come back this way later in the evening, I will ride down to verify this. It appears to be a different RV, along with a pop tent. I'm taking a different route to work from the gym this morning. I'm one block over from a busy boulevard. Parked next to an apartment complex, among other cars, is a suspiciously run down camper. On the way home, I'm on a stretch of bike trail which is opposite the side of the river where this summer's homeless RV camp was. Tomorrow, cooler temperatures are forecast, but they appear to have arrived late this afternoon. On this side of the river, parked on the road next to the bike trail, is a guy in his car. His window is open and he's singing along to a country song on his sound system. Around the bend and across a bridge, I'm at the small lot where homeless cars congregate. This evening, the lot is full of cars which I assume belong to a gathering of women on the other side of the bike trail. They are socially distanced in a circle of camp chairs, out on a playground as the sun sets. A single guy stands in the lot. He has stubble on his face and a cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth.
Thursday. On the way home, I notice that the camper next to the junkyard is gone. The old guy's van is back at the residential street with the open field, up from another homeless camper. This camper has a rope of sizable thickness attached to the front, underneath. As if it was towed here. And, on the street down from mine, a camper is back where one sat since last May. The other camper and pop tent are down at the other end of the street. Friday and Saturday, it's difficult to keep track of this maze. On Friday, I'm coming home down the bike trail. I'm just the other side of a short wooden bridge, beyond which lay the secluded parking lot with a homeless camper. The trail is blocked by a trio of sixteen-year-olds. ambling along. There are a pair of girls on the right and a guy on the left. He's taking puffs from something he's smoking, and coughing. The girl on the end notices me right behind them and alerts the coughing guy. He makes his way over and, as I pass, he says, "Shoulda said something bro." Directly after, I'm rolling past the secluded lot. The camper has returned. A guy stands outside of it, the side door is open, and a cat strolls underneath. Perhaps an hour later, I exit the bike trail. The camper across the busy street has been gone for a day or two. I turn up the residential street next to an open field. Not only is there one camper here, but a second one I don't recognize has joined it. Saturday, I turn back down this same street to work. The old guy's minivan (a guy who actually appears younger than myself) is here. A yellow sticker on the back claims that a student driver is onboard. This minivan has some kind of rig on the back, a short platform to carry some cargo. A motorized wheelchair takes up most of the space on the platform. Hours later, I'm coming back up the trail home, past the small lot. A new camper and a new homeless guy is here. Back up along the street near the field, the not so old guy and student driver is outside his minivan. Then, I turn down the street just down from my own. The camper is gone again. The other camper and pop tent are still at the other end of this street. And then, I turn onto my own street. Behind me, a camper pulls out onto the street.
Why Do You Touch This?
Monday. On the way to work. The camper which several days ago was parked next to an elementary school, across the boulevard from my neighborhood, has moved a few blocks. It's now where the long time camper was, on the street down from my own. The big RV is back in the lot, across the busy avenue from where I enter the bike trail, on the way to work. Meanwhile, at work, my single issue with enrolling in a health care plan for next year is a simple one. I can't reset my password for my account in the state health care exchange unless I have internet access to my phone or to a laptop. neither which I have. The following day, this issue is, as is sometimes said, about to blow up into something exponentially ridiculous. But I get head of myself. On the way home. Old guy's (who really isn't old) minivan is not in t he small lot along the trail, and it isn't on the residential street next to the open field. Around the corner, up and across, I turn along the street just down from my own. No camper. In the spot with the original camper from May is a passenger van. Tuesday. I'm on my way to an appointment at a dentist who takes Medicaid. By the end of this day, after six hours of phone calls while at work, I will have discovered not only that this appointment is unnecessary, but that my approval for Medicaid has disqualified any tax credits for my health insurance. As a result, I will cancel the rest of my policy. My appointment with this dentist is unnecessary because I will discover that my regular dentist began accepting patients with Medicaid without my knowing it. Though I am disqualified for Medicaid, there's an emergency order in place disqualifying anyone from Medicaid until further notice. This is fine with my urologist. This isn't fine with my beloved primary care physician. But I know nothing of this at & AM, when I step into the 7-Eleven along the way to the soon-to be unnecessary dentist. No more than fifteen blocks to the south is the 7-Eleven across the street from where I live. There, customers reach under the heat lamp and grab their own snacks, and put them in their own bags. I walk into this one and attempt to do the same. The manager stares at me from across the counter. "Why do you touch this?" I reply, "Because it's open (for me to reach inside.)" He continues to stare. I ask for my snack. He tells me to leave the store.
After my appointment, I hook up with the trail to work at a spot further north. All the way down and onto the connecting trail, I'm rolling along the long open space below the waterpark. Yesterday afternoon, I came past here and spotted a guy laying out on the grass. His bike was on the ground next to him. This morning he's still here, now under a blanket. I'm down the trail, off the trail, on the horse trail, and through the old money neighborhood before I'm across a busy road and into the last neighborhood before work. I spot a delivery van, with the name of the last company I worked for, way up north. I spot the driver going to pick up a bag hanging on the front door. He spots me and he comes over to chat. Before we both went to work in Arvada, he was the driver who came to the location where I work now. Good to see him. After work, I'm headed back home. In the secluded lot off the trail, a little Toyota camper is parked in a spot. It appears as if it could be from the early 1980s. I'm down the trail, onto the connecting one and all the up to where I exit. I'm just off the trail and passing one of the trailers on the street with the open field. It now has three orange cones on the ground surrounding the side facing the street. I don't see the typical "stolen from..." stenciled on the sides of any of them. They appear smaller than regular traffic cones. There is a car parked behind it. It's missing the entire front hood. A bungee cord stretched across the length of where the hood otherwise would be. The following morning, I pass this same car. A grizzled guy comes around the front toward the driver's side. He waves at me and says hi. Ten hours later, I'm on the way home, just off the trail. In the small lot on the busy street, across from the trailhead, there is this evening not one camper, but two here. And as I pass the hoodless bungee cord car, a different guy is now standing next to it.
Thursday. I'm on the way home from work. A freezing drizzle has slowly rolled in. The two campers are gone, across the busy street from the trailhead. Around the corner, along the street next to the field, there are now three campers parked. On the way home I stop into a supermarket with a particular product. I grab the last one and am outside when I decide I'm hungry. There's a little pizza place in the shopping center. I stop in and order some hot wings. I have a fifteen minute wait. A single employee must make all the food, take all the orders both over the counter and from multiple phones, and take pizzas to cars in the parking lot. I step outside to wait so I can take off my mask. I watch a homeless guy come wandering past the shops. An unlit cigarette hangs from a corner of his mouth. He stands at the end of this line of shops, out from the freezing mist. He comes over to the front of another shop. A young female employee comes out of the Dairy Queen next door and runs into the pizza place for something, before running back to her own store. My wings are ready and I take them down the street to a park. It's popular with homeless and I find a wall where I'm out of the wind. I eat my wings across the covered picnic area from someone on the ground in a sleeping bag. I wasn't given any napkins and must wipe my sauce-covered fingers and mouth upon my gloves. The gloves will get washed in a couple of days. After my meal, it's cold enough now for my mittens anyway. On Friday, I'm headed to a supermarket on the way to work, in a search for a product I was unbale to find where I stopped along the way home yesterday. I'm headed down my street just around the corner from where I usually turn on the way to work. Hidden just around this corner is a small trailer, such as my dad used to have years ago where we used to live. Saturday. It's a frosty 27 degrees F. this morning. I'm coming around the corner, of the residential street where two campers remain parked next to an empty field. Closest to the corner is the car without a hood, and a bungee cord stretched above the engine. The driver's side window is halfway down. On this frosty morning it's an even stranger sight. After work, it's warmer, and I make jig time to the camera shop out in the neighborhood where I used to live. I say a quick hi to my tall photogenic hippie goddess. Then it's off toward home again. The route home from here takes me through a sizable park. Residents of surrounding apartments and homes are all out for a last bike ride, run, or dog walk before the big freeze and snow on the way overnight. I pass one young guy standing on the grass. A frisbee is in one hand and his phone is in the other. He's telling someone that the frisbee has been in the family for three decades. I grab a quick dinner at a deathburger, and from there take the way home which I took out of downtown. I'm coming down a street through the neighborhood between my own and the bike trail. I'm pedaling past a washing machine on the sidewalk. A woman asks me in Spanish if I cam help her take it into her house. It isn't too heavy and we get it inside. We set it down in the kitchen of this small apartment. We've carried it up a concrete wheelchair ramp. A young woman is in a motorized wheelchair. inside. This is my last stop today.
Speaking of deathburgers, I need to grab a couple of things from the supermarket down the street. A little snow has arrived. I'd like an opportunity to wear something other than bicycle shorts for a change. So I decide to take the bus. Before the supermarket, I stop into a deathburger for lunch. For the moment, the place appears deserted. I yell hello. Someone who could pass for a sixteen-year-old girl appears. I order, and I get the wrong thing. But I don't care. They're open for dining inside, and the girl is spending her Sunday working. A family comes in and the place now feels lived in. I finish my lunch and make the short walk to the supermarket. Items in hand, I grab a bus back home. A couple of years ago, I was riding the bus with my bike to work and back. I was collecting the excuses of certain riders. What those riders had in common were that they had no fare. This afternoon, a couple of guys come aboard at one stop. One tells the driver he doesn't get paid until tomorrow. This driver is charitable. Or perhaps too tired to argue. Monday. Temperatures are in the single digits. A thin veneer of flurries passes through the air. There are a couple of inches of snow on the ground. I'm out on my bike at a reduced speed. The streets this morning are slippery in spots. I approach a residential street with the remaining two campers next to the open field. At the corner, a big RV pulls slowly through. It appears to be the big RV from the small lot across from the trailhead. It's some eleven hours later that I am negotiating the alternating swaths of ice and snow, along the streets to the trail and then upon the trail itself. And doing it in the dark. This is going to be a relatively long ride home. I'm on the trail home which connects with another. I'm under a bridge when, in the distance, I see the tiniest of lights and two shadows in the dark. Two little grizzled homeless guys are walking their bikes along the trail, instead of riding them, as I see homeless sometimes do. The shortest one asks me where Littleton is. Littleton became famous two decades ago as the municipality where the "Columbine" High School shootings took place. I tell him, "You're in Littleton." But the municipality goes on from here for many miles. All the way to the south past Highlands Ranch, and south of a business loop known as I-225, out where my brother lives. He complains that it's so far he can't order a pizza. But I guess these two guys get around. And I imagine they have not much else to do. And they may want to keep moving to stay warm. I forget that I'm in ski pants, a balaclava under another face mask, and leather insulated ski mittens. Even though these guys have coats and knit caps, as cold as it is out here I still don't think they're dressed warm enough. But I imagine charities ain't handing out ski gear. He asks the other where they're going. "Beavis Library," says the other. It rings a bell. I still think it's funny that there's a library named after Beavis and Butthead. Which I'm sure makes no difference to them. No doubt, they're looking for a library, perhaps this particular one, because they can find services and resources, and perhaps even shelter. I'm not much help to these guys. I just don't know where this library is in the vast county. I suggest they get on Broadway (the overpass we are standing under)and go south. The following day, I will look p this library at work. The Edwin A. Bemis Library is indeed in Littleton. It turns out they were pretty damned close. Had they taken my advice, they would have had less than a city block to go down Broadway, and a few streets west. There it is.
On Friday, as well as Monday and Tuesday, I am scheduled to work open to close. It's not long after 5 AM when I enter the bike trail. It's a section where there is a gravel path between the trail and the river. In the dark, I can hear someone scraping along the gravel path. Someone bundled up against the morning chill is dragging a suitcase on wheels along the path. Some fourteen hours later, and the sun is going down, I'm right back at this same spot. It happens to be next to a golf course. A homeless guy is riding his bike toward me. Across his handlebars is a golf club. I wonder if it came from the big RV homeless camp from a month or two ago. Following him is a woman riding her own bike, pulling a bike trailer. Not long before I get here, I'm a few minutes back down the trail. A teenaged guy is laying across the trail, looking toward the river. I have just enough space to get past him. Before I pass, he says "Fuck you" to someone toward the river bank. When he spots me, he says, "Oh, not you." Then he mentions something about I have a spider, or do I have a spider? Curious omens on the day before Halloween.
