It Snowed In My House!
It sure would be nice to get a fire going to warm up the house.
But, it's illegal to build a fire in public to warm yourself.
Thanksgiving, 2005 (cont.)
I spent the rest of Thanksgiving afternoon driving around Minneapolis, looking for our friends who maybe didn’t get inside for a Thanksgiving dinner.
It was so COLD that afternoon, and there were very few people out on the streets. The homeless I usually see must’ve found a warm place serving a meal; better yet, they must have found a warm place inside to sit, preferably for a couple of hours. When it is so danged cold outside, and you are so danged homeless inside, finding a ‘leave-me-alone’ warm place to sit is almost more important than finding family or friends, even if it is a Holiday – even if you had a family.
Well, I had found Willie that Thanksgiving holiday. And, Willie had found me. Together with our friend, Scott, and my dog, Beau, we found an out-of-the-wind place where we could set up a propane stove to heat up our soup.
As the double boiler spit and bubbled on the stove, I prayed that we would find Willie a refuge for that night. I hated the thought of having to drive Willie back to his jungle home, only to leave him at a frozen heap of rags for a bedroll. I’ve often wondered if it’d be fun driving an old city bus converted with bunk beds. I could pick up a bunch of our homeless friends at the end of the day, drive out to the nearest Interstate rest stop and park all night so everyone could use the public restrooms. Hum? Sounds like too much fun, eh? Or, maybe something that belongs in a ‘Ten Year Plan’ to end homelessness.
Well, God does provide an answer to prayer. And that Thanksgiving day, God provided Willie with a friend who knew of a guy who heard of an abandoned trailer parked in some vacant alley. At the end of our route, I found the abandoned trailer and I dropped off Willie and his friend and the propane stove. It was dark before Beau and I finally got home.
I sat alone with my pups for the rest of the night. I thought about Willie and I hoped he wouldn’t burn himself up in that old, abandoned trailer. I prayed that if I found Willie the next morning, that I’d find him warm … especially because I know he’s already froze his feet once before. And once you’ve froze yourself, little things like toes and fingers turn funny colors and fall off when they get too cold. And top that with all the pain and the loneliness that comes from being homeless …it would hurt enough to make a grown man like Willie cry.
Most nights, I cry for our friends like Willie. But I only cry on the inside.
¶ 6:00 PM 0 comments
What'd you do for Thanksgiving?
I went out early this Thanksgiving, out to the streets to look for our friends who are homeless. I knew that Willie (68 yrs old, disabled) spends most of his nights hunkered down in a clump of woods near the University. Considering the minus-degree wind chills that morning, I had a special concern for Willie’s condition, so I checked on him first thing.
I found Willie in his bedroll, just poking his head out from under a pile of blankets. It took him a few seconds to catch his breath as he raised his head up and against the biting wind. Willie quickly ducked back under the covers to grab his shoes. He sleeps with his shoes off so his feet don’t freeze while he’s sleeping, something every camper should know.
I reached out to help Willie as he struggled to stand in his frozen shoes. He has his own ‘system’ of getting himself out of his bedroll, so I stepped back and let him flail his arms about. He kicked at his blankets and I noticed he didn’t kick his ‘pee-jug' – putting it ‘pee-lightly’. A pee-jug isn’t something we need to talk about. Anyone who sleeps out in the cold knows what a pee-jug is. When you’re all toasty in your bedroll and you have to go and you already have your shoes off, you can’t take time to put on all the rags you’d need to keep warm just to go … So, hence, the ‘pee jug.’
As Willie lumbered out and about his bedroll, I glance around his jungle camp. I hesitate to use the word ‘camp’ because camping here would be illegal. It’s more like Willie’s jungle ‘home’ – fair enough?
(Yeah, fair enough! This is the area where a handful of us friends had been quietly meeting for almost ten years. This is the abandoned area down along the rails that was recently fenced, chained and padlocked to keep folks like me from parking anywhere in the area so I can minister to folks like Willie. I’ll have to park in the street nearby and walk a few blocks to get to Willie’s jungle home from now on. And with every step I take to get there, I’ll think about next time parking right in front of the local sub-sandwich shop in town, and then inviting my friends to join me there for fellowship! Yeah, probably not!)
As I looked around Willie's jungle home, I noticed that the fire pit was cold.
The fire pit is constructed of broken cement and rocks and scrap iron scavenged from the immediate area. The pit is surrounded by a stump and a couple of chairs creating an arrangement that can be quickly – albeit, not easily – moved according to prevailing winds. The entire pit sits in a small clearing that serves as ‘great room’ and kitchen for when family stops by to visit. A rack from an old refrigerator serves as cooking grate. A piece of junk steel holds a half-dozen medium-sized rocks. As the fire burns, it heats the steel which heats the rocks. The rocks get just hot enough so you can still grab them with a gloved hand. Sitting around the fire in the cold, you can stick a few of these hot rocks in your jacket to bring the heat of the fire closer to your core!
¶ 12:01 PM 0 comments
Willie wiggled his way out of his bedroll and looked at me. He raised his hands in the air and motioned to the world around us, as if in a kind of prayer. Maybe, it was more a motion of ‘surrender’. Maybe, he raised his hands in a prayer of surrender? Ah, the wind was just to cold to stand around thinking, so I invited Willie to my van so we could warm up.
As Willie sipped a cup of hot coffee, I thought about my day ahead. I had a route to keep. Willie knows many of the friends I hoped to see, and I still needed to find a place to set up my stove to heat up the soup I was going to serve with sandwiches, so I invited Willie to ride with me for a while. I had no idea of what the day would bring. I had no idea of what I was going to do with Willie later that day. I just knew I had to move my van or I was going to attract the kind of attention that could ruin my day – police and ID’s and all. And that’s the kind of attention that would really ruin Willie’s day – he’d likely get ‘kicked’ from his jungle home.
So, we moved on.
