About the down and out

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.“–Jesus

Yesterday I walked out of the gym and headed to WalMart to replenish my energy with some orange juice and chocolate milk.

As I moved down the sidewalk, a skinny old guy sat in sat against a wall. He babbled something about the FBI.

Two days before, as I sat outside in the heat outside the same WalMart, on a bench, a stringy fellow with a white beard and a backpack strolled by. He too was babbling, but what he was saying was incoherent.

Soon thereafter, an elderly man wearing a California Angels baseball cap and sunglasses, a guy who resembled Fred from the 1950s sitcom “I Love Lucy”, sat down next to me on the bench.  He began talking.

At first I was a bit resistant, but since I have resolved to be kind to and show respect to all, I listened. We engaged in conversation. I started to look past his gruff exterior and missing teeth.

Ray turned out to be an interesting guy. We shared roots in West Virginia and Washington, D.C. . He said, “You must have come out here for the same reason I did–the weather.” Since that wasn’t true (though it could have been!), I didn’t respond.

Ray was upset with WalMart. He told me he had just seen the same watch he had bought in the nearest large city at a price significantly lower in our town’s store.

The local bus company made him unhappy, too. Unlike other cities he had been in, these folks dropped him off on the main street about a 1/4 mile away instead of having a stop right at the WalMart.

The 74 year old guy talked about Social Security. He also asked me how I was getting on finding a place to stay in our expensive state.

Then Ray told me of  some of his experiences back east. He related how he liked to travel by long distance bus, carrying only 10 dollars in his wallet.  What people didn’t know was that he had $100 bill stuffed in his socks.

What really interested me was his story of a false arrest. He once got on a bus and found a red toboggan. He told the bus driver about it.

The driver said he didn’t know whose it was, so he might as well keep it. That was a big mistake.

Apparently it belonged to a criminal who was wanted for six counts of felonious activity. Ray was identified as the perp on the basis of his being in possession of the cap.

After appearing before a judge, he was released after a couple of weeks. “He dropped three of the charges,” Ray said. He didn’t tell me what happened to the other counts.

“You know these judges,” he added.

As he was being discharged, Ray was given his personal possessions. “Where’s my watch?”, he asked. He told me he had entered the jail with an expensive time piece.

“What watch?,” was the response he received. Ray also claimed his jailers stole a lot of cash from him.

Considering my lack of faith in human nature and the corruption prevalent in all aspects of society, I believed every word Ray told me.

After a warm farewell, I walked over to a nearby Starbucks. As I walked in, dark-haired 40-ish fellow was in conversation with an older, fit woman.

I asked a couple of questions since I was new in town. We talked about the new shark movie that just came out. Then the older lady left.

As I sat down with my coffee, the man and I carried on. Victor and I began by talking about keeping in shape. He told me he ran the nearby hills.

Then the conversation took an unexpected turn. Victor told me his story, which included a broken marriage. A Native American, he is currently he is living in his car with a common-law wife. I told him his running was a form of therapy for him, as my workouts and walking are for me.

Victor’s situation could be written off as a common one for a minority person in the United States, except his is not the common stereotypical saga. Apparently he was previously wealthy. Not only that, he helped to found a few prominent schools.

As our discussion got deeper, I learned we shared a faith in Jesus Christ. We prayed together. After about 2 hours, Victor went his way.

The meetings with these two gentleman are not uncommon for me. I tend to run into such folks at stores and coffee shops.

What I have found is that the seemingly disenfranchised are actually pretty wise people. They have learned a lot about God through their sufferings and hold no illusions about society’s institution’s  and their fellow man.

Fellowshipping with these so-called common folk is more refreshing to me than holding forth with people who are well-to-do. I can relate to them better. As I told Victor, people like him are more “real” than those who have it easy.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose prose I love, seemed to understand how hard times can build a real person. A man who was only mildly successful in his lifetime, and therefore struggled financially,  only to posthumously be considered as perhaps America’s greatest 20th century writer, wrote this in his short story “The Rich Boy” (1926).

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.

I am not saying that being poor is necessarily a virtue. It is not.  Someone has to lead in this world.

However, it just seems to be that the down and out are more in tune with what really matters. They are more focused on eternal things.