After a lousy night's sleep and an even lousier breakfast at the homeless shelter on Baker Street, I knew that I needed to find work and a place to live, and find both quickly. Arriving the day before in a freight yard near Baltimore harbour after riding all night in the end of a hopper car, I was completely filthy. I'd managed to get most of the filth off my face and hands by washing in a public toilet but there wasn't much I could do about my clothes - at least not until the nearest Salvation Army store opened. At the shelter, the night porter or gate keeper or whatever he was called, had taken my name and given me a cot number and instructions that breakfast would be at 7:30, and afterwards I would have to leave by 8:30, rain or shine, sleet or snow, hell or high water. No, there would be no help from that arrogant sourpuss.
It was at that point that I even started questioning whether it had really been necessary to run away from Chester and the comfy situation with Ellen and family. Would the mob types from the club really pursue me? Taking a job below minimum wage, no bank account, no ID, they had to know I had a shady background. But how shady? In retrospect, I realised and accepted that they couldn't be sure I wouldn't go to the law and try for a deal. Yeah, running had been the right thing to do.
As I was leaving after the 'breakfast', to my surprise and relief, sourpuss was not in the reception cubicle. Instead in his place was an elderly couple with name tags indicating the church they belonged to and their names: 'John' and 'Martha'. John, a quiet reserved type whose face I couldn't even begin to read, looked the part of a retired bureaucrat. Martha, on the other hand, seemed to be one of these caring sympathetic types (some folks would say a bleeding heart) or maybe she was just skilled at looking that way -- over the years I'd seen all types.
I turned to her and got her eye before opening with a thanks and "Miss Martha, I know it's not your job but I'm just trying to get back on my feet. I know how to do lots of different kinds of work around houses and gardens. You must know somebody who needs stuff done -- like gutter cleaning, clipping, mowing, painting, repair. Heck, I can do lots of kinds of home repair work and construction, I just don't have tools or transportation."
"And you don't have a social security number or drivers license either?"
So Martha had been around the block a time or two. I gave her a look that said she had read me correctly.
"Well do you have a name?"
"Art."
"And a last name?"
"Chester. Art Chester, you know like the 21st president's except in reverse order and without the 'A' in the middle."
The night porter had surprised me when he'd asked for my name and I'd fallen back on my old system of using the name of some city where I'd been -- 'Chester' in this case. When he'd asked whether 'Chester' was my first or last name, I decided to say it was my last name because Chester as a first name sounds a little fancy for a guy sleeping in a homeless shelter. And the 'Art' I did get from the 21st president's last name. I've used lots of systems to remember my phony names -- when I was in Chester, Pennsylvania, I used 'Al' as a first name. Why? The letters 'A' and 'L' are short for 'at large', which as a bail jumper, I was.
Martha: "Well we don't need anything right now at our house, but let me think a minute. Oh, why don't you wait outside and maybe I can think of something."
So I waited outside on sidewalk. Maybe something would turn up. It must have been around nine when the two of them came out and I got up and looked expectantly at Martha. She turned to me and said to meet them in the parking lot around the corner on Mountmore in 10 minutes. I knew I was in luck because she was supposed to just say they weren't allowed to arrange jobs for 'clients'.
In the parking lot, Martha was standing next to the passenger side of the car, her husband John was sitting behind the steering wheel. Obviously she was the arranger and doer in that marriage.
"My friend Lisa has a home that she's having trouble keeping up. Right now she says the gutters have been overflowing and there's some other stuff wrong. You wait here. She'll come by for you in a half hour or so. You'll have to mention our names so she knows who you are. Oh yes, and be sure to use the same name that you gave me and remember which one is the first and which one is the last name."
I agreed, at the same time ignoring her barb. What else was there for me to do? Guys like me have to eat a lot of shit along the way. Then I sat down on the curb to wait.
Sometime later, a light blue Ford sedan stopped and the lady driver with grey-streaked black hair put down the front seat window and looked at me.
"I'm Art. You must be Lisa. John and Martha told me to expect you."
"That's me. Hop in Art."
The drive to her house didn't take as long as I'd expected and not much was said on the way. When we got to her house - a two-story brick bungalow like they built in eastern and mid-western cities in the late 40's and 50's - I saw right away that the place was an example of deferred maintenance. The lawn was mowed but it looked like some kid had done a 'lick-and-promise' job of it. Lisa showed me where the gutters had overflowed and showed me the ladder in the garage. Being a bungalow design, the gutters were only around 16 feet up so it was easy with the ladder. There were lots of rotten leaves and dirt in the gutters and from the way it clung to the gutter bottoms, it looked like they hadn't been really flushed out for years. After I got most of the stuff out, I told her I needed a long hose for flushing.
"The company that cleaned them last didn't need a hose."
"They needed one but they didn't use one. That's part of the problem."
