November 30, 2003

A Holiday EnCounter with les Miserables

...OR "Another step in my Republicanization"

So, Thursday: I was en-route to Alabama for the Darby Family Thanksgiving (Kevlar advised) and, desirous to evacuate my bladder, I pulled into the Welcome station on the AL/GA line. It was a miserable rainy gray day (not particularly cold as this is Alabama, where I’ve more memories of wearing short sleeves on Xmas than not). I literally had not been out of the car for a second when I heard from behind

”Sir- I don’t mean you any harm…”

This invariably means one of two things. Either

1- It’s an angel coming to tell me that "Blessed art Thou, for thou art to give birth to the Redeemer of all mankind", and then when I express utter fear and confusion say with angelic vibrato “Dude, Thou art so punk’d!” as they disparate into a fiery exit, OR

2- It’s somebody begging money with a tale so tragic that the life of Anne Frank looks like Paris Hilton's party tape when compared to their misfortunes.

This was the latter for a change.

There was an oddity, though: this was a youngish and attractive-ish woman. She was clothed in an aqua-blue overcoat, wore a nice cross pendant and amber earrings, and was very soft-spoken.

The story, near as I can remember it, sounded more than a bit rehearsed, not unlike an egotistical freshman of moderate talent auditioning for a junior college production of OUR TOWN. Something to the effect of the following, spoken quickly with a tinge of quiver:

“My husband and son are in the rest area- we were traveling to see my family when we were hit by a drunk driver and our car was totaled. We had to stay in a cheap motel for two weeks until we found a car cheap enough to buy and it wiped us out. It got us here to this station but it’s leaking fuel and out of gas broke down and won’t crank and we're broke and desperate. Can you please help us out? We have got to get to my sister’s house- I can show you the accident report and I’ll be glad to give you my name and home address…”

When I was a wee lad of one and twenty or even five and twenty, hardly bigger than a 3 month old elephant bull seal, I had a total weakness for the assertively indigent. I’d come close enough to poverty and homelessness enough times to feel the cold heat of it and I had a major helping of the “There but for the grace of Perhaps go I” guilts. Even if I was relatively sure they were a drunk or an addict I’d usually still give something if it wasn't anything but some cigarettes since, after all, they were paying the price of their addiction. Over a period of several years and visits to New Orleans, Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia and other metropolises I must have given an aggregate total of, by the most conservative estimate, well over three dollars to these people. Then at some point a negative epiphany:

Firstly, the realization that when I was penniless and, though you’d never tell it to look at me now, missing meals, I never begged money from anybody (not even my quite well-to-do siblings); everything I owned of any value found its way into pawn shops and I learned the places that pay the most for aluminum cans and I sure as hell held some jobs that weren’t exactly spiritually or monetarily rewarding, but when there was still no money I essentially saw that as a My Problem deal.

Secondly, I started to hear the same story just a few too many times. “Hey buddy, I have a pregnant wife in _________ and I’ve got to get to her, but the _______ went out on my car. There’s a place up here who can sell me one for $___.__” (always an exact figure) but I only have $___.__, is there any way you can find it in the goodness of your heart to help me out?”. (Variations have included offering a soiled teddy bear as collateral and even once a guy literally begging on his knees, but always the same basic story- I’m convinced that there are Panhandler Conventions complete with Power-Points and scholarly journals that help standardize stories, because I’ve heard variations on the same theme just a few too many times.)

Thirdly, I've known too many people like my friend Stef, who had a wife and newborn baby that he almost never saw because he was working three jobs; this person can’t find ONE?

Anyway, the main variant on this was that it was a woman whose outfit certainly didn't qualify as bedraggled. I had some money on me BUT I also had 80 miles still to go AND it’s the Christmas season AND I have a fairly major job interview that I need to be arraigned in glorious garments for AND my current paycheck has to last me until New Year's Eve, so I honestly don’t have the money to spare and she didn’t seem to be wired for credit cards. I said a polite “Sorry, can’t help”, started to go into the rest area (for my lizard was still most desirous of drainage), saw a young man and a small child who were almost certainly the husband/son she'd referred to, and, he was clearly walking towards me (he hadn't seen us together) probably to launch into the same spiel, so I decided “Screweth it, my bladder can wait another exit for its ritual cleansing” and I headed out.

So for the 30 miles to the next rest area I was cast into moral maelstrom about whether or not, to quote Herr Schindler, “I could have done more”. There really was a child after all, and a husband-like person, so she wasn't making that up. And it is a holiday and it is windy and wet and gray and miserable out. And I did have some cash on me. And dear lord she was wearing blue and had a husband and child- she could well be the Virgin Mary in disguise and I’ve just told her “no room in the Budget Inn for you” again. Ah sheesh, I’m going to hell…

Maybe Thom Felicia will decorate my flat though, maybe one with a small balcony overlooking Pandemonium Park that he could cast with a nice understated Ikea-ish neo-minimalist that doesn’t clash too much with hell’s overemphasis on Gothic and red, but…

Wait a minute… she spent two weeks in a motel before buying a cheap used car to complete her trip. Why not just buy bus tickets to wherever you were going? Even if that were to Fort Ketchikan, Alaska, it’d have to be cheaper than 2 weeks in a motel (figure $300 even if it’s a total fleabag) and car (figure $500 even if it’s nothing but 89 lbs of Bondo and a third hand carburetor).

And while yes, she did look better than the average beggar, Fantine sold her hair and her teeth and her body and you can’t even hock your jewelry? If you only get $10 then that’s $10 you don’t have to beg. (So Great Granny gave them to you on her deathbed- big deal- keep the ticket and you can redeem them- hell, I sold my father's wedding band to a used gold dealer to buy gas for my bombed out Yugo, sometimes sentiment must bow before practicality).

Also, you are two people with a child and you have no friends, relatives, employers or acquaintances who can wire you money (Western Union is 24/7/52)? You have to beg strangers? (Plus, the child essentially proves nothing; where is it written that grifters can’t be fertile?)

It also occurred: if I had a small child and I was stranded and penniless in a strange city, would I

A- beg for spare dollars from strangers
B- contact local charities and state agencies that would be able to provide more long term help [even Day Labor is better than begging- some of my favorite people have done it in bleaker days] and perhaps a place to stay? The most that a guy at a rest area is going to be able to give you is a few dollars and all that is going to do is get you to the next Rest Area- you need more than that.

The inner dialogue continued with an exchange that began “Are there no workhouses?” and concluded with “then perhaps they should, and decrease the surplus population”, which was followed by a few more moments of self-loathing based on the “but what if they were telling the truth? Certainly if I were going to lie I’d make up a more pitiful story than that one”, closely related to the Wallace “In-con-ceivable!” Shawn “which chalice has the poison” dilemma in PRINCESS BRIDE.

So I journeyed on. I got to the next rest area, dehydrated my iguana, and as I’m coming out to my car what to my morally perplexed eyes doth appear but a begrizzled drifter with a cheap cap o’er his ears saying “Hey buddy, look, I don’t mean no harm, but I have a pregnant part in Wetumpka that needs a wife who costs $12.34…”. Thankful as I was that he was using Standard Grift 42.0A (I wonder if beggars are like AmWay and Mary Kay salespeople and the way you really make money is by getting people to beg under you?) I got into my car with all cash intact and entered the Holy City of Monkeytown a few minutes later to gorge myself on fried turkey, the World’s Greatest Camp Stew™ (my grandfather's WWI recipe), and other feast day accoutrement, occasionally eavesdropping onto CNN to see if there was a report of an ersatz Holy Family suicide pact in an Alabama rest area sandwiched between stories of Jacksonian molestation and Bush’s triumphant entry into Mesopotamia.

So, what would you have done? Do you ever give money or do you follow Dion Warwick's maxim and "Walk on By"? And is it a sign of aging or just the Alzheimers of my compassion that I increasingly think these people should be corralled?