I wrote this article last semester for class. Enjoy.
Zach Seymour
As the sun began to dip below the tree line, Jack and I cracked open our last set of King Cobra 32 oz. malt-liquor beverages. We had spent the better part of the day balancing our time between Lynch Park and the back of S & S Cleaners, a dry cleaning joint where Jack used to work.
The goal when I set out had been to pair a face with the term “bum” in the city of Gainesville. I’m not sure if I ever truly captured the essence of whatever it was I sought, but spending a day amongst the homeless pitted me face to face with myself and the human condition; it truly was an exercise in the American experience.
Jack and I met, by chance, around St. Francis House, a homeless shelter on south Main St. I had spent the majority of the morning getting in my own way, trying to talk to people who had more to worry about than a college kid trying to piece together a sob story.
Walking into St. Francis House’s cafeteria was kind of like walking into your high school lunch room for the first time – everyone is talking in their own groups and no one notices you in the least. In my head I had envisioned a scene much like the one in Animal House – I would walk in and the proverbial record would screech to a halt followed by a collective gasp of horror and terrible outrage. That didn’t happen; my entrance was far more whimper than bang. No matter, I dusted my self off and scanned the room for an open seat in the action.
As I approached Doc Dubios, it was clear he had a decision to make – was it going to be me he devoted his attention to or the plate of baked beans in front of him. After some labored thought, Dubios thankfully decided his beans could wait.
Doc said he was 52 years old, but before asking him, I would have wagered my bank account’s balance that he wasn’t a shade under 75. He had thinning white hair contrasted by a full and almost pure-white beard. The beard was nearly flawless, save for the permanent dye-job that countless other baked bean meals had put on the border of his mouth. I gaged baked beans were probably one of Doc’s favorite cuisines, as seems to be the case with most people who can lay claim to more fingers than teeth.
Doc had a distinct accent which can only be described as cajun-cooked, Rhode Island crab cakes. He praised the St. Francis House for everything it had done for him, but admitted that a lot of people have taken advantage of the homeless shelter’s generosity – a theme that would be echoed throughout my experience.
As far as Doc’s personal situation, all he asked was, “Listen, you eva’ been hungry befo’?”
“Well,” I said, “I’ve kinda…”
“No,” he interrupted, “have you eva’ been hongry befo?” I could tell by the exhausted look in his eyes exactly what Doc meant; he was tired of fighting. As he explained to me how he had left Rhode Island and traveled south for greener pastures, he seemed sadly resigned to his fate – happy to receive free meals when he couldn’t scrape enough together while doing whatever he wanted in his spare time. I couldn’t believe that the same Doc was sitting in front of me that at one time could “hang, frame, do whateva’ you wont.” What sat in front of me was the product of being kicked in the teeth; life had rolled him into submission.
As we parted, Doc told me to “listen to ‘im one mo’ time,” as if he knew he was going to lay one more hidden nugget of truth on me.
“I can’t say it’s been goo’, but I cain’t say it’s been bad eitha,” he said. “But that’s life.”
I wished him luck and moved on from Doc, just like Doc had seemingly done years ago.
I decided at that point that I needed to get away from the shelter for a little while; I figured I would walk towards University Ave. and see what I could find.
After a mile or so – right on cue -- I saw a small figure with a big sign. It read: Homeless Vet… Anything Will Help… God Bless!!
The small figure was James Mozer. A fifty-nine-year-old wanderer and veteran of the United States Marine Corp. Mozer had been homeless in Gainesville for nine months and made it clear that he didn’t care much for the city.
“I myself prefer California,” Mozer said, “particularly Laguna Beach. Ya ever heard of it?”
I told him I thought I had heard about it once.
Mozer said he won’t even go down by St. Francis House anymore. It’s way too risky.
“All they do is rob each other down there. Everyone does it over there by that place,” Mozer said. “It’s like that everywhere, but especially in Gainesville.”
James Mozer wasn’t a shade over five and a half feet tall, and his movements were labored and painful looking. The look in his eyes mirrored that which I had seen in Doc’s eyes an hour before. He was defeated and toothless, too. His clothes looked like they hadn’t been changed in months, although he did boast a fresh shave.
Mozer spoke about a falling out he had with his brother in Tennessee which lead him to the streets, and how one time while “bummin’” in Memphis 20 years ago, a group of college kids found him drunk and tied him up behind their van and let him drag for a few miles, and how that had led to four months in the hospital and only fueled his alcohol addiction, and how now he has trouble walking, and he falls down a lot – even when he’s not drunk – a source of even more ridicule from “normal people.”
Mozer also said that he gets a disability check from the military every month, and if he were to simply sign over a third of that check, they would provide him with a one-bedroom apartment to live in.
“I like the whole check though,” Mozer said. “I do drink a lot of alcohol, and I don’t mind too much living on the street.”
I asked Mozer where the best place to sleep outside in Gainesville was.
“When you’re sleeping outside there really is no best place,” he said. “It’s all shit.”
I could tell that Mozer was wearing thin of my questions – like I was cramping his style, so I decided it would be a good time to move on. I told him I hoped he had a nice day; I mean it was a beautiful day outside. He thought a little differently.
“Lemme put it this way,” he said. “This morning I woke up without a beer or even a cigarette... it hasn't been a very nice day.”
When I left Mr. Mozer I had all intentions to walk back to St. Francis House, get back in my car and call it quits, in hopes of more success another day.
En route to my car I passed a middle-aged black gentleman who wore a tattered Gator t-shirt with a suavely placed, torn tuxedo vest on top; he had my immediate attention.
Before I could even get into my schpeel about an article and putting a face with yada, yada, yada, Jack initiated first contact.
“Could you spare some change, sir?” he asked me.
I told him I didn't have any cash, but that I'd be more than happy to share a couple of cigarettes with him. “Even betta'!” he said.
The cigarettes – which I had purchased with the intent of making friends – were Marlboro 100's. Before I could even get a smoke to my own mouth, Jack had taken the skag into his calloused hands and torn off the filter. He tore it off so fast it was as if he was totally put off that such a faux-safety measure would have ever made it onto a cigarette.
Jack said he was very familiar with the area around the shelter and Lynch Park, but he didn't need to say anything at all because it seemed like every person we ran into had something to say to Jack.
“What up Jack?” “Whataya say Jack?” “Oh Jack! My man, what's good?” And of course, “I'm gonna steal that bike Jack. I swear to God, Jack. I'm taking that shit!”
The bike – which, I would find out later, was, in fact, a magnificent machine to be sure – would be an object of discussion for the remainder of the day.
Anytime the subject of Jack's bike was breached he used the same seemingly rehearsed answer. “You ain't stealin' shit. That shit is locked the fuck up!”
I liked Jack from the very beginning. It was no coincidence that everyone knew the guy. His personality was electric. He very well could have been wearing that outfit for a few days. He didn't have many teeth left, and he reeked like a German brewery, but for whatever reason the guy made me feel comfortable in what could have been a very hostile environment.
We strolled down Main St. as he told me all about the problems the area faced. It was amazing how much disdain Jack had for what he perceived as the problem with homelessness and the substance abuse that many of the people I met faced. It was a problem that he was clearly deeply involved with.
Jack said that the crack and laziness was the real problem in Gainesville. “I’m not a crack head though,” he reassured me. “I like alcohol. I’m a drunk.”
“My favorite beer’s King Cobra – 32 oz.” he said. I had my in.
When I told Jack we were going to get ourselves some Cobras his eyes lit up like I’d told him I was going to buy him a car. “Oh aright,” he said. “My man.” His fist bump let me know it was alright if I stuck around a little longer.
As soon as we slipped inside of International Grocery and Deli Jack made a bee-line for the beer fridge while I stood and took in the scene. We couldn’t have been in the convenient store for more than 15 seconds before Jack was ready. He had our beers and he even grabbed me a paper cup. “To keep the cops off ya back,” he told me.
Before we could drink the beers Jack had to retrieve his bike – the bike I had heard so much about earlier.
As I stood on the corner holding our ice-cold beverages and some pork-rinds I’d sprung for, Jack went around the corner of a building where he had locked-up his bike.
Now I knew there must’ve been something special about this bicycle, but I had no idea how special it might be.
Jack never got into exactly how he had acquired the bike, but as he wheeled it out I (maybe unfairly) drew my own conclusions. The bike appeared to be brand new and was a woman’s bike, but to really put the whole thing over the top, it had orange and blue bows tied up all over its frame. No wonder it had been so blatantly coveted.
“Yup, this is it,” Jack said to me as we made our way to a more beer-friendly destination.
As we walked, I expressed to Jack the best I could why he had come upon me in a land so foreign from my own. I told him I felt like homeless people, and those that hang around places like Lynch Park, get a bad shake in Gainesville; I told him I felt bad.
“Don’t feel bad for those people,” he said. “They don’t want to work. They could if they wanted to. There’s always work to be done. The problem is that they give out all those free meals over there at St. Francis House. That’s supposed to be for disabled people and families -- not for bums.”
When I asked what he would do to solve the problem Jack told me they need to stop giving free meals to people who are able to work. He said they should be cut-off cold turkey – immediately and completely. Of course, even Jack would have to admit, this drastic measure would come with some undesirable side effects.
“Some people would work so they could feed themselves, because no one wants to go hungry,” he said before pausing briefly to really put some effort into what he would say next. “But other people would steal and even kill for food… So I’m not sure that that’s exactly the solution you’re lookin’ fo’”
By this time Jack had found our destination. It was a place that Jack seemed to know all too well. S & S Cleaners is a business Jack said used to employ him. Whether or not Jack ever actually punched the old time card in that dry cleaners, I’ll probably never know. I can attest, however, to the fact, that Jack was very familiar with the back of the cleaners. It is a place where Jack has had many beers and the place where we shared a few one afternoon; two creatures, who might as well have been from different planets, united in humanity and our appreciation of cold beers on a beautifully sunny and warm north-Florida day.
Jack echoed my previous two acquaintances’ sentiment that everyone has problems. He said almost every person who was homeless or living off the streets had made their decisions long ago that they were going to just scrape by for the rest of their lives.
He said you can’t make people change and in fact it’s just plain senseless to keep trying. The only hope is to reach the kids before they make that faithful decision to cease being a contributor.
As I laid in the grass, Jack sat in an old folding chair we found behind the cleaners. I tried to keep the focus on the homeless issues but the longer we sat the further we drifted.
We talked about how beautiful a day it was and how no matter who you were, on a day like that, it was hard to be upset about anything. Jack told me stories about life and beautiful women. He said Mavis Staples was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and when I told him I was familiar with The Staples Singers, I received another fist bump.
The dynamic slowly shifted from me interviewing Jack to Jack interviewing me and then back again; as a few hours went by, it became clear this was no longer a formal process of any sort – it had become a couple of guys separated, not so much by socioeconomic status, race or educational background, but merely by age and time. We carried on that way, just lounging in the sun behind a laundromat, long enough for me to lose track of the time. All I’d really been searching for was a story and an angle and all Jack probably cared about was a free beer, but by the end of that day, I somehow ended up with renewed hope and a grand appreciation of the universal sameness of people despite the bleak picture Jack had painted for me.
We were, at our most basic level, two entirely different beings enjoying things that all people are fortunately free to enjoy. It reminded me that no matter how many bad decisions someone has made or how bad of a rut they’re in, deep down that is me and you and everyone you know; life is a struggle for everyone no matter how you slice it; we are somehow all tied in to this thing together. There was a beauty to the simplicity of the situation -- a simplicity we both appreciated; it was a glorious symposium of nature and human discourse and I won’t soon forget it.
