January 28, 2000

A lot of movies portray the homeless as dignified lost souls; helpless victims of the capitalist greed machine. Not so. The homeless are often mean and crazy and smelly. Nothing glamorous, nothing dignified about that. Then again, half the people I meet are mean and crazy and smelly. The homeless are no better or no worse than these folks.

This past Monday, while dining on an Egg McMuffin and a large orange juice at the McDonald’s near Broadway and Washington Place, I overheard a conversation between two middle-aged homeless guys. One white. One black. They were dressed warmly as it is quite cold up here now. Army fatigue pants, gray sweatshirts, old wool parkas and caps. Standard Goodwill attire. The two men were talking over hot coffee that had been generously provided to them by a sweet-faced girl named Shontay. (Shontay is the employee of the month at this McDonald’s. Her picture hangs prominently on the wall near the registers.)

"Do you like using a push-cart?" the white guy asked. "Or do you think they’re too much trouble?"

"Too much trouble," his colleague replied. "I mean, it’s a pain in the ass lugging a big bag of aluminum cans around slung over your shoulder, and you can definitely get more cans in a cart, but they are so hard to steer on these bumpy sidewalks. And you can forget about movin’ them around in the snow."

"You are so right" the first man answered. "Now maybe if they had wider wheels on the carts…then it’d be a different story."

"Wider wheels with some good traction on ‘em. Like regular tires, only smaller for a cart," added the second.

"That’s a great idea" the first man nodded excitedly. "Maybe you could put chains on ‘em, like you do with tires on a car in the winter."

"Well now you’re bein’ silly," the black man replied.

"Yeah, I guess you’re right," the white guy admitted.

They both laughed.

"And another thing," the white guy said as a reflective countenance transformed his face, "when you have a cart, you have to worry about it all the time. You have to worry about somebody stealing your cart. Who needs that?"

"I don’t," the second man said, shaking his head.

"I don’t either," said the first.

This went on for another couple of minutes. They were still talking about the daily tasks and tricks of street living as I pushed my tray through the swinging "Thank You" panel and dumped the yellow McMuffin wrapper and white juice cup into the trash.

Theirs is the old story about becoming a slave to your stuff. When you’ve got a cart for your cans—a thing that makes your life a lot more comfortable—protecting that cart becomes your first priority. For others, it is a similar tale. You move to New York to be an actor and you get a job "just to pay the bills." But then you get dependent on having a steady income, you become content with mastering the same-old, same-old, and your initial dream gets lost in all the hubbub of a comforting routine. Oscar Levant, a famous entertainer from the middle of the last century, once quipped in a film, "I liked my day job so much I had to quit."

As I zipped up my coat and put on my knit cap, I thought about that and about where my priorities were now, two years after beginning my great literary adventure. Practicality and dreamy ambition are both equally important. Finding the proper balance is the key. Too much practicality in the place of dreams and you might as well die now. Too much dreamy ambition without a concept of reality and you might find yourself an out-of-work actor working as a temp for some punk 22-year-old CEO of a telemarketing firm. And that would be silly. About as silly as putting chains on the wheels of a homeless guy’s push-cart.

 

Broadway Jim Sosnicky