When I have nothing in particular to do, I park a few blocks from a mission that feeds four to six dozen street people two meals a day. I get in line and get a plate of whatever they're serving, usually chicken and two vegetables.
You always want to set with talkers, never set at a quite table; if there's going to be trouble, it'll be initiated by someone at a quite table. The last time I was there I put my tray down across from two guys who I was sure were Rhode Scholars, and I wasn't disappointed. A snaggled tooth, shaggy faced guy with gravy dripping from the corner of his mouth, who looked sixty but turned out to be forty-two, said, "Poverty today is unlike the poverty when I was a kid. It is not the result of a scarcity of food. It's imposed upon me by the rich and the heartless federal government."
I was encouraged, and was getting ready to agree with Aristotle until he used the word "imposed". The one thing I've learned from my meals with the street people is not to be too quick to judge them. Most are dirty; they usually spend every dime they can get their hands on buying smokes and cheap wine before covering up at night with newspapers that they’ve read. The average street person has a better knowledge of current events than the typical citizen. True, street people have the time for it, but we all have extra time. I think that some of these street people just have the spirit of poverty.
Then there was Hubert Humphrey's opinion:
"Slumism is the pent-up anger of people living on the outside of affluence. Slumism is decay of structure and deterioration of the human spirit…"
I'd have to say, Hubert, for a damn warmonger that was reasonably compassionate. It's really too bad that you were Lyndon Johnson's butt boy, it cost you the presidency. You weren't much, but you were a far better person than the drunken Richard Nixon.
