The Crazy Old Man

 Preface

This work is not really fiction, but not really a biography either.  It is a blend of both.  It is mainly a tribute to someone who had a profound effect on more people than he could ever realize.

On To Our Story...

It was a depressing day when I met the crazy old man.  I was out of work, and so was my Insignifigant Other.  I went out to fill out applications at every place close to where we lived.  I had been to a few places already, and I walked into the local donut shop to try there.  The manager gave me an application and walked to the kitchen.  I filled it out, and drank a coke while I waited for the manager to come to the front of the store again.  

"Do you want me to approve it for you?"  said a bearded guy at the end of the counter.  He was wearing a worn out coat, and his beard was wild looking.  He was mostly bald, but he had the ring of hair around his head.  He had a chess board and newspaper in front of him.  Another guy sat next to him, studying the chess board for his next move.

"Can you do that?" I asked

"Sure, bring it over here, and I'll give it my stamp of approval!"

I didnt realize until he finally let me in on the joke, that he was a customer.  He chatted with me a bit.  When the manager came back, he told him that he had approved it, and that he should hire me. I watched the two men play chess, and the older man bought me a donut, and antoher coke.  I had spent my last buck on the first coke.  The two men bickered  back and forth during hte course of their game, and finally when the game was over, Ray, the younger of the two, got up to leave.  He kind of saluted me, and told Roger good bye.

When Ray was gone, Roger asked me if I would like to go out for hotcakes.  I was hungry, so that sounded like the best offer I was likely to get for awhile.  I was a little nervous about going somehwere with a stranger, but i hoped that I had the advantage by being young if I got into trouble.  

He took me to the last Big Boy's in the area.  Most of the places I went to as a youth were now gone.  I hadn't been to a restaurant of any kind for quite awhile, as my IO and I were too poor to eat out.  We could barely afford to eat in, so eating out was not an option to  us.  The IO's habits were never denied, but food was the sacrifice we made for cigarettes and beer.  

While we waited for our food, Roger was asking me about myself.  He was filling me with trivia, in between the questoina he asked and the answers I was giving him.  I told him about Paul, and how we were out of work.  I used to work at the local photo lab, but their work had slacked off to the point that they didn't need me back.  When the meal was over, nearly two hours later, Roger asked if I could use anything from the Rite Aid next door.   I couldn't refuse that offer either.

He drove me home, and bid me a good day.  I had a heavy bag full of stuff.  He was like a jewish mother, "more you want?, you are too thin, you should eat more!!"  I was in shock that anyone, especially a stranger, would be that generous.  Life in the suburbs was almost as rude as life in the city.  Kindness from a stranger was completely unheard of, even in the suburbs.  Paul could not believe my story when I arrived inside with a bulging bag of goodies from Rite Aid.  

A few days later I headed back out to the same strip to see if anyone was willing to interview me.  I saw the blue over white van, and went into the donut shop. He was there, exactly as I had seen the first time, with the newspaper and the chessboard.  He had a different older gentleman there this time.  Roger introduced me to Joe, who appeared to be a painter.  Roger offered me a donut and a coke.  

Joe left, and Roger and I were there with the chess boatd and donuts.  He asked me if I played chess, and I replied that I was a lousy player.  I hadn't had much success learning it as a kid, and had even less success learning it as a young adult.  He offered me the newspaper, which I gladly accepted.  When I turned to the local news section, I noticed that the lotto numbers had been blacked out.  He told me that he did that for the folks who just looked at the paper for the lotto results.  He said he also tossed out the sports section, as he felt it to be a waste of paper.  All I lliked was the local news, the comics, and the advice.  

He told me a bit about his life.  He grew up in California, and had come to the east coast permanently about 27 years before.  He said that he and his wife had the perfect marriage, they hadn't had an argument in 27 years.  Of course, that was because he had been separated for all of that time.  Neither of them had gone to the trouble or expense of filing for a divorce.  He had a son, a daughter in law, and a grand child on the way.  He also had two grown children that he had adopted.  They were his wife's kids from her first marriage.  

He took me to the local Denny's.  I pigged out on a milkshake there.  Ever since Howard Johnson's had left the earth, there had been no decent milkshakes anywhere in the DC area.  Denny's was pretty close to a HoJo shake. It was worth the weight gain for a shake that good.  Everybody else was selling whipped corn syrup "milkshakes".  Roger was well known by all the staff at the Denny's and most of the customers at the counter.  He picked arguments about politics and religion with a couple of the customers.  He was adamant in his beliefs, and he was vocal about those views.  It was amusing, but a bit embarrassing at the same time.  

He wanted to go somewhere, and asked if I minded going along.  I was getting the impression that he just liked having a running buddy.  He was retired, but from what was a mystery.  He had mentioned at least half a dozen careers, and if you followed the timeline, they didn't really add up.  He had been retired for the better part of 30 years, and that meant that he had retired somewhere around 30 years of age.  (he was 60  when I met him)  If you believed his tales, he had had at least four different careers before the age of thirty.   That seemed improbable.  

He talked about growing up during the depression, in a big family on an almond ranch in California.  He said that the place he grew up still had the old world way of telephone numbers.  It would go somethng like JA4-yellow holler road.  I had only heard of these old world phone listings on Andy Griffith.  Most of what he had talked about were the goats and the rabbits, and a few favorite sisters.  From what he said, it sounded as though he really enjoyed growing up on the farm.  He told me about how his mom cried one Thanksgiving because she only had soup to feed her kids for Thanksgiving dinner.  

He started to take me to the University of Maryland Astronomy Lab.  They met twice per month for a lecture and a look through the big telescopes.  The lectures tended to be kind of dry, but the view with the telescope was spectacular.  They usually had one on Mars, or Venus, and the other on the moon, or Jupiter. After the viewing, Roger would go to another donut shop that was open all night.  He would play chess with another older gentleman.  This would go on for hours, and it would be after midnight before the game finally broke up.  By then the manager of the donut shop was really annoyed and was about to call the cops to get rid of them.

There was one day that I walked into the donut shop to find Roger on the payphone.  He motioned for me to come over.  He handed me the phone.  I heard the computer voice say that he was $1,500 overdrawn on his account.  I dropped the phone from the shock, and he laughed uproariously.  When he finally recovered from his laughing fit, he explained to me how this happened.  His sister had callled the VA and told them that she thought he might be dead because she had not heard from him in several months.   He had been going about his usual routines, and had been writing a check from his California account to his MD account, and had no clue that anything was amiss.  When he finally found out about the overdraft, and found out why, he had to get legal aid involved in straightening the chaos.  In the end, he was required to show his face at the VA hospital in order to prevent it happening again.  Plus he had to contact his sister at least once per month, so she wouldn't report him dead again.  

I felt bad about taking him up on his generous offers, when he was destitute himself.  He explained that Ray had loaned him money to hold him until it was straight.  Plus, he had a stockpile of food and STUFF that he had bought for the last several months.  He was a pack rat, like many children of the Depression, and couldn't throw anything away, nor could he pass up something useful when it was on sale.  

I could not get hired anywhere in the area, and eventually Paul and I ended up homeless. We built a tent in the woods, near all the local conveniences such as water, food and laundromats.  I didn't tell Roger how desperate we had become, but I was soon to find out that he was almost as bad off as me.  Paul and I had found work with a temp agency, but it didn't offer enough hours to be useful.  We worked because it was all we could get, but it didn't pay enough to pay rent, nor buy food.  The job was good for 4 days a month, and was minimum wage.  It wasn't long before we could not afford to take the bus to the job site, and we had to quit.  When I finally told Roger how bad the situation was, he had tons of different camping supplies that he donated to us for comfort.  He had blankets, a dual fuel stove, pots, pans, and a propane heater, plus a P-38 can opener.  He gave us tons of canned goods, such as beans, Spam, and Chef Boy Ar Dee.  

He started taking me to a soup kitchen in Laurel, MD, where they served a meal, plus a bag lunch for the next day.  If someone donated blankets, clothes, fruits, snacks, bread, or anything else, that was put out for everyone to take with them as well.  One of the times we went, a new restaurant was soon to open down the street.  They needed to train their cook staff, so they had them learn to make the menu items, and then all those meals were donated to the soup kitchen.  We got to take home 1/2 pound hamburgers, and shrimp salad.  Everyone who was there that night was stunned by the evenings take home.  Roger gave me his, as he was allergic to shrimp.  I was handed the 1/2 lb burger, adn he was handed the shrimp salad.  I offered to switch, but he wasn't crazy for burgers.  He told me to share it with Paul.  

Not long after we became homeless, I learned that I was pregnant.  I had suspected, but I had tried to wish it away.  The worst thing that could happen at that time.  Roger took me to Social Services to get signed up for welfare and food stamps, as well as the prenatal care through Medicaid.  When I first applied, they told me that I should be able to get assistance quickly, as we were in an emergency situation.  It ended up taking two months to see one dime.  In order to get the assistance, I had to go there nearly every day, and pester them for an answer, and they kept feeding me misinformation, then asked me for more documents, and more proof that I was who I was.  Finally, they  told me that I could not get help if I did not have a valid mailing address.  I was using a PO Box that belonged to a local church, and that wasn't good enough as it had to have a building attached to it.  At the end of the two months, I finally had prenatal care, food stamps and welfare.  It was an exhausting and humiliating experience.  I was really angry at the fact that the first case worker who talked to me either didn't listen to the situation, or didn't know enough of the system to give me all the facts.  I was passed to at least three different case workers in the two months it took to get help.

One of the indignities of being homeless is not being able to take a shower.  We would get cleaned up in the restrooms of the local gas stations.  We were eventually thrown out of gas station bathrooms, because we came to use the restroom, and never bought any gas.  I told Roger about this, and he took me around to the places that were good for taking showers.  One was a local campground, part of our National Park service.  Most of the time, nobody would even notice you were there, and would not say a word if they did notice you.  Another place was a Marina in Alexandria.  It was such a good feeling to have a real hot shower.  

I met some other homeless folks through Roger. I had no clue what had brought these folks to such dire circumstances.  One was a bearded lady who lived in her car.  She was mildly retarded, and had a job cleaning the rest stops on I95, but it didn't pay enough to be self sufficient.  There were a few of the homeless that I met who were homeless because they didn't want to get caught for non-support.  Another guy we met was a BAD alcoholic who panhandled to support his habit, rather than work at a full time job.  It seemed ridiculous to me that if he spent 8-10 hours a day panhandling, he could easily spend 8 hours a day working.  He really only pulled down enough money to support his habit, and not a bit more.

Roger was full of stories about when he first came to the DC area with his two girlfriends.  He came here with two young women, and they had a very open and progressive relationship.  They camped out in a secluded patch of woods and enjoyed life with nobody to interupt them. It sounded like the summer of love.  He had talked of another room mate he had who was deaf.  He never did explain how he ended up living in a camper, but I got the impression that it was by choice, and not by chance.  He was very picky about his privacy, and I suspect that his privacy was the biggest factor in the decision to live in a camper.  It may have had something to do with the obsessive collecting as well.  Perhaps he was ashamed of it, and didn't want anyone to complain about it.

He had a knowledge of all kinds of things that really astounded me.  His favorite seemed to be science.  He read the science news in the paper.  He spent three hours one night trying to get me to understand how to understand the atomic weight of things.  He never mentioned any education past grade school.  The latest grade he ever talked about was sixth grade.  This led me to believe that perhaps he had to drop out of school to help support his family.  When he spoke about the latest scientific advances, you would think he had a full college education.  His favorite joke was that he had to marry the teacher to get out of grade school.  During that three hour lecture on the atomic weights, he also covered how desperately hydrogen needs to bond with something, that it will always find another hydrogen molecule if nothing else is available.  

Paul was getting annoyed with all the time I spent with Roger, but he wouldn't come along.  I couldn't find a way to explain to Paul that I didn't feel right telling Roger when and where to take me when he was springing for lunch, and taking me to get showers, and to the doctor's appointments.  Paul wasn't doing anything to go find a job on his own, so he really had no place to complain about how much time I spent with Roger.  I was no longer a good employment candidate, since pregnant women aren't really employable.  Plus, there was nothing to do back at the tent, so hanging out with Roger was  a much better option than sitting in a tent with no radio.  

When summer came around I was starting to panic about what I was going to do when the baby was born.  I had pestered Social Services about subsidized housing, and was told that there was a 5 year waiting list for that.  I asked them what to do in the mean time, and they replied "go to a shelter".  Well, they couldn't tell me where it was, because it was for battered women, but if I called the number, they would tell me how to get there.  I didn't buy that story.  

A few months before, Paul and I had done some yard work for a state senator.  He seemed like a very nice guy.  He didn't have that chronic liar quality that most politicians have.  After this scene about Section 8 housing, I wrote to the state senator to see if he could tell me where to go for help.  It was clear that the folks at Social Services were not in the business of helping their clients, their only interest was collecting paychecks.  I heard back not from him, but from someone at the church that was getting our mail.  They came to tell us that the state senator had put in a call to an agency, and had got us housing that we could move into that night.  We would be put up for two months, and would have three meals paid for by Social Services.  It was a flea bag motel, but it was indoors and it had a shower and a real bed.  They were also supposed to help Paul find a job.  

Roger was shocked that I wrote to the senator in the first place, and was impressed that one letter was able to get so much done.  He was getting worried about where we were going to have a baby also.  He shlepped all of our junk down to the motel.  We ended up staying there for over a year.  For the time allowed, Social Services paid the bill, then after Paul found work, we paid for our own rent there.  

Thrift store shopping was one of Roger's favorite pasttimes.  He would go hunt bargains, or things that he thought someone would find useful  and then buy them, or he would come get me, and have me come and look at his find.  He was like a little kid with his first art project at school.  He really did have a knack for finding great bargains.  One he found was an SLR outfit with telephoto lens, normal lens, and a bag for $30.  It was a heck of a nice camera, that is still useful today.  He also found all kinds of furniture and little knick knacks for next to nothing.  

It was during one of these trips to the thrift store that Roger did something I never thought he would do.  We came out of a store, into a downpour, and Roger saw a person who was sitting in their car in a fire zone.  He went to the driver of the car, and started lecturing them on how it was only 15-20 feet to the nearest parking space.  The driver argued that he was waiting for his wife, and she would be out in a minute.  Roger was insistent, and taunted the man for being "too good to park in a parking space."    "Why don't you set a good example, and go park in the parking space?  There is one right there, only 20 ft away!"   I was getting worried and annoyed.  I was worried that this person was going to get out of his car and start beating Roger, and annoyed because he left me standing by the door of the van, while he was arguing with the fire zone offender.   This was not the first time he had done something like this.  He was insistent about people obeying all the laws, no matter how trivial. If someone tried to pass him on the shoulder, he would pull to the shoulder to block them from getting by.  If someone honked their horn at a stop light, he would get out of  the van and demand that they drive their own car, and allow him to drive his.  If he saw someone panhandling on the street corner, he would stop and offer to get them something to eat, to which almost all of them would reply "no".  He would then argue that they put away the sign that says "will work for food", or "homeless, please help God Bless" and hold up a sign that said "I am a wino begging for change"  Nobody ever beat him up for these things, but I wondered when his luck was going to run out.

After I had been home with my son for about a year, it was time to go back to work, since I needed some adult conversation, and some money.  We needed to get out of the motel and find something better. I also had let the public assistance run out, and didn't want to go through the same bull I had been through before to get it back.  I wanted to stay off public assistance forever.  I was able to get my job back at the photo lab, and it was a good fit. Paul and I had to work opposite schedules in order to make this happen.  We tried the day care scene for a short while, and it was costing us the same amount I was making, plus the day care worker was not doing a very good job.  Roger was glad to see that I was trying to help myself, and even more glad that I wanted off of welfare.

I was at home with Eric one day, when Eric was around 4 years old, when Paul came through the door.  He told me to come outside and go with him and Roger.  We all piled in the van, and took off for Beltsville.  Neither Paul nor Roger would let on what was going on.  We dropped Paul back off at work, and then headed a little further up the road in Beltsville.  We stopped at a body shop.  I still was really in the dark about what was going on.  We went inside, and Roger told me that there was something he thought I should sign.  We chatted with a Pakistani gentleman, and he got out a stack of papers.  Roger had bought a car, and was intending to give it to me.  He had found an old Ford Escort for $1500, thought it looked and ran mechanically sound, and bought the thing before he went down to tell Paul about it.  He had Paul go with him to get me.  When we left the body shop, we went to an insurance office about two blocks away, and he even paid the down payment and first month's payment on the insurance.  I was in shock.  Roger never told me how he heard about this car, or why he decided I needed a car.  The car had a lot of miles on it, and seemed to have been in some kind of wreck, but it lasted for two years.  (in those two years, it withstood 40,000 miles!)

At some point I left Paul, until he could decide to quit drinking.  Roger was very sympathetic.  He asked me if I was leaving him for good, or if I was going to give him a second chance if he quit drinking.  I told him that I would give him another chance, but only after he was sober.  He was very happy to hear that.  We were separated for about a month, maybe six weeks, but he got off the beer, and we picked up our lives again.  

It was a couple of more years before we were able to own our own home, and Roger played a big part in that.  We didn't have enough credit to buy the trailer home we wanted to buy.  Roger had good credit, so he agreed to co-sign for us, so we could get the home.  He came to visit us at the trailer once, right after we moved in.  He commented on how impressed he was that one of the neighbors asked him who he was, and who he knew on our street.  He said that you always want to have at least one neighbor like that, who pays attention and asks questions.  Once we were settled there, he came by less frequently.  Part of it was because of his health, he was spending more and more time at the VA Hospital.  He had a lung disease, that is rare, and almost impossible to treat.  They were pushing him to get into a "home" and get on oxygen full time.  He didn't want to be chained to an oxygen tank.  He liked to go to his haunts, which was a rotation of donut shops and restaurants.  

One morning when I stopped at the McDonald's in Beltsville, I chatted with the lady who worked the drive through.  She asked me if I knew about my friend Roger.  She told me that he had died.  I asked her who told her, and she described Maureen, who was Roger's most recent girlfriend.  I was certain that she was correct, as Maureen had been going to the VA Hospital with Roger when he had his appointments.  I was stunned.  I had just assumed that he would live forever.  It was over a year after he died that I found out that he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.  It took even longer for me to visit his grave, but I eventually did.