The Homeless

After reading about and watching the now famous youtube video and subsequent video on the today show of the homeless man with the golden voice"Ted Williams", not the Baseball hall of famer but the homeless man who has the incredible voice and lived on the streets after  many years of drug addiction and alcohol.what a great story and what a true testament  that there are good things going on in this cruel world after all. My fascination with the homeless goes back nearly 30 years when i used to go to Malibu to visit my sister Linda while she was atending Pepperdine university, we would often trek to downtown Santa Monica , near Venice beach on Pico and stopped at a place called Tom's #5, a knockoff of tommys but the same food, we would always go and sit there and watch the people, a lot of homeless would pass by ,some would ask for money, i would offer them food, it started my thought process how could a then 17 year old punk ass kid like myself have a car, a home to live in , clothing and a sense of direction in life when these guys didn't. I never drank until i was 21 and don;'t drink at all now, never took drugs so those factors would never contribute to me ever being homeless, for me to be in that predicament something drastic would have to happen beyond losing a job, or a wife or something that can push people over the edge. I thought to myself, this is not right , and i felt really , really sad at the fact that the haves and have not where so far apart and yet apparently so very close to co-existing. Every since that first night I saw that homeless guy accept my gift of food, It triggered and deep and interested part of me that always questioned, what did it take for this person to end up in that situation? I ask it everytime in my mind. Moving forward to the early 90's, my first trip to Seattle and I was on a work funded trip, which i turned into a vacation and spent alot of time in downtown Seattle on my first venture to the Pacific northwest, i fell in love with the people, the woman and the whole clean scene of the emerald city! I was cruising up first avenue in the City Center when a black gentleman comes up and asks me, apologetically, if i could help him out with some money for food, for shits and giggles i said to him ,sure, but you gotta tell me a story about the streets first, 30 minutes later i learned that this once successful man had a family and a business as a karate instructor ,and worked with some decent stars in the art of self defense. Had a drinking problem lost his family ended up in jail, took a bus to Seattle here he was! Several years later i was on a trip there with a coworker to visit my now ex wife and we went clubbing at the Fenix Underground which is not there anymore due to the earthquake but has since moved near the waterfront, anyway, I come out to get some fresh air after dancing and drinking my ass off, i see a guy who is shining shoes, looks like somebody i either went to high school with , or somebody that i recently met, a familiar face, i ask the dude to shine my shoes, he starts and i said, shit! this is the dude who i met a few years ago, the karate instructor, i asked if it was him and he said yes, He didn't remember me  and i didn't expect him to but he was shining shoes and making 100 dollars a night on first ave , has an apt and is off the streets and was tryingto get back to L.A. to his family one day! how cool was that, the irony, so i made it a quest of mine to delve into the homeless thing a little further. Every city i visited was I would talk to as many homeless people that I possibly could, If they came up to me i would tell them , i will give you money, but you have to tell me how you landed here on the streets , if they didn't mind i would give them 5-20 bucks depending on whether i thought they were being honest or not! Every city with the exception of St Louis di i speak to the homeless, I looked in Washington DC when i was there this past October but they don't let the homeless around the Mall at all, 6 blocks away you can find them all huddled up away from the touristy part of DC.  There is a part of Greg that bleeds a little everytime i see an unfortunate person on the streets. I know these people have essentially put themselves there and that's not the tragedy of it all, it s the fact that these folks have little or no support group in family to bring them back and get them back on their feet. Also understanding that in most cases its drugs and alcohol that has alienated them from their loved ones and that they have essentially given up on themselves because everybody else has given up on them! My affinity for the plight of the homeless is so strong that i had a personal project that i was going to see through. My project was to live on the streets of Seattle for a year, , journal my living for that year and take  pictures and discretely as possible and then write a book about my travels and my experience as a homeless person to be published and to be made not as a money making idea , but to share what these people go through and so that we don't look at them as shit, and as worthless human being, they are not ,the have love i their hearts and more perspective on survival and hard knocks than we will ever imagine. It always grounds me with the thoughts of the homeless and their trips form wherever it was in life to the streets of wherever to not know where their next meal is coming from if at all. we always have the narrow minded detractors who make fun of or make light at the fact that they are Bums and useless, when in fact they live lives that none of us would ever be able to tolerate and would die trying to emulate. I know i wanted to try it out and see what it was all about and share the experience with you all. I'm older now, i have a family and a wife who loves me, and she actually told me, "if you want to do it i will understand " I know terria would allow me to be away fro a year but i couldn't be away from her or my family. i really wanted to do it but as we always say, life takes over and we try to catch up. I just thank God that we are all In a place where this is something i am trying to understand as a human being , and not realistically living it. it's one thing to write a book about homeless people , visiting every day and then hopping in a car, downloading pictures  and a story on a laptop then heading home to a warm fire and a home cooked meal, ?i wanted to sleep on that park bench and beg people for money, or ask them for work or wash windows, something to help me understand how incredibly precious are lives are. i know God doesn't do bad deeds, I know we are all children constantly learning something about ourselves, our lives and our people around us. The lesson i learned from Ted Williams story is that there is always hope and always people out there with talents and gifts to be given, we just need to look beyond the dirty and gruff exteriors to see it all inside, therein lies the lesson, the lesson to not judge and be good to us all. God Bless my family, friends and those who will eventually read this and truly understand it all, and to Ted Williams"the golden voice Man" An inspiration of mankind lies in his story of perseverance and of mans kind heart!