The Scoop - http://www.bobharris.com/ Hi -- usually I write with a lot of humor. Sometimes, when I'm maybe a little too close to the subject, I don't or can't or whatever. This week is one of those times... THE SCOOP for February 1, 1999 ___________________________ Ever Look A Homeless Person Right In The Eye? Possibly More Often Than You Think © 1999 Bob Harris mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [] = italics Beneath downtown Chicago, just northeast of the Loop, not far from the riverfront you've seen on "The Bob Newhart Show," and just steps from the fancy shops of the famed Magnificent Mile, there lies a different city. It's a city where there are no addresses. There are no jobs. There are few possessions. Some residents barely have a name, or at least none that anyone else knows. Between the bright lights of the city above, and their murky reflection on the river below, lies Lower Wacker drive. Lower Wacker, and the surrounding maze of side streets, parking spaces, and loading docks, is where many homeless go on cold nights to escape the bitter wind and sleep for a few hours on the warm ventilation grates. Some stay for a night or two and move on with their lives. Some, who feel they have nowhere else to go, stay for an entire winter. A few stay even longer. On a cold Chicago winter night, when the temperature drops into the teens and an Alberta Clipper brings windchills below zero, the cover of the city above and the heat of a warm grate below can be literally the difference between life and death. During the Depression, thousands found shelter down here. In our time, on any given night, there might be a few dozen, or there might be a hundred or more. No one really knows. The census doesn't reach down this far. But it's there all right. I've been down there myself. ____________________________ What does a homeless person look like, exactly? You probably have a mental image already. OK, here's a harder one: What did they look like before they became homeless? And what will they look like after? The answers might surprise you. ____________________________ Here's a story I rarely tell: In the spring of 1984 I graduated college with a flashy engineering degree, a plum job with a Fortune 500 company, enormous financial potential, and a mountain of student loans. In the summer, I added to my debt load with credit card spending to cover relocation, rent on a cool condo, three-piece business suits, and the assorted household crap you buy when you first have a house to hold. By fall, I realized I couldn't function emotionally in a corporate environment. Not at all. The reasons were and are my own, but I was becoming deeply depressed. (I'd explain more, but I realize that if you've ever worked in a giant corporation, there's a decent chance you don't even need me to.) So I quit. Getting another, similar job was out of the question. Three reasons: a) my sanity, b) my resume now made me a high-risk hire, and c) this was the height of the Reagan defense build-up, so most every other offer I had was in some way related to blowing people to bits. So I went home and lived with my parents for a while. This was worse. My father had worked a mind-numbing blue collar job for more than 25 years to put food on the table. I'd had a chance at something better and blown it in less than 25 weeks. Suddenly I was an unmistakable failure, with no tangible future and enough debt to wipe out years of potential income. They tried not to criticize my decision, but I could hardly look my parents in the eye. I was profoundly depressed. My weight ballooned to over 215 pounds on my 5'9" frame. The best job I could find was in... telemarketing. Yeesh. This [had] to be the bottom. I was wrong. Surprisingly, I was good at sales. Excellent, actually, since I could create the illusion of perkiness while mentally debating the merits of public self-immolation vs. a simple, discreet ten-story fall. It wasn't long before the company wanted me to enter management. Training would begin with a temporary stint in the Chicago office. If I impressed, the twenty bucks a day I was making in Cleveland suddenly had a chance to become twenty grand a year. So Dad dropped me off at the Greyhound bus station, and I bought my ticket out. The next day I arrived in Chicago, suitcases and hopes in hand, [Bob: Pig In The City.] Those hopes didn't hold out long. A high school friend was letting me sleep on his couch until I was on my feet. But once he went back to Cleveland to visit, his roommate, who resented the extra housemate, threw me out. With no fixed address to mail my paychecks to, and no place to keep myself presentable, it wasn't long before the job went away as well. This was just after Thanksgiving 1985. I couldn't go home a failure again. And there was nowhere else left to go. My long Chicago winter was about to begin. ____________________________ I never considered myself "homeless" at the time. I thought of "homeless" people (when I gave them a thought) as, uh, [bums]. And I had a degree and came from the suburbs, so of course [I] wasn't one. I didn't realize how many homeless people are former mental patients in need of medication, Vietnam or Gulf War vets with severe emotional damage, and sometimes just ordinary folks way down on their luck. No, [I] wasn't "homeless." I just didn't have anywhere to live. Sometimes, when I could find a gig, I could afford a room at the YMCA, which was tolerable, if sticky. Or sometimes when I was in decent shape I could sleep at the airport, moving around between terminals and washing in the restrooms so security wouldn't get wise. For a few weeks a girl in Oak Park gave me a place to sleep, and she even tried to set me up with a job, but that didn't last. One warm night I slept out in Lincoln Park. This was actually nice. Too bad there was only one warm night. My existence was two days here, three days there. Too many days were nowhere. Sometimes I sang in the subway for meal money. Sometimes I just stared into space. More than once I stood freezing in the wind on the Michigan Avenue bridge, the one in the opening of "Siskel & Ebert," and thought about throwing myself into the icy river below. One night in particular I remember, I'm still surprised I didn't. I can still show you the spot where I stood. It was brutally cold. I was scared and lonely and angry and ashamed. I just wanted to disappear. And I assure you it's less than a two minute walk from where I stood on that bridge to the warm heating grates beneath Wacker Drive, and, as for many in my situation, survival for another night. ____________________________ "Get a job," people say. OK. [You] try it sometime. You try getting a job when you can't give an employer a fixed address. Then try leasing an apartment without a job. Catch-22. Try just getting an interview while carrying a dirty suitcase with all your belongings in it. And even if you do get a job, try opening a bank account and cashing that check without being able to prove residence. And so on. Try spending days at a time with almost no one even making eye contact with you, having to reassure yourself sometimes you still even exist. You try watching a world of plenty go by, wondering how you got to this place and how you'll ever get out. You try not just giving up and slipping further into despondency. You try it. ____________________________ And y'know what? I had it [easy.] I wasn't old. I wasn't sick. I wasn't injured. I had a college degree, for heaven's sake. I had blond hair and blue eyes. I wasn't black or hispanic or a woman, so I never had to deal with prejudice. I didn't have a kid to take care of. I didn't drink. I didn't have a drug addiction. And my tendency to overeat was certainly no longer a problem. Even with every conceivable advantage, it took me six months to climb out of that hole, just to land a steady five-dollar-an hour gig, rent one-third of a basement apartment, and become a functional, if struggling, member of society again. And I had it [easy.] I still keep pictures of the YMCA and certain Chicago streets on my wall, just so I'll never take anything in life for granted, ever again. ____________________________ There's a reason I'm telling you this story now. You've probably never heard of Lower Wacker. Chicago doesn't much want you to. You might not feel so comfortable spending disposable cash (how obscene that phrase sounds!) in the upscale shops just ten yards above. But don't you worry. They've come up with a final solution. As of Friday, the city of Chicago has essentially closed off the area. New steel fences have been installed, and new city rules now allow shopkeepers aboveground to lock the gates all night. The only reason for the gates is to keep the warmth of the ventilation grates away from people who have [nothing]. ____________________________ The gates could have been put up in the warm months of summer. But Lower Wacker was closed in the last week of January. The business owners are happy. The merchants of the Magnificent Mile sleep soundly in their beds. Where are the homeless supposed to sleep on the next bitter Chicago night? That's their problem. No great outreach is being made. No organized effort I can find is steering these people toward help. No directions to the city's shelters are even posted on the steel fences. There's no way to know where these people will go, no accounting how many survive the next cold night. The gates are now closed. That is all we will know. The homeless, presumably, will just disappear. I pray none of them disappears as I almost did. ____________________________ Bob's Big Plug-O-Rama™ (updated 2/1/99): http://www.bobharris.com is taking its first baby steps. Check in occasionally as the site grows. Radio syndication is rolling along. Call your favorite station and ask for the feature. They pay attention, honest. Mother Jones online (http://www.motherjones.com) now carries The Scoop. Finally, Common Courage Press is publishing a collection of these columns for Fall 1999. 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