At the end of April I suddenly found myself homeless. Put all my stuff into a storage unit and moved into my
car. Luckily I had a friend that let me put my phone line in at his place so I was able to stay in business. At first it
was a little tough trying to figure out where to sleep for the night. It's not like the old days when you could just park at
the beach and stay all night. Nowdays they close the parks at dusk and make you move along so I had to find something else
to do. I started parking outside gas stations and repair shops after dark and leaving at daybreak to go to the beach
I've been able to find a couple of abandoned pieces of property in the woods where I stay at night. Talk about pitch black,
it's as black as can be when it's cloudy out, which seems to be most of the time, lol. With my black car I'm pretty well
hidden in there in the mornings as I make myself some coffee and breakfast before I leave. My old Crown Vic has a really
large trunk. I can put most of my camping stuff on the trunk shelf and still have a lot of space left for customers luggage.
I've learned to keep myself pretty well organized to clean up and put things away as soon as I'm done.
A couple times a week I stay at a campground in the middle of the island for $10 a night. What a cold May and June we had, I
didn't think summer was ever going to get here. At least it's the one place where I feel like I can keep coming back to all
day without having to constanly change locations after doing my calls. They really only allow you to stay seven days a month
but I can stretch it a couple extra days if I have to. The one bad thing about it is the Navy runway directly in line one
mile away. Those jets really scream and look like they're almost touching the trees directly overhead. They practice in the
afternoons and sometimes just before midnite. If someone calls me on the phone I have to wait for them to pass before I can
hear what they're saying. Around here they call it "the sound of freedom".
I spent a lot of time at the storage unit trying to organize my stuff. Everything was packed into one storage unit so tight
I didn't have room to do anything so I rented another small unit. The two units still didn't leave me enough room to really
spread things out so I ended up getting a garage sized unit. That worked out pretty well because I could have my stuff
spread out and just close the door and leave when I got a call instead of having to throw everything back inside when I had
to work. It's taken about three months but I finally got everything into a more organized jumble now, lol.
I also spent a lot of time roaming around to different beaches and talking to a lot of different people. Being that I was
born and raised on the island here I felt a lot like a historian telling people about how things use to be and how much
things have changed. I didn't like to stay too long in one place and was driving around quite a bit from one end of the
island to the other, about 40 miles one way. It was costing me a lot more in fuel than I had been paying in rent. It's a
good thing my business picked up quite a bit but not enough to rent another place. Without having rent anymore I was able to
make enough for my insurance downpayment to stay in business and I was able to catch up on all my bills and paid off my
former roommates to keep them out of my hair. I thought I was going to struggle all summer to catch up on everything but I
was able to do it in about a month. I still have one old debt I owe a friend and was hoping to pay him in one lump payment
but I guess I'll have to start making monthly payments to him for a few months. Glad he hasn't hassled me about it but I
still feel bad about it.
It's been a great adventure being homeless and I've seen a lot of wonderful wildlife in action too. There's sure a lot of
eagles on the island now, along with deer and rabbits. One night I came upon a great horned owl just standing in the middle
of the road. It was facing away from me and at first I thought it was a brown paper bag. I stopped to check it out and when
this big owl face turned around to look at me I decided to back away and leave it alone. I still had to inch me car up to it
until it finally flew away. I thought maybe it was stunned from being hit by a car but it's feathers were in nice shape and
that big white V on it's face sure looked neat. Down at the dock one day there were some crows harrassing an eagle until it
started flying away. The crows chased it down the beach aways until it was pretty high in the sky. Then the eagle made a
dive bomb right down towards the pier in front of me. I thought it was going to land on the railing and it was so cool when
it spread out its wings and had these big old drumsticks outstretched. It flew over the one pier and under the pier next to
it to grabbed a pigeon from of the beach and took off again. It was the most awesome thing I had ever seen.
In July I ran into an old acquaintance that I knew when I was driving taxi on the island in 2003. At that time he was at the
office and had his first attack that sent him to the hospital. He says I saved his life because the last thing he remembered
before he hit the ground was me saying that we better call 911. The next thing he knew he was waking up in the aid car.
This year he was in the hopital three times within the couple months before he caught up with me at the ferry dock. He
flagged me down and asked me to go have a cup of coffee with him. He said he wasn't feeling very well and wanted me to
follow him home to make sure he made it. When he found out I was homeless he asked if I could stay with him and help him out
for the month.
He has bad emphasima and could hardly walk ten steps without getting out of breath. His place was a disaster area so the
first thing I had to do was clean up his kitchen and I started making his meals for him. It took all month but we finally
got the rest of his place more organized too. Each week I kept telling him he seemed to be slowly getting better and he was
glad for the encouragement. He says he doesn't think he would have made it through the month if I hadn't come along to help.
He had resigned himself to being near death and had accepted that. I've taken him to a few medical appointments and he's
gotten well enough that he gets out and about on his own again. He is still on oxygen all the time and has some bad moments
where he doesn't want me to leave until he gets his breath. I could only live at his place for a few weeks and now I'm back
to living in the woods again but I was able to stay with him during the worst of it. The retirement place he's at complained
that I had been living there too long so now I leave at night and come back during the day, so technically I'm not living
here. After this month he hopes to be well enough to manage everything on his own again and he'll probably sell me his truck
and camper for cheap and I can get on with my own life again.