DAVID

PHOTO BY RANDY BACON

DAVID’S STORY

I’m originally from Tennessee. I have four sisters, two brothers and an ocean of nieces and nephews and great nephews and great nieces. They all live in Tennessee within a forty mile radius of each other. I was orginally going to to try to buy some land and obviously that hasn’t worked. I’ve been homeless on and off for the last three or four years. This time around it’s been about six months. I had a good job and it worked out where I was traveling all over and then they stopped paying my expenses and I couldn’t afford to keep working and paying for travel and all that. When I was in the Navy I was an operations specialist. A “scope dope”. I read radar, I was called an air intercept controller, which is vectoring fighter jets and stuff. That was four years of my life from ‘87 through ’91. I grew up in a military household, my dad was Army.

I read a lot. But I don’t do drugs or anything. That’s my escape. I do drink some though. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not pure as the driven snow. I’d say the hardest part of being homeless is dealing with everybody else who is homeless. There’s just so much drama. I just don’t understand how you can devote so much time to that when we are all out here just trying to survive. Everybody just wants to start a fight and argue all the time. I just don’t get it.

My dream is to buy some land and build me a little cabin and call it home. I don’t need much.The land I want is four acres. The problem with getting money to do that and get off the streets is that nobody will hire a homeless person, not on any full-time basis. I have people who I do odd jobs here and there for but they are mostly individuals. I go blow his leaves for two or three hours or paint his back wall or whatever. I don’t have any tools or transportation so that makes it pretty difficult to do on a regular basis.

I want to tell people to not live like me! I passed up so many opportunities. Don’t be self-destructive. Don’t think you know it all because you don’t. All these young people out here now on the streets, I never saw that when I was their age. I can’t imagine being twenty one and on the street. I’m forty eight now. It’s hard for me to see it now but it’s easier than seeing it when I was twenty one. It’s crazy. The best thing I could tell you about being homeless & being around other homeless people is that we may be a sub society but we’re just like any other society. There’s good people, mostly good people, but there’s a few bad ones that get all the attention. And that’s what makes everybody stereotype homeless people. I’ve been all around the world...I was in the Navy and I’ve been a lot of places, and everywhere you go there’s good people for the most part and there’s bad people. And it’s the same thing in the homeless. We are not all out there trying to rip you off and going to break into your house. I’m so sorry you are offended by our presence.

My advice is to just treat people with dignity. Treat them like they are a human being and not something you’d scrape off the bottom of your shoe. That’s all I’d ask from anybody. The world would be much better.