(some notes from a young man, Ben, who loves to go share food with the homeless and needy.)
“One of the men who have shelters in a plot of woods in the city has been welcoming of me for this past year that I have known him. He is a reserved older man who collects every soda can he finds and keeps them all in garbage bags on the ground by his hut. Assembled on the ground surrounding his hut are old things that no one but him has seen for a long time. A fire hose, an office chair, barrels, carts, pallets, tires, and remnants of furniture cluster around a tree near which he built the hut where he sleeps. He flings carpets over some of the wooden refuse. Once I was following him out of the bushes and into the clearing. He saw some leaves that had collected on the carpet-covered broken furniture. He brushed them off before walking past.
He recently had about ten bags worth of soda cans. He estimated their sale would bring him near $100. They form black mounds on the ground outside his hut. He woke up one recent morning and the valuable mounds were gone. Though in seclusion he felt he was protected from this kind of blatant theft, he told me, after angrily telling me what had happened, “This is what I put up with. But it’s happened before. It’ll be fine.”
It’s very cold this week. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow. He has enough wood to keep a fire going in a barrel at the foot of the tree. He can ward off the cold until it’s time to sleep in the hut. Maybe he’ll keep the space inside warm with a candle. In his mind he cannot escape knowing that his work in amassing the cans came to nothing. He will have to start again, slowly and picking up each can, and postpone any plans he had for the money.”