A Cadillac
“I want a Cadillac,” said an older bearded man standing in front of me. I was behind a counter serving breakfast on my first shift volunteering at a street ministry in a small town outside of Portland, my hometown.
It was my first time inside a street ministry.
The man was my first customer on a Tuesday morning and he called himself “Ronald Reagan” when asked to sign into the register. He said he didn't want to give his real name or provide any personal information.
I think he was joking. It occurred to me when I heard the name “Ronald Reagan” that I wished Jesus would resurrect Ronald Reagan so he could stare his ravaged namesake in the face and see where his Presidency led exactly to this moment all across America every morning. Yeah, it was Morning in America all right. Remember that phrase of national rebirth?
“Coming right up,” I said, a little surprised with the enthusiasm in my voice.
I poured hot coffee into a paper cup from a percolator of the type you might find dispensing rivers of gruel coffee at a church potluck. I was in a church so there you have it!
But this was no ordinary Christian percolator potluck coffee. At the bottom of the cup rested a few teaspoons of hot chocolate powder.
That made it a Cadillac.
I handed the man the concoction and said, “Here's your Cadillac.”
He thanked me and shuffled away to sit at one of the tables to recharge and reorient himself for another day of living outdoors. How do they do it?
A minute later a young Black man stood in front of me and introduced himself to me with a great name that I can't disclose because of client confidentiality. (I will, however, provide a hint: a Jimi Hendrix song title and it's not “Purple Haze or anything to do with the word foxy.”)
The man wanted a Cadillac. I whipped it up and handed him the cup. He thanked me and then I poured milk into a bowl of Cheerios. He was getting ready to depart when he asked me my name.
I told him. I told him it was my first day volunteering. I didn't know what the hell was going on.
He welcomed me and said, “Every day without formality is positive.”
The line electrified me. I'd never heard or read it before. It had to be original.
I absorbed the line, dove deep into it, laughed a bit, and said, “Nothing like a little philosophy with your Cadillac in the morning.”
He laughed and said, “Thank you.”
The man walked to a far table and sat down facing the counter. I could see his face across the room. I am always looking at faces. When I am not, it's over for me.
There was a lull in the line. What the hell? I thought. I'd never tasted a Cadillac. Now was the time!
I poured one and guzzled. Not bad. There's always something comforting in the taste of hot chocolate. It is redolent of a caring mother in childhood, winter holidays, crackling fires and a ski date at Timberline Lodge.
But of course, many Americans never had nor will ever have any of these memories with hot chocolate because Ronald Reagan put into motion attitudes and policies an amorality that eventually obliterated any possibility of them.
I looked over to the Black man sitting at a table. He was alone. I saw him gripping his Cadillac with two cupped hands, tip his head over, and try to cool the potion with the breath of the streets. Then he took a sip and closed his eyes.
It was the classic scene of drinking hot chocolate for comfort in the movies and real life.
Was he thinking about comfort? Hope? Survival? Or something else I can't possibly imagine?
There was a great novel of the New American Diaspora in the way this young homeless Black man gripped his Cadillac with both hands, blew some vapor from his lungs to cool the drink, and how he had earlier professed a (sometimes) great or bad or mediocre notion for the need of informality in his life.
I saw it all. I won't write the great social reform homeless novel in America, but someone should.
If they did, would it do any good?