Summer neared its end. Two weeks had elapsed since my interaction with the Street Response Team. Mark hadn't called for help. He hadn't asked me to call. Nothing on the intake form. Even if he had filled it out, I wasn't ready to run the Rockford con and perhaps never would.
Several times in previous weeks, I had passed Mark and Donnie on the sidewalk and they were drunk, asleep, splayed and twisted across the path as if machine gunned. Mark was seemingly drinking more and Donnie was up to two half pints a vodka a day on top of whatever else he consumed.
One Sunday afternoon I was bicycling through Sellwood and detoured to see if Mark was around. He was, malt liquoring, smoking a Swisher Sweet cigar and reading a novel, some kind of fantasy thriller. Tami was in her wheelchair a few feet away. I'd had a pleasant chat with her the previous day, at the farmer's market, and showed her my two fat misshapen tomatoes that cost three bucks apiece.
I mentioned to Tami how delicious the tomatoes had tasted and how tasteless their corporate counterparts were at the chain grocery store.
Mark said the same about farmer's market berries. He then launched into an enthusiastic reminiscence about picking berries as a kid growing up in East Portland in the mid 70s. He would ride the city bus alone to the outskirts of Multnomah County where there were several family-owned berry farms. (They're long gone now.) He got off the bus and walked to a farm. There, he worked until lunch time and then walked to a convenience store and bought a Little Debbie's confection and Dr. Pepper. He figured that would fuel him enough for the afternoon's labor. After quitting time, he pocketed his dough and rode the bus home. He did this for several summers.
I then related my berry picking history as a kid growing up in Oregon City. The berry bus picked me up at the crack of dawn. (How this was all arranged I have no idea. My Mom must have handled it.) I rode the bus with 15 other white kids roughly my age (ten). My mom had made me a sack lunch and I took along my army canteen filled with tap water. I lasted one day. I ate berries and threw berries. I earned a couple of bucks. I think I was fired before I could quit.
Tami then chimed in with her own berry picking story of her Oregon youth!
Here we were, the last generation of white kid Oregonians who picked berries in the summer for spending money. We all commented on that and speculated there wasn't any parents in Sellwood who would sign their brood up for paid summer berry picking, let alone riding a private bus if it were available today.
As we continued to wax nostalgia, I simply couldn't get over how Mark had ended up homeless on this sidewalk after such an enterprising start as an Oregon berry picker.
Isn't hard work in your American youth supposed to guarantee success in later years?
I remember riding those same berry buses to the outskirts of Oregon City to the farms in Beavercreek and getting $.25 per carrier. I hated it.
...Winter is coming.