I stood outside the street ministry a few days before Christmas, recycling cardboard, when an elderly and long-haired homeless man approached me in a smiling and gesturing manner. I knew him. Earlier that morning, I had watched him prepare his signature breakfast: coffee mixed with hot chocolate poured into oatmeal.
What follows is my best reconstruction of our conversation. His unexpected approach and random topic of conversation threw me for a loop and unfolded so quickly that I'm not sure of his exact words. But I promise this a pretty accurate recording of our discussion and in no way did the man appear addled or deranged.
“I'm a great cook,” he said.
“You are?”
“Yeah, I'm a great cook on a fire. I have this grate I use. I always dig a hole so there's no danger of fire.”
“What's your specialty?”
“I cook a turkey in a garbage can.”
“How do you do that?”
The man began pantomiming how as he explained:
“I dig a hole, start a fire at the bottom, let it burn into coals. I get a huge turkey, toothpick about 50 small strips of bacon to it, stuff potatoes and vegetables inside, then place the turkey inside a small metal garbage can, put the lid on, and then it goes down into the hole. I shovel some coals on the lid, then walk away and come back in a few hours. It doesn't last that long when its ready, I can tell you that. People smell it cooking for a miles around. I share it with the camp.
“I bet it's incredible,” I said.
“I made one for Thanksgiving,” he said.
“Are you making one for Christmas?”
“I think so.”
I would have paid a hundred bucks to join that repast. Five hundred.
He was finished with his story. We said our goodbyes and he departed.
It occurred to me at that very moment that I had just listened to what would soon become the greatest Oregon Christmas story of all time and I dearly wanted to document it.
The story was liquid gold and then it turned into some kind of vaporous Frosty the Snowman magic and floated through and around me. I tried visualizing this man cooking a Christmas turkey in a garbage can in a hole in his homeless encampment and then sharing the feast with his homeless neighbors. I saw a movie, a children's story, a colossal landscape painting, a one-act play, an epic poem, an episode of a podcast, a puppet show. I saw a damn a rock opera! Turkey can you hear me!
The spell was broken. I returned to reality. I wasn't going to attend this particular Christmas dinner prepared by a member of the New American Diaspora for other members.
What about writing a fictionalized version? Forget it. There was no way in hell I could write anything worthy about it without seeing it, hearing it, smelling it. I didn't have the talent as a writer of fiction to come even remotely close to capturing its gritty, Dickensian potential. The idea of making up homeless characters, scenes and dialogue felt pretentious, phony and downright larcenous.
So I would simply have to ask him about his Christmas dinner the next time he visited the ministry and take it from there.
Matt, your narratives are wonderful and compelling to read. They also give us much needed insight to better understand the homeless. Thanks for these gifts to your readers during the holiday season.