The Drill

The sound of hootin' and hollerin' came from the parking lot of the street ministry. I was standing at the counter signing in homeless men and women in advance of their cold cereal and pop tart breakfast. The front entrance of the ministry stood ajar and I caught a glimpse of the noise's source—a gaunt and elderly man wearing a mask was steering a BMX bike with his left hand and holding a power drill with his right. He aimed the power drill upward and was firing it like a Dodge City cowboy on a drunken rampage. And when I say firing I mean it because I heard the the drill buzzing. Fortunately, it didn't have a spinning bit or I might have raised an alarm.

The man parked his bike and entered the ministry smiling, yukking it up, and brandishing the drill, firing it here and there at the other people, including me.

It was all in good fun and so utterly preposterous that laughter filled the room, including mine. Several seated men hailed friendly hellos to the gunslinger and he was obviously a regular and popular with the crowd.

He came up to the counter and I signed him into the register. He greeted me with significant enthusiasm and ordered a coffee, black. The drill now hung down at his right side. Every few seconds or so I heard the drill buzzing. He shuffled down the line and another volunteer poured him a cup of coffee from a percolator the size of a toddler.

Another man sidled up to the gunslinger and asked to see the drill. He was pretty excited and the gunslinger handed it over to him.

Then I got the story of the drill from the man who was now handling it. He said it was an old school Makita power drill, industrial grade, high end, the best, steel, no plastic whatsoever. It was at least 20-25 years old and they didn't make chargers like this anymore. Therefore, unless the gunslinger had a charger, he wouldn't be rootin' and tootin' much longer. The gunslinger did not have the charger and he didn't seem to care. The man explaining the drill knew everything about it because he used one exactly like it in his former life as a construction worker. How he went from that job to this street ministry was something I dearly wanted to know but didn't ask.

The gunslinger took the drill back and then walked with his coffee to a table where he joined a half dozen other men. A few men from other tables came over and rustled up chairs. The gunslinger fired the drill every now and then and everyone chuckled when he did.

Then I overheard the gunslinger's story of how the drill came into his possession and into a street ministry in December of 2021. Everyone wanted to know and the gunslinger was positively giddy to recount it. As he narrated he fired the drill to punctuate the tale. It was undoubtedly the only power drill story of its kind in the history of world storytelling that also had the bonus of being told while a power drill was (sort of) in use!

The story was this: the man found it that very morning on his ride to the ministry! He'd looked inside a garbage bin and there it was! He dug it out, with a battery attached, but sans a charger. He gunned the drill and buzzzzzzzzz it worked! He then got on his bike and rode away with his left hand. The right hand was firing the drill to the sky like the way the revolutionaries do when they overthrow a tyrant.

The men were transfixed by the tale. So was I.

Story time concluded. The gunslinger passed the drill around and several men fired, buzzzzzzz and broke out in smiles.

Any time soon, the buzzzzzzzz would end forever, but what the hell? A buzz is a buzz and by any other name a buzz would sound so sweet...or redolent to men who used to wield drills on a job site and build structures, perhaps even housing, perhaps even a picnic table for the kids that were now in their 20s and wondering how their father fared during his life on the streets.

Here's something I have seen in my recent year interacting with the homeless of Oregon: several father and son homeless men hanging together, and one man with his nephew living in truck. I have met them

But this was not Grapes of Wrath living together homeless as a family and trying to survive and get somewhere where they could squeeze the juice of grapes into their faces and begin anew with work and shelter. What I see in the new American Diaspora is surviving in stasis in squalor with no hope or desire or energy to move forward.

When you see something like this, it does something injurious to you. I see it three times a day in Portland.

I watched the drill story unfold of from ten feet away. At first, it didn't make any sense. Then it did. It made all the sense in the world.

It was kind of a Christmas morning for homeless adults. It was pure lame luck, kind of like winning a buck on a scratch-off ticket that cost two bucks. It explained just about everything to me why there is so much weird useless shit in homeless encampments.