Under Bridges
Anya, a new member of the Old Crow Book Club, needed a ride into the hellhole of Old Town to conduct administrative affairs in person or otherwise she would lose her subsidized housing. She was apparently close to eviction and ending up on the streets.
So I offered to provide one and braced myself for impact.
I didn't brace hard enough. I've written about visiting the Old Town hellhole many times, but seeing new, different, vastly more horrific images of Portland's crisis of homelessness rendered me totally incapacitated to write about the hellhole anymore. I saw grotesque violations of humanity that I should never forget as a caring person, Oregonian and American, and I sure as shit forgot them.
After dropping Anya off in front a service center, I made my way out of downtown and across the Burnside Bridge. I made a right turn on MLK Boulevard and headed south. I passed under the Morrison Bridge. To my right I saw a dozen or so tents and tarp shanties and a bonfire crackling in a parking spot. It was 87 degrees this afternoon and no one was around the fire.
A couple hundred yards later I passed under the Hawthorne Bridge. To my left I saw a dozen or tents pitched on a narrow sidewalk, literally inches from traffic. An elderly and bedraggled Black man was in a wheelchair, trying to somehow to wheel into his tent.
I slowed down. I watched him. I saw his face. It was carved with pain. To me, it almost didn't appear as a human face.
Another homeless man appeared and began lifting the elderly man out of the wheelchair and into the tent. It all felt like they would all tumble into the boulevard and end up a unique specimen of American capitalist roadkill.
I drove on. They disappeared from view.
That one I won't forget.