Living in the Car Jake bought me

      I am homeless once again.

      This time however, things are different.

      I am in my forties and I am homeless with assets.

      I own a home and a few rentals and a truck and a motorcycle.

      I am out of a job and because of my lawsuit.

      I am unable to find a employment that will keep me ahead of my bills.

      I am sinking into crushing debt.

      I cannot afford to live in my own house, so I rent out my home and I keep a cot in the outbuilding which has no kitchen, no bathroom and no insulation.

      I am forced to live in my truck much of the time I travel the state of Oregon for work that forever seem to elude me.

      Despite the fact that my employer fights tooth and nail to keep me from collecting unemployment, I win my case and I am given a meager pittance of what I had been making compared to my overtime checks.        

In Medford I manage to scrap a few hours between two part-time temp jobs.

      Neither job would give me enough hours to be of consequence, and the total hours between both jobs was still not enough.

      Thankfully, both jobs do not total enough hours or income to disqualify me from getting my unemployment checks.

      The money I get from the jobs and employment insurance does not pay enough for me to live in my home – barely enough to rent a trailer space.

      Scheduling snafus between both jobs and ugly politics from one boss causes me to lose that job and also all unemployment benefits.

       Life is fucking bleak.

      I met a guy who was visiting his parents in Medford.

      He is a manager for a Safeway store in Ketchikan Alaska and he offers me a job as a stocker on night shift.

      I am getting set to take my chances in Klondike country.

      I have a dream.

      It is a bad dream about my Mother.

      She is young like I remember her when I was a kid.

      She is smiling and telling me she loves me, she is telling me to take care.

      I don’t know why but I feel anxiety.

      I wake up and I know something is wrong.

      I don’t know how I know. I don’t know what is wrong. I just do.

      My Stepfather calls me later that day.

      The night I had the dream my mother nearly died.

      She has Alzheimer’s and she has been bed ridden and her mind is going.

      She has nearly died.

      Jake and her friend and personal nurse think that my mother held on only because She was waiting for me so that she can pass.

      Jake makes a point that I should take an opportunity to visit if I want to be with my mother before she dies.

      He has been running himself ragged, running his business, worrying over my mother.

      So, instead of leaving for Alaska, I go to Pennsylvania to be with my Mother.

      My Mother is bedridden.

      She is a prisoner to a feeding tube.

      Sometimes she knows I am her son.

      Sometimes I am a scary stranger.

      Her near death experience is past and my presence seems to have bolster her strength, her ability to endure.

Jake made it clear that he would appreciate any help that I could give him regarding my Mother’s care – mainly to keep her company.

      Everyone seemed to be glad I had come to see my Mother.

      Everyone wanted to ask me how things were going in my life.

      No one wanted to hear the truth about how fucked my life had become.

      It is good to see my Brother Ricardo.

      He is my half brother – born while I was in the Marines.

      He is heir apparent to Jakes business and in fact Jake is grooming him in his business.

      Jake is grooming Ricardo and paying him a handsome wage to boot.

      My Stepfather has co-signed bank loans for my Brother Ricardo – for his nice house and nice furnishings and nice car.

      Previous to these benefits – Ricardo had been living with Jake – and why not… Jakes house is five thousand square feet large.

      I have inherited the sewing/quest bedroom, a place I thought I would campout until Jake no longer needed my help.

      I was wrong.

      Surprisingly, Jake makes it clear that He would rather not have anyone living at the house with him.

      The story from Jake is that he is a light sleeper and he cannot tolerate the slightest noise or inconvenience or he will not get the rest that he needs.

      Funny, Ricardo’s coming and going various hours – day and night – do not seem to have bothersome affects on Jake.

      I am now in a tough situation.

      I had come back to be with my Mother and to lend my Stepfather help and emotional support.

      After all, I had not been much help the years previous has my Mother spiraled towards rapid decline.

      Suddenly, I was cast out with expectations that I would find a place to live and somehow manage to visit my Mother at the assisted living facility.

      Despair!

      Depression!

      Anger!

      Hurt!

      Betrayal!

      Rage!

      Despair!

      Impotence!

      I have no place to live.

      I have no vehicle with which to get around.

      I have no job.

      Despair!

      A friend of my mother, the nurse that my Stepfather had hired to help the assisted care facility personnel to care for my Mother came to my aid.

      If it had not been for her, spending time with my Mother and helping to ease my Stepfather’s burden would have proved impossible.

      I needed a place to live that was close to my Mother or I needed a car to travel to see her.

      I needed a car to find a job and to travel to a job I could find.

      The problem was, I did not have any money, or a car or a place to live close to my Mother.

      If I lived with my friends, a lack of transportation would prevent me from traveling the long distances to and from where my Mother was warehoused.

      The nurse – my Mother’s friend and companion – talked to the preacher of the church that she and my Mother would worship. It was through her that I was allowed to stay in a house that was used for people in need. Luckily the house was right next door to the facility where my Mother was housed.

      In addition to this good fortune, a little strip mall was situated across the street and a 7-11 store a block down.

      In the strip mall their was a nice little affordable gym with a pizza shop on one side of it and a laundry-mat on the other side of it. I managed to get a job watching the gym a few hours on each Sunday and in return I had a nice gym to train and have use of the showers.

      This gym and the shower and the laundry mat would prove to be what I needed when my time at the church mission ended.

      Shortly after moving to the mission, it was decided that I still needed to find a job so that I could continue to pay my monthly bills and also I was told that I had a limited time to stay at the mission.

I would need money to find a room or an apartment.

      Jake found a used car for me… and I mean used!

      Any illusions that my friends had that Jake would find me a car one fourth as nice as a car he purchased for Ricardo was crushed as soon as they saw the beater I was assigned.

      Actually, it looked worse than it ran; however, the person who owned it was a heavy cigar smoker and for years it was smoked in – evidently with the windows left up.

      The bad taste of stale cigars was still imbedded within the upholstery and the foul taste was over-powering and tough on my asthma.

      No mystery as to why the guy died of lung cancer.

      Just when I was about to give up the car, my Uncle Pip recommended that I slice up a few apples and situated them in each corner of the car. He claimed that the cut apples would absorb the odor and the taste – and thankfully it did.

      The comfort and livability of the car came non-to-soon as was expelled from the church mission and suddenly, I found myself with a new home and it was on wheels.

      I tried to make the best of new home. The truck was sectioned off – Clean laundry in one area, dirty laundry keep in a back in another section, boxes of canned food and supplements and more than a few books.

      I called the back seat my reading room and visiting area. I tried to imagine what color of curtains I should hang over the window. The front seats were bucket and they could be laid all the way back.

      It was the front left passenger seat that I used as my bed.

      The task of living in the car is much more problematic in Pennsylvania than in Oregon – especially in the metropolitan suburban area of Philadelphia. Citizens and Police alike do not like the idea of anyone living in their cars because there are no designated places to park for unfortunate citizens.

      I had to face two challenges – surviving the brutal sub-freezing winter temperatures and avoiding detection from good citizens and the police. Since it is not feasible or safe to keep a vehicle’s engine running to keep warm in the winter, I had managed to find a decent sleeping bag – no sufficient for normal people to sleep in winter conditions, but fortunately I am much more inured to cold temperatures than most people (Not as much as my friend Neo or any Eskimo).

      To deal with detection, I picked up a few very large boxes and duct taped these together – which made a cardboard receptacle the size that would hold a six-foot water heater. This box laid almost prone on the passenger seat that I kept tilted back as far as it would go. – which was back till the front seat touched the back. The foot of the box was reached to the floor in the front – under the dashboard and the top stretched out toward the backseat’s back support. I left one corner untapped so that I could crawl in , slide into the sleeping bag and sleep mostly on my back and at times in a precarious fetal position. Once this set-up was complete, my biggest concern was getting in or out of the box without any pedestrians spotting me as they walked by or citizens looking out from their homes or places of business – they would have called the police. There were a number of times that my cover was blown and to be safe I would simple drive elsewhere to avoid detection or questioning by the police. To say that this entire situation was a pain in the ass would be an understatement.

      Initially, my Stepfather let me know in so many ways that if I was truly a standup son, I would not have hesitated to sell my properties back east so that I could move back to their area and afford to keep an apartment close by my Mother and help care for her. No matter how often I tried to explain to him that the market had softened and my situation did not allow me to follow up on that plan… he simply would show his impatience and tell me that he did not have time to hear my shit.           

      I wished that my friends and relatives lived closer to my Stepfather’s residence or closer to where my mother was being cared for. Unfortunately, my Stepfather’s home was the closest to the facility where my Mother was being housed and that still was a good distance away. If my friends and family had lived closer, I would have put my pride aside and taken them up on their offer to stay with them.

      I was faced with the harsh reality of my need to be employed during hours that I was not needed to spend time with my Mother. The meager income I made helped to keep me fed, the car gassed up and just barely enough money to pay towards bills that I was woefully behind on… just enough to keep from filing for bankruptcy.

      After a few weeks at the mission, I lived a few months in the car, that is until some of our relatives and friends of found out  - they voice their disbelief and their outrage. Jake never let on why he changed his mind to let me stay in the house where I could sleep without fear of arrest. I suspect his change of heart was due to the fact that he does like to put on the pretense of the loyal family man.

      Regardless of his reason, It hurt my pride that I accepted his Johnny-come-lately offer and if it were not for the fact that my Mother’s comfort was not on the line, I would have rather gone back to the six-by-camper I had nearly starved and froze to death in twenty years prior than ask him for help… Just as I had refused ask for help those many years previous.

      At least now everyday was more effective insofar as traveling twelve miles to work west of Jakes house and then after work I would stop back at the house for a quick shower and then drive ten miles east to where my Mother was being cared for so that I could spend time with her and help attend to her needs for six or more hours.