Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York

By Daniel Canada

Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York is the story of my five years living on the mean and unforgiving streets of New York City. Though it deals with a crucial topic it is a testament that homelessness, as tragic as it is, is survivable.
Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York is based upon the NPR Radio program This American Life, hosted by Ira Glass, which was broadcasted in 2008 across 5oo radio stations in the U.S, to an audience of over 2,000,000 listeners. The radio program was about me and my former homeless partner, Hobobob’s life as performing artists hacking out an inhospitable existence on the streets of New York.
The Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York, however, is based upon my personal experience of living outdoors and what I did to survive.
Even though the initial NPR radio program aired a full 37 minutes, longer than any other prod cast on This American Life at the time, I felt there was yet more to say about the growing phenomenon of homelessness. I also wanted explicate further upon my time spent without a place to call home and what I learned, which could serve to benefit those who might be unfortunate enough to find themselves in this horrific set of circumstances.
My memoirs delves deep into and sheds light upon the hither-to-unknown, shadowy world of the homeless and intends to dispel a lot of the myths associated with this peculiar state of affairs. What is more, it is designed to be a guide to anyone who might be suddenly thrust in this confusing, tangled maze, with the view to returning to a life of normalcy while maintaining their precious sanity.
Covering an assortment of topics germane to homeless life and highlighting the valuable lessons I attained The Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York is a memoir with a common theme: Being homeless does not mean it is the end of the world. One can not only live through this adversity but also rise out of it, if they apply some of the examples I outlined in this book.
So, buckle up your seatbelts because you’re getting ready to embark upon a wild and unforgettable journey into the unknown!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel Canada
• Release date: Aug 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370543793

Daniel Canada

Daniel Canada's foray into the wilderness of writing began in his senior year in high school, when he entered into and won the 1982 NBC Award for amateur journalism for New York City, after interviewing NBC's news reporters Marv Albert, Gabe Pressman and Larry Varas.After wandering about in an attempt to find the meaning of life, he found himself strongly entrenched in the New York City poetry scene, reading and performing under the name Obsidian. He also co-hosting two renown open mic poetry venues in New York City, the "Times Square Shout Out" and the "Shout Out at Ottos," from 2007-2010. As a result he and his co-host were the subjects of a documentary of NPR Radio's "This American Life," entitled "Social Engineering," hosted by Ira Glass.Daniel Canada aka Obsidian appeared on Columbia University Radio station WKCR-89.9FM, "Studio A Series," hosted by Anne Cammon Fiero, along with several members of the celebrated "Brownstone Poets." He has also soiled his hands in a little publishing, and has been twice published as a contributing poet in the anthology "Diner with the Muse," and “The Venetian Hour,” edited by Evie Ivy and sold at St. Marks Bookstore.Years earlier he had spent a decade researching the ancient Middle East, in a land that was once called Assyria and co-authored the yet-to-be published epic historical fiction novel entitled, "Hegemony."

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Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York

By Daniel Canada

In loving memory of my mother, Sallie Canada

May 22, 1937-May 18, 2016

Cover page picture taken of me sleeping on a stone bench in front of New York Public Library. The photo was taken by Hobobob, during the fall of 2008.

Whoever said you can’t get back what you lost was a loser. You can get back whatever you lost. It just takes a little finesse.

-Daniel Canada aka Obsidian

INTRODUCTION

The economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said, The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

The stock market is unstable and experiencing the mercurial vicissitudes of a roller coaster ride. Many hard-working middle class American's are losing their homes, due to the unprecedented collapse of major subprime lenders in 2004. Chief investment bankers and financial corporations are folding and laying off thousands of employees, who once had secure jobs. As a result, a lot of the former middle-class Americans are now facing the real possibility of losing their homes and having to contemplate life on the streets.

If you found yourself suddenly unemployed, out of an income and thrust into a state of homelessness, what would you do to survive? The Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York is a memoir of my four years spent on the unforgiving and nightmarish streets of New York City, while roaming the poetry scene, plying my trade.

It is my wish that this book can serve as a beacon of hope to anyone facing such a seemingly irreversible predicament. It is my expectation that this memoir will serve to illustrate that no matter how despairing your situation in life may be you can successfully navigate you way through the tangled maze of life, as I was able to do. Perhaps my story may serve as a guide to, and demonstrate that with personal faith and perseverance you can make your way out of even the most debilitating situation imaginable in life.

The Hobo Handbook exhibits what life on the streets is really like. I will familiarize you with the actual existence of those without domicile, and demonstrate what steps I took in order to survive the onslaught of the bare-ass-naked streets.

What is more, I will introduce you to some of the most colorful and bizarre, real-life, characters you will ever meet, and no doubt would otherwise never encounter unless I made their acquaintance to you in this book. These are truly the invisible people of the earth, folks you've pass by on your way to work on any given day of the week without giving a second glance.

Also, I will present the types of personalities and characterizations I had to take care not to unwittingly imitate, after spending a certain amount of time in the company of the dispossessed.

The Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York uses my personal experience to demonstrate how practicality helped me to survive and to keep my precious sanity, while negotiating my way through the trials and perils of the streets; this was all with the goal of extracting myself from the state of homelessness and to once again find a place I can call home.

CHAPTER ONE

SURVIVAL AND THE HOMELESS

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It doesn't matter what you've done in the past. All that matters is where you are in the present. You probably were working at a well-paying job, in a respectable company, drawing six-figures. You might have been a manager or the supervisor of a cutting-edge, corporate team.

Suddenly, there's an economic downturn and like Gilligan on Gilligan's Island, you've been handed the short straw and you're the ill-fated one out of a job. Now you're forced to scrounge off your precious savings. At this point you reluctantly started dipping into your 401K plan, or Roth IRA. However, this still doesn't stop the bleeding.

Before long the bills are stacking up. The rent or the mortgage becomes overdue. You’re robbing from Peter to pay Paul. To add insult to injury, your unemployment insurance ran out, or you were fired and never had any from the giddy-up.

Suddenly the rug is pulled out from underneath you and your next option is your first night out on the streets. This is not exactly the scenario that I faced, but similar, in that I was in transition between jobs and got caught out in the middle, when the economy took a severe downturn.

Here the deal in this kind of situation, folks. Once you fall on your ass you’ll probably find out that your friends and family members view you as a social pariah, and do their best to distance themselves from you, for fear of catching the financial heebie jeebies. There’s just no room for a free-loader in this day and age.

Now that the dye has been cast, you'll have to find somewhere else to rest your head; a daunting proposition you would think. To use my own circumstances as an illustration (especially since this is my memoir), there will be priorities that have to be given attention immediately.

I, for one, had to find a place to lay my head. I had to maintain a level of acceptable cleanliness. Furthermore, I also had to find ways to keep my precious sanity, which was being constantly threatened by the gathering storm clouds of abject poverty.

There was a lot on my plate at the time, especially during the first few days. But I took courage and managed to meet these pressing goals objectively. However, I was not completely without resources. I used the tools and knowledge that I had gained previously, skill I had acquired long before being turned out into the concrete wilderness. What is more, by means of my memoir I will demonstrate to you how this was done.

Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York will reveal how I steered my way through those seemingly turbulent times, and how I successfully negotiated my way through the confusing maze of the jungle of the streets. To start off, I will discuss some of the things that were closely associated with my personal survival and shed a little light on the hither-to-unknown phenomenon of the world of the homeless.

HUMAN CONTACT We all know the story about Robinson Crusoe being stranded on a lonely island. Being homeless can be the same way, if you have no one to communicate with and bounce your thoughts off. You’d be surprised to know how many homeless persons I’ve seen hit the streets as normal people and gradually, over the course of time, turned into complete, blithering lunatics.

The problem with the whole damned thing is that most individuals separated themselves from society and took to the streets because of some lack of understanding with former loved ones, friends and relatives in the first place. So, while they’re out here there are very little-if any-telephone calls, or contact with the very ones they use to have commerce with on a daily basis. As a result they eventually go bunkers.

So, how did I avoid this dreadful fate?

Let me tell you it wasn’t easy. So I joined something. You too can join something as well, be it a local church or synagogue, or ashram. It doesn't really matter. If you’re not so religiously inclined, join a local volunteer group, like Police Benevolent Association, YMCA, YWCA or Kiwanis Club.

There are plenty of them out there. I being a poet of some notoriety have found a way to busy myself, traveling the poetry circuit and applying myself to the art of prose. On the poetry circuit, I met a lot of people of like mind and made plenty of contacts to… well… contact.

There’s seems to be something psychologically advantageous about the exchange of ideas between two people. So be creative, as I was. Find a companion, even if it’s just a friend for a day, that you met in a soup kitchen, for Christ sake!

Fortunately for me I had a homeless friend named Hobobob, who actually hit the streets the same along with me. Our companionship provided a major bulwark of psychological support and kept us from going over the edge. Unfortunately, everyone was not so blessed and weren't successful enough in persuading former friends or relatives to rough it out and join them in their new-found life on the streets.

The other option is to begin creating faux friends, or mentally dredging up friends, family members and enemies, then launching into a full tirade with these.

I'm sure you've seen this before. And I’m pretty certain you don’t want to end up like that. So follow my advice and do what I did. Roll your sleeves up and take the time to do some enthusiastic volunteer service at any local organization you like. Believe me, there are a lot of them to choose from. If you do, you will find many a wayfarer like yourself and may be able to take refuge in the up-building banter with a kindred soul to two.

OFFENSIVE BODY ODORS Oh! You don’t want to smell a funky Skeksy!

Skeksy is a word I use to refer to a run-down-homeless person as oppose to the regular homeless individual, doing their best to get by. More on that later, when we get to the chapter Levels of Homelessness.

Let me put it like this, if they were to drop a bunch of funky Skeksies out of a C-130 over Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the whole lot of them would simply throw up their weapons and surrender.

The war would be over. Period and amen!

The truth of the matter is there is no reason whatsoever that your homelessness has to be associated with offensive odors. There are restrooms a plenty in which you can tidy up. As soon as I found out where a few local churches were that provided showers and a clean set of clothing, I made a bee-line over to them and got my shower on. In fact, if I hadn’t told you I was homeless, you would never know, unless you had some kind of homeless meter on you, or something.

You know, the homeless people you encounter in the public restrooms steady washing themselves up in the sink, to the ire of everyone around. These are the better ones of the bunch. At least they’re trying to keep up their daily hygiene.

The ones who don’t see freshening themselves up in the public sinks… well, that’s a different story all together. These are the Skeksies that chase people away with the most battering stench imaginable.

Notice that horrendous tang around some homeless people?

You’d never guess it’s their feet, would you? Yep. That’s right. What you’re smelling is the odor from their long-over-due and unkempt feet. The feet of the homeless are first to go because they are constantly on them. They hardly have the opportunity to take off their shoes and socks and to give their poor well-deserved broughams a breather.

The other smell is coming from a long neglected, unwashed ass. Writing this part of the memoir brings me much vexation; in that there is no reason on God’s earth anyone should put aside the upkeep of their own backside.

However, this is another of the offensive stenches emanating from the bodies of homeless Skeksies, who just don’t give a clean, coyote-you know the rest-about the upkeep of their person.

This underscores the importance of keeping good maintenance of your feet and your backside when living out on the street. Do not wear your socks for more than two days in a row! Wash your feet every day and give the poor doggies a little breath of fresh air, as often as you can.

Who cares what others think about you when they see you airing out your flippers? Trust me, they rather see you doing that than endure the oppressive muzzle torture of your offensive smelling feet.

Sometimes one has to choose between the lesser of two evils.

I shouldn’t have to stress the importance of keeping your backside clean. A clean change of pants helps in fighting off odor as well. Applying a little talcum powder to the inside of my pants or underwear worked wonders for me, so much that I was able to mingle in with the rush hour crowd and no one was able to surmise the extent of my predicament.

Hey! Why not take care of yourself? It’s the only self you’re going to have for a long while.

I think I’ve said enough in that regard. So let’s move on to the next item of importance.

KNOWLEDGE OF SOUP KITCHENS Are you hungry? Well, you bet to start learning where all the soup kitchens are. Otherwise, you're going to starve to death and that’s a fact. There are some homeless people that make it by sitting on a stoop and begging, but pan handling’s illegal in most states. And even in states in which its illegality is questioned, it is still opprobrious.

Forget about the fact that it’s supposed to be protected under the First Amendment. If the cops want to bust your balls for panhandling they can so and they will with impunity.

Besides, begging its Skeksie.

For those of us who don’t want to be affiliated with Skeksies, but want to be able to satisfy our hunger when the time comes, there’s a whole network of soup kitchens operating throughout the cities and town in which you live in. So it behooves you to familiarize yourselves with their locations and times.

The thing about it is once you’ve connected to one soup kitchen you get tied in to a whole plethora of information leading you on the path to another hither-to-unknown soup kitchen, and another, and another.

Capish?

The process repeats itself, spreading out like a web, until you become satiated with information about the locations and times of a variety of soup kitchens. This overload of info bifurcates exponentially until you reach the point where you no longer need to seek out a soup kitchen, but will have so many resources at your disposal that you can have a meal almost any time of the day, on any given day of the week.

I’m not spinning a yarn here, folks.

You can actually get fat just following the trail of soup kitchens serving a variety of scrumptious victuals within the very city or town in which you live in. Amazing, isn't it? To help you along your culinary expedition, some of the churches that serve as food kitchen also provide handy brochures, such as The Street Sheet, which has a comprehensive listing of other soup kitchens you can avail yourself of throughout the week.

Surprisingly, one of the best sources of information about soup kitchens comes from other homeless individuals, standing on soup lines. If you listen out carefully, from time to time you’ll hear someone discussing, or even gushing, about a brand new soup kitchen they just discovered.

Look! There’s more than enough food to go around. So there’s no need for anyone to be all clandestine and attempt to conceal a new grub spot. If you’re savvy enough, you can go onto the internet at any public library and look up and find the numerous soup kitchens available. I did, and I’m not all that smart either.

The point is this, there’s no such thing as a hungry, homeless person in the big U.S. cities. In addition, there are so many soup kitchens operating around town, that unless you’re on a self-imposed, Mahatma Gandhi hunger strike, there’s no reason on God’s earth for you to go hungry simply because you’re homeless.

Feel me?

THE POWER OF THE NAPKIN They say the pen’s mightier than the sword, but not much has been written, if you will, about the power of the napkin.

Out here the napkin rules supreme!

You might be wondering how in the hell can a common item, such as a napkin be of such importance. I was surprised how much I had to rely upon this little piece of paper, on a daily basis, just to get by.

It seems I have to explain and provide a little history.

I used napkins to wipe my mouth, to wipe my hands from grease after I ate, to wash my hands from dirt and debris. I used napkins to blow my nose, to wipe my-well, you know-in cases where there was no toilet paper available.

I used napkins to wrap food, or a valuable thing. I used napkins to wedge public bathroom doors shut that had no lock. I used napkins to scribble my thoughts and to write the outline of this book upon.

If I were to attempt to enumerate all the purposes in which I put the napkin to, I’d have to write a separate brochure just on my usage of napkins. However, I will not overwhelm you with all the minutia.

Suffice it to say, napkins went a long way when I was homeless.

So, the next time you’re in a fast food joint, like Burger King or Wendy’s, glom as many napkins as you can physically carry, without causing a scene, and save them up for a time when you're going to be in dire need.

And that pretty much wraps it up.

GENERAL HYGIENE SOAPS AND DEODORANT Okay. So now you’ve taken a shower at one of the centers that provides showers for the homeless. You even feel good after you've changed into some fresh clothing. But there’s still something missing. How about the use of some deodorant, toothpaste and what not?

This is where glomming these provisions from the soup kitchens that hand them out comes in handy. During the evening there are a variety of charitable organizations, such as The Midnight Run and certain church groups that drive around in vans scouring the sidewalks for the homeless to give out these accoutrements.

However, you have to know where they stop and the times they arrive, or you’re gonna be shit out of luck. If you do locate them, you’ve hit the homeless jackpot, buddy! Why? Because they give out buku (Yeah, I know the proper spelling is beaucoup) soap, deodorant, toothpaste, razors, just about everything you need to keep up your personal hygiene for a decent period of time. That’s until you need to catch them again