Street Stories: Pro & Con

By Michael Roy

It was a two-way conversation: he told me his story as I asked questions and listened. People passed by. Some gave him money, most didnt. No one stopped. See, fella, he said, I need more than money for food and things. Yeah, I need that too. But I also need people to hear me. That day, I opened my ears and took the time to hear people on the streets talk. (Excerpt from The Reason, Michael Roys explanation for writing these stories.)

Michael Roy carefully listened to the men and women who inhabit the streets of Philadelphia, Americas fourth largest city. Whether they lived on the streets or passed by, these people had vibrant stories to tell about their lives that were waiting to be written. Thirty-four of their stories are in the pages of this book.

You will read about the mayor of the square, the couple who returned to the Reading Terminal Market to celebrate their anniversary, protesters and protest rallies, a woman who lives on a bridge, bus conversations, the men worried about justice, finding pizza slices to give away, a comedians life and death, a former Peace Corps volunteer, the men who helped another ex-convict get a job, a priest who interred a mans ashes in a park at night, and other stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543440690

Michael Roy

No author information.

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Copyright © 2017 by Michael Roy.

Library of Congress Control Number:         2017911860

ISBN:                     Hardcover                     978-1-5434-4067-6

                                Softcover                       978-1-5434-4068-3

                               eBook                             978-1-5434-4069-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 08/02/2017

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CONTENTS

The Reason

The Stories

The Woman at the Bus Stop

Mayor of the Square

Street Chat

Till Death Do Us Part

Serving and Selling

The 1% and the Others

At the Oranges

Street People

Crossing against the Light

The Apartment Player

Bibbing

Vet on the Corner

The Counter

Standing in the Cold for What You Believe and Others Don’t

Not My Problem

A Bridge of Her Own

Reunion

The Resident

Six Blocks on the Bus in the Fall of 2016

When What I Am Is

How to Learn?

When the Straw Doesn’t Sip

Searching for Paco’s Breakfast Burrito

The Street Collector

Travelin’ Woman

Spring

A Piece of Pie for You and Me

Street Play

Sometimes, Success

But What If… ?

Close Companions

At the Intersection

A Million

Digging in the Dark in the Park

Preface

Walking a city’s streets keeps your muscles strong, your weight down, and your outlook fresh. Walking also puts you in the middle of conversations that surround you.

Stories in this book illustrate an event, theme, cause, or human condition heard on the streets, in coffee shops, stores, diners, and restaurants. If a story required more details, I invited people to have an extended conversation over coffee or lunch. Most times, they were willing to expand their accounts over the course of several conversations, providing deeper insights and interpretations.

These kernels of ideas bloomed into fictionalized stories in which the names of the storytellers and others were changed.

Thanks to the people on the streets—that human milieu of an open, fleeting exchange of countless interesting narratives. I feel blessed to have been able to listen to them. I learned so much.

Michael Roy

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Reason

He sat on the sidewalk, propped against a storefront on a busy street. Coins clinked in his cup as he shook it. I paused, dug into my pocket and gave him a dollar for food he asked for, and started to walk on.

He called out, I was injured in Iraq.

I paused, turned, and asked, How? My arm, he said. Then he rolled up the sleeve of his dirty shirt to show me his badly mangled arm. He said, Stay and talk to me.

I asked how his arm got that way. He said that a roadside bomb blew him out of his vehicle. He told me about how he thought he would die, but the medics pulled him through. About his long recovery. About how he returned to the States to find that his wife didn’t want a less than complete man who could not find a job. About how he went off the deep end and finally came back, but with no money.

It was a two-way conversation: he told me his story as I asked questions and listened.

People passed by. Some gave him money; most didn’t. No one stopped.

See, fella, he said, I need more than money for food and things. Yeah, I need that too. But I also need people to hear me.

That day, I opened my ears and took the time to hear people on the streets talk. Their stories are in the pages of this book.

The Woman at the Bus Stop

The small, dark, delicate city bird flew around the bus stop, landing for awhile, looking for crumbs people dropped.

"Last night was my night . . .

Where I come from, cops don’t take after you down the street . . .

Here, they come at you right there with their clubs ’n boots, ’n beat, beat you down . . .

That guy in the bank knows how to keep your money where he can get to it and I can’t . . .

The guy that runs the doughnut shop on Sixteenth Street, he got some kinda nerve going after somebody who’s hungry.

I been hungry so long my stomach shriveled up . . .

Can’t keep nothin’ down . . .

What kinda place do we live in anyway?

How come so many people after me I can’t get a job nowhere?

I’m sick, tired, too tired to do anything . . .

When’s the bus gonna come?

Give me some money! I’m hungry! I gotta eat!"

I hurried past this woman as I came off the bus, walked around the rear of the glass bus stop to avoid her like everybody else did, crossed the street, walked alongside the front of the building, and quickly stepped in through the door. But what was I hurrying from?

I thought, Ms. Chitchat tries to run after people to beg, but she doesn’t have the energy. She stumbled a bit and moved about two feet, maybe too much for a young woman weighed down by emotional and physical grime. Looks like she could have been a prom queen a few years ago before she went on drugs or whatever she was on. Maybe she was lovely at one time. Now her elegant deep-blue eyes looked without seeing, hollowed out. What was within? She talked to people without knowing they weren’t there.

There was too much in her mixed-up mind. Her load must be so great that she could explode in anger and melt all the candles and shred the crosses inside the church where I go. I had to be fast because I gave her a dollar once or twice, so she knew me now—not by name, of course, but she knew where I went to work just across the street. Now she expected me to give to her. I did.

She tried to walk away from the bus stop that was her place. At least, I think it was her place because that was where I saw her every day. She was as familiar a part of the scenery there as the posters on the bus stop walls advertising plays and concerts.

A couple of times, I got off work late, after rush hour. And as I walked by, I didn’t see her. She disappeared into the city that expanded to enfold its homeless.

One time, I got up enough nerve to ask her where she went when she left the bus stop. She said,

"Go? Don’t know where to go.

Used to go to high school.

But no place there. They kicked me out.

Mom and Dad not home.

I just live. Wherever I can. Live. Where I . . .

What time is it? Got some change for food?"

I gave her a couple of bucks.

She looked about the age of a college student, maybe a little older. But now life on the streets had chiseled her features. She had a light gray-brown look, a grimy patina on her, burned into her cracked skin by the sun. She had scratches on her face and marks on her hands; black imbedded under her fingernails; filthy hair, matted, maybe with lice; and teeth clogged with old food. Her clothes? They didn’t change. It was the same ripped, grime-caked coat and pants. What she really wore every day was dirt, ground-in dirt.

I didn’t ask her questions because I wouldn’t know how to help her. I wished I could. I mean, there were places she could go to sleep at night, even places that would give her food and guidance that could be helpful to her. I doubt if she would go. She was too much into the street to leave it. She was at the bottom of a downward spiral.

Last winter when I was waiting for the five-thirty bus so I could go to a shop to get something to eat on the way home, I again asked her where she went when she was not at the bus stop. She told me, Sleep? I sleep wherever. Then she said to no one in particular of the half-dozen people waiting for the bus,

"I used to be with a