| MY LIFE AS A "HOMELESS CAMPER" PART TWO |
| At the end of Part One of this chronicle I had brought us up to November 1997, when the Eugene City Council amended the camping ban to allow us to park in the industrial zones. I'll make a couple of comments on that before moving on with the story. As I had said in the last installment, the fact that we were required to move every 24 hours meant that a lot of us were no better off than before. Many of the camping vehicles that people use as living quarters are simply not in a condition to be used for daily transportation. Some of them don't run at all, and some of their occupants, like myself, are not even licensed drivers. Also, for some of us, this provision had made life decidedly worse, as we had been banished from the residential areas where we had previously taken refuge, with easier access to downtown. In my opinion, this move on the part of the City Council was merely the type of partial concession that is designed to take the wind out of people's sails. It eased just enough of the pressure on the campers to discourage activists from following through on the threats of civil disobedience which they had made so vocally through the summer and fall. There was also another hidden danger in this provision: it had a sunset clause, meaning the experiment would end the following June, at which time it would be subject to review. But in any case, it was now November and life had to go on. My camper was now parked on one of the industrial streets 'way out in the boonies of West Eugene, and I certainly wasn't moving it every day. And I still had to deal with my previous camping ticket. The lawyer I had found to represent me was at least useful in getting postponements of my trial date. I wasn't sure if he was doing any actual work on my case other than that, as I had few conversations with this intensely busy and temperamental man. Then when I went to see him in early February, he surprised me by pulling out a 17-page brief that showed me how much work he had actually done. This was in preparation for a hearing on Feb. 23, at which time he would try to have the case dismissed. If that didn't work it would go to trial on Feb. 27. All this work did indeed pay off. Even though I was about 20 minutes late showing up for court, and my lawyer had already left by the time I got there, the clerk informed me that the charges had been dismissed. YES!!!!VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!! So now it was the end of February and spring was approaching. A full five years had passed since the first Centennial Car Camp, and my life had gotten better in some ways. But we still had a long way to go towards restoring the full rights of us "homeless" citizens and providing a set-up where we could truly have some peace in our lives, even perhaps turn our attention to other things that were going on in the world besides the "homeless issue". Now I am coming to a much more pleasant segment of the story, as the stage was being set for a new love to unfold in the fullness of Spring! It would not occur to a lot of people that one of those makeshift "homeless camps" could be the setting of a beautiful love story, but so it was. This was not to be one of those tired old co-dependent matches that are commonly formed on the street, like the one I had with Rick that brought me to Oregon, but a romance that is formed out of genuine love, the way Nature intended! Society spends so much time defining homeless people by what they are not: people who don't live in the mainstream, who lack "normal" employment and housing, it seems they are completely unaware of what we are. That is, we are people who have the same life processes going on as everybody else; it's just that our life dramas are being played out on a different stage. Those who want to picture "the homeless" as forever inhabiting a bleak, shadowy half-world, do not want to see the color in our lives. But there was color aplenty in those lovely wetlands when spring came. Eugene banished us to the edges of town so the people in City Hall wouldn't have to look at us, and so a new community was formed out there in which new cross-fertilization could take place. Spring comes for the homeless too, silly Eugene! And life happens for us wherever we are. Society's every attempt to make life impossible for us only generates new life! click here for new index page) |
| END OF VOLUME ONE |