For a few days, during my day-trips on Caltran from Oakland to San Jose, for $7 a ride, I had seen this man sitting with a middle-aged, homeless, dog-woman, a lady who kept herself clean and once offered to sit with me at Diridon Station a few years ago. Her black lab was leashed to her collapsible cloth wagon. The skies have been crystal clear by day, streaked with line clouds that swirl just before sundown, and marked by a dinner time bite of moon at 11 to 1 on the clock.

This morning, before returning here to the Waterfront Hotel in Oakland, where I enjoy the companionship of the lass of middle years who works the counter by day and the old cracker by night, the man stood before me. He was not stooped, though was wizened, Moses-like, as straight as he might. He stands 5’ 6” and scales about 160, a muscular old man. A beige cloth blanket was worked as a poncho about his shoulder and down to his belt. He is tattooed in the old way, pre-lifestyle identity tat, with various mottoes. The hair on his deeply tanned and print-inked arms was still dark, that on his head gray and white, as was his beard.

He leaned on an interesting hand-made staff, the head formed from a root bulb in the manner of a hand, his fingers there intertwined, regarding me, “What has happened to us Americans?”

I stepped up to him and extended my hand, “James, how are you today, Sir?”

“Mike, James, glad to meet you. I’m wondering, me being a veteran, fought in Vietnam, why isn’t there a place for me? I did what I was told. That Motel 6 is packed with foreigners. They get all the positions—I go to the VA, and there’s nobody looks like me behind the counter. I have my VA card, my EBT, but no California I.D., working on getting that. But its hard not having a phone, can’t contact those VA people working on my case.”

People gave us a wide berth, yet Mike had no bad odor about him. The park, I had just walked through, next to the train station, named in an old-fashioned American manner, is filled mostly with Asians.

“So, James, look at how well these foreigners do here. What about us? What is happening to us? My social security doesn’t rent a room. I eat, but have to sleep on the street. You go in and out of that book store—you’re a man that knows.”

“We’re being replaced. I was run out of my home town in June 2018, been homeless ever since. All these clothes are donated.”

“You’ve been on the street seven years—you look good! I’ve only been out five years—Covid.”

“I’ve been lucky, Mike. Men I coach put me up, last fella game me enough money to tarry in this fine neck of the woods, and out west, people are good, not like the east.”

“The east—you’re not kidding! ‘Watchyou lookin’ at!’ always a fight. When I was in New York, I snuck down too the big park, found some roach clips, built a reefer, and smoked under a bush and passed the night.”

I grinned and shook my head, “New York, 14th and 6th, the only time I slept on the sidewalk—I’ve been blessed, headin’ out to garden for some Mormons for a month, folks even more worn down than me.”

“I’ve been baptized Mormon, Baptist too—but now I’m beyond all that finger-pointing. It was a good way to get started, but I need more love than argument. I’m lookin’ to head down to Deridon, out to Santa Clara—they got the best services out there—the trains and busses here are so good… and, the women are fair to look at.”

“Yes sir, I have been suffering from some eye-strain in these parts. I hope they take care of you over there.”

“I don’t mean to complain, Brother, but they done dropped the ball once—was supposed to have this bladder cancer removed. But it got postponed. At my age, that is pretty uncomfortable. A hospital bed would be nice. Say, you don’t suppose you could spare a quarter so I could buy a cigarette, do you—I’m a bit jittery.”

I smelled no booze, not now, or any time I have passed Mike. His half-clean hair did not harbor smoke. Taking out my wallet, I peeled off a $20 and gave it to Mike, my heart grown soft to mush were fellow losers are concerned over these past two years.”

“Oh, my—are you sure, Brother? This buys a pack and a train ticket, a soda too!”

“Sure, Mike. It’s been a flush year for me. I’ve got these clean clothes given me, a modern roller suitcase too. I hope you have a better week, man.”

“God bless you, Brother James; thank you—maybe us Americans have something left.”

I walked down to the book store and stopped, clearing my head, my Mother-in-Law recently deceased, and my oldest friend groaning beyond words on his sick bed, ‘How much of us is left—how many people will blow off Mike when they read that he scrounged weed from negro blunts in Central Park?’

‘How many of us have been tempted with drugs and booze by the same system that we slaved for or killed for, just so that we might be labeled drunk, addict or loser, and stepped over with that much more ease by our replacements?’

And finally, what of all those across America, that are of like mind with me in many ways, who HATE the people of California like some disease? I have not met a single shithead in California: sissy whites, coward Negroes, robotic Asians, yes. But, unlike the east, no one in this state has given me a hard time, no violence threatened, kindness the rule. Yet these people are somehow our enemy?

The thing that strikes me the most about California is: the most farms, trains, warehouses, factories, strip mines, quarries, parks, single family homes, oil wells [even in back yards], pretty girls, skate boards and cool breezes, with the least police. The prices are the same as NYC and Chicago.

I’ll take it.