Walter has had a very interesting life, with international travel, college study, important projects, and a huge amount of learning and reading and studying. He has had great jobs, wonderful relationships—with a couple wonderful women—and a huge apartment with a private room full of big chairs, a well-stocked bar, and a wide desk for thinking about “earth-shattering news and implications” of current events and problems. Walter is an expert on this windy city we live in. Walter is an expert on many things, and has done many things, but has one little thing standing right in the middle of his living room.
Walter is homeless.
This professional comes from a technical background and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Chicago, thorough understanding of how the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) functions, and who designed what automobile when and what engine they put into it. He can tell you also what engines were available in the 1966 Ford Mustang, the 1967 Chevy Camaro, and the 1968 Pontiac Catalina. He knows about the Pontiac “Iron Duke” four-cylinder engine (Iron Duke engine - Wikipedia) and the V8 engine from which it came.
Not only that, he can tell you who started each company, what happened to the company, who currently owns the company, and what kind of six-cylinder engine is available in the 2021 Chrysler 300 sedan…
2021 Chrysler 300
.
…as opposed to the one that will be available next year. Listening to him talk about these things, in his animated manner, is like watching the Discovery Channel.
He looks like any other technical expert, mathematics professor, or geologist you would see standing in front of a map or poster or display as he tells you the secret dealings of the helicopters used to transport the last of the refugees out of Vietnam. There is only one clear difference between Walter and all of the experts you would see on such an interesting and engaging television special.
Walter is homeless.
I sit and listen to him talk, and I keep striving to get him to discuss his situation, his plans, his living situation, and his journey into being “unhoused.” He would prefer to talk about more history and more technical information. I press on often, in our interview which spans many meetings indeed, to get him back to those topics we started out talking about: “living in the rough, living outdoors, sleeping on a train.”
Not only that, but Walter can tell you what kind of train it is, who built it, when, how, where… etc. potentially long into the night, as they say. But that information is not what I want to know about.
“Why are you homeless,” I ask Walter.
“Well, there are several reasons, but this last bout has been the longest and the most technically ‘homeless’ of my stays out of doors,” he explains. “Know what I mean?”
And, of course, I say, “No.”
Walter sits there, then responds with “Well, a few years back after my wife died, I lost my job and decided to sell our house …although I had some money, I lived as a homeless guy for about six months and then decided to try to go on disability.”
“This is bringing us up to current day?” I ask.
‘No, well, I was on disability and then I got bumped off that.”
“Then what happened?” I ask.
Walter starts up again, “Well, none of this is in any particular order, but I wound up pretty much broke, and I got evicted, and I started sleeping on the train—but NOT on the Red Line.”
“So that was the order things...or not?” I query.
“Well, that is close enough,” he responds. “The whole homeless situation came about because of that ‘snafu’ I mentioned before—I’d just as soon not talk about…”
I am not sure I am going to get a lot of information about the past… and maybe need to not only deal with what he is saying about the recent and the present… and hope I can find a miracle to get him to think about the future. That will be a challenge!
It has become clear during the six months I have known Walter—and the five plus months he has not wanted to sit for a formal interview on the topic of homelessness—that he is only going to say so much about the “snafu” that occurred (Came to pass? Befell him?) and keep switching the topic to other areas more interesting to him (Less revealing? Less personal? Less frustrating?) and just a lot more fun to talk about.
There are obviously mainly reasons most people become homeless. Experts can tell you what happens typically and give you statistics and great sources to read (What Causes Homelessness? - National Alliance to End Homelessness).
After all the time I have known Walter, he has spent 99 per cent of his energy and hours telling me about all this technical history. Is it Obsessive-Complusive Disorder (OCD)? Maybe he has to tell me about all of this because he thinks I need to know it? Maybe he cannot help himself because of the OCD or similar challenge (NIMH » Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (nih.gov)).
Does he absolutely have to tell me all about cars, trucks, pickups, trains, vans, airplanes, Chicago, Al Capone…
…the old North Shore train line? The old Chicago cable cars? The horse-drawn cars? The use of the cable tracks to ground the electric lights framing Irving Park Boulevard? The Halsted #8 CTA bus? The history of the #8 route through all the different kinds of conveyances and propulsion used? Including the tracks you can still see sticking out of the street here and there in the Lakeview neighborhood?
Walter focuses on all of this history—very interesting but not a productive endeavor—and gets most of his money from people who offer it, including some regular benefactors who give him quite a bit of cash. He stands on a corner with traffic coming into the city—hence cash but little food—there would be various burgers and pizza coming to him but only if he were standing somewhere people would be passing on their way OUT of towm.
His job used to be called “panhandling,” but as that activity was deemed ‘legal’ in Illinois, starting in January of 2021, individuals are free to conduct that work everywhere in the state, except for in a very few specific locations. For example, nobody may seek donations on or in CTA facilities or vehicles—or within 10 feet of them.
I guess I need to be more proactive in many ways with Walter. I am coming to hate his story. But I do not hate him. I hate what has happened to him. I hate that darn “snafu” I am supposed to just accept and go on listening to the new Dodge automobile lineup for 2023 including the Charger...
Maybe I can listen and slowly steer the conversation away from “all this darn stuff” I have to hear about and instead concentrate on new topics, new ideas, new projects, and new plans. Otherwise, I am afraid I will be defeated by this story I hate.
I hate this story partly because it reminds me of so many other similar careers and lives that get bumped and shifted and which produce yet another person with no roof above their head.
There is not that much I can do in this moment, without the winnings from a good lottery ticket—or the discovery of a suitcase full of $100 bills—to help Walter and so many other experts out there. There are experts on music, dance, algebra, child-rearing, and hog-farming. And many of those experts sleep on a train or behind a dumpster.
There are a lot of smaller, briefer ideas that come into my head about my hatred of this story. Life is not fair. Walter could be tutoring high school students in math, or college students in the design of automobiles. He could be writing a book about automobile transmissions. Perhaps I can work our future conversations into such areas.
Walter is like many single unroofed guys out there—they become advocates for themselves on daily topics—where to get a good Sunday dinner, where to get warm socks, where to find people who will give you cash, where the cheapest but strongest cup of coffee can be bought, where if you show up at closing time you can get a whole pizza for free because the manager “hates to throw good food away” even though you know the real point of it is she wants to help people so they do not starve.
As an educator, I must learn how to reach Walter. How to get him on that journey to helping others, contributing to society, building a stronger town, and helping others. In that way, maybe I can stop hating this story.
For so many little reasons I detest this story. I can think of many ways in which I am NOT helping Walter to change his life, improve it, enrich it, or maybe even extend it. What happens to guys like Walter who after enough time sleeping on the train just decide to wake up in the morning and figure out where to get the next “really good” free food and coffee and stuff?
More reasons I hate about this “career” he is living have to do with my inability to make much of an impact. I do not know how most can be helped. I do not know how to convince some of them they need help to begin with.
I guess when it comes down to it, there is really one main and “over-arching” reason I hate how this life of a brilliant man has gone.
Walter is homeless.