Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [31]
After I was done, George brought me a bottle of Pine Sol and a broom, and he showed me where the hose was so I could get the courtyard extra spic-and-span for Sparky. The entire project took just two hours, although it had felt like a full day’s work.
I was ready to call it a day when George asked me if I’d like to pull some weeds. Why not? What else am I gonna do with my life? Keeping with my newfound tradition that nothing would come easy, George’s weeds weren’t normal. His weeds—pokeweed, mostly—had smuggled Miracle-Gro and other plant steroids into the neighborhood, so they looked more like overgrown plants that had been neglected for several seasons. It was a one-acre model—to scale—of the Amazon. That was the bad news. The good news was that he had enough work on that one plot of land adjacent to his own house, where he was planning to build a three-story apartment building, that I could pick weeds for the next five Sundays. The terrain was rocky (even more work for the coming months), so it wasn’t like a Bobcat or some other gargantuan machine could come in and just tear it all up. These weeds needed to be picked with finesse.
I spent two hours on weeds—just as tedious as my previous task (although more sanitary). The sun was blazing straight on my back, so my work time was peppered with quick water breaks every fifteen minutes. This also gave me an opportunity to converse with George about Charleston’s history and beauty and how some of its residents had come from long lines of Charlestonians, while others were former tourists that had visited and declared that Charleston was the place that they absolutely had to live. He would describe in colorful detail the places he’d been in the world—Italy and Spain were his favorites—and we discussed the drug epidemic in Charleston that was not at all limited to the lower classes uptown. He wanted to hear my story of why I was living at the shelter, but I deferred it until the following Sunday. That first Sunday had already been packed with plenty of stories. By 2:00, I had put in an intense four hours of work, and I had learned a lot about my new town in the process. He paid me $40 and sent me “home” with a sandwich since I’d missed lunch at the shelter.
Smelly and dirty, I walked a mile to the other side of the downtown peninsula, through Marion Square, to the library. This would become tradition. For the next two months while I was living at the shelter, rarely would a day go by that I didn’t pay a visit to the library. It would become my connection to the rest of the world. I recognized early on that everyone belongs there. For a moment lower, middle, and upper classes all blend into the same intellectual melting pot. Whether surfing the Internet or perusing the bookshelves, everyone can find something to do at the library.
On that particular Sunday, Easy E had solicited the help of one of the librarians to find a collection of books on drug addiction. Through some course of philosophical realization, he had convinced himself that the best route for him to take in discharging his drug habit was just to quit. I certainly wasn’t one to protest, although I knew that Crisis Ministries had programs in place that seemed a heck of a lot more efficient than quitting cold turkey. But that wasn’t my business. What was my business was that he had been invited to a mass baptism around the corner that was serving hamburgers and hot dogs. And best of all, he was encouraged to invite his friends.
Well, naturally, with a building full of homeless guys, word had spread