Off the Grid

In all her years--growing up in an upper middle class house in a quiet suburb, graduating high school with honors, going to college, getting a Master's degree, working various well-paying jobs--Natalie never thought she'd find herself dumpster diving for food.

It wasn't a lark, as some college-aged kids tried to live "off the grid".  Natalie was actually leaning over the metal rim of an actual freaking dumpster actually touching actual garbage.  She tried to work fast because being caught would be too embarrassing, and she managed a partial loaf of bread, wrapped safely in the original plastic bag, three apples, and a take-out container with half a sandwich and a handful of fries.  Nat started to cry as she slipped the treasurers into the pressed-fabric reusable grocery bag for what she told herself were her "shopping trips".

Homeless Homeowners

It is possible to own a home and be homeless.  We're about to do it!  Here's how:

We do not have enough money to get a decent mortgage for a decent house.  We were also too poor to carry cash to a city tax auction and compete with contractors and "investors" for dregs.  We are, however, clever enough to dig into the system and buy a city tax auction house outside of the auction so we could prepare and get a personal loan to pay for it.  We are also persistent enough to make it work!  However...

The city said the house was in "normal" condition.  It is not.  The city said they had NO inspection reports, they said they did NOT go inside, and they could not tell us anything about the property.  We can tell them that there is no plumbing, no heat, no doorknobs, a roof that needs complete replacement, and a back porch that is dragging off the back of the house.  We have also found out that the only reason the home was boarded over was because of neighbors begging for it--for years.  Lesson learned: the city knew the condition of the house, they let it get worse, and they had the nerve to ask for any money for it.

We love our house!  We spent all our first months, from September to December, cleaning out the garbage, attempting to get contractors to give us estimates, and bringing over boxes of our stuff we won't need right away.  We tried to apply for the grant that would get us just about everything we'd need to fix the house and live in it, but you have to live in the house to get the grant.  ?!?  After a HUGE struggle, we got special house insurance for a house that was being fixed up that was cancelled after a month because they said the house needs to be fixed up and we need to live in it.  ?!?

So we're now renting our apartment, paying for a personal loan, and paying taxes on our house.  We haven't been to the house in over a week because temperatures are less than 10 degrees, and, as you may remember, we have no heat.  The struggles of low-income people to make it out of their low-income living conditions is real.  Really real.  Because what happens when we can't afford to rent?  We use up all the money we've managed to save for fixing our house.  We can't move in if we can't fix it.  We can't get a home equity loan or house insurance or a grant until we live in it.  What do we do?

The plan: visit the department that manages the grants and tell them we're about to become homeless homeowners unless they put us on the grant waiting list (yes, there's still waiting!)  We look to rent a scary-cheap apartment in the same city as our house.  We wait until the temperatures go to above freezing, go back, keep cleaning, keep moving, try to fix more windows, try to remediate the basement ourselves, and maybe even try to dismantle the back porch ourselves.  In the meantime, keep plugging along, trying to increase our income.

Homeless with a home.  In 10 degree weather (lows below zero.  Fahrenheit, in case you were wondering.)  How does it happen?  People like us struggle to get up.  How will we make it work?  Through ingenuity and persistence, like we've always done.

Inez and the Good Life

When did Inez still have a chance at a good life?  It was definitely before she was hit by the car that injured her back and put her on hydrocodone.  It was before her father died as a result of "an altercation" at age 74.  It was before she divorced her husband.  It was before they lost their house on South Street.  It was before they sold family land in South Carolina to a paper company to pay their bills.  It was before she dropped out of community college.  It was before she got pregnant.  When did the chances for a good life stop, or was it that she stopped seeing them?

How did you develop your sense of morals?

I have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, and I feel shame.  I'm not religious, it's just that the idea fits my situation perfectly.  I know about religious stuff from the old guy who lives on the fifth floor.  He recites, or shouts, stuff from the Bible at me as I walk by on the stairs to my eighth floor walk-up.  I'm fourteen, but I can call it my apartment because I pay the rent.  The landlord doesn't know that, of course.  He'd be obliged to call social services, and they would ruin my ruined life.  It's ruined.  I see it now.  But it's my life.  Sticking me in foster care again, or forcing me into a children's home, would mean I'm not in control.

The Tree of Knowledge has shown me the lousiness of my life.  The first thing eating from that damned Tree showed me was my smell.  I remember getting into a fight with Candy Booger (real name Bourgan) in fifth grade when I actually hit a girl.  I knew it was bad to hit, but I didn't know it was extra bad to hit a girl.  She said that I smelled, and I punched her.  While I waited outside Principal Morgan's office, I tried to notice smells.  The copy machine next to me smelled like warm paper.  The secretary who walked past smelled like acid flowers.  I kept sniffing and, finally, I smelled it.  Piss.  Body odor.  Maybe mold?  God, save me, Candy Booger was right, and I had punched her for it.  Nobody appreciates the messenger.

If you were a shoe, what kind would you be?

He was beyond indignities.  Whatever could be done to him had been, and he was simply tired of the time that stretched in front of him.  He shuffled slowly, partly because he had nowhere to go, and partly because the shoes on his feet didn't fit.  Cars beeped, but couldn't get him to raise a hand.  He shuffled, and waited for the end of his time.

If you could be a door or a window, what would you be and why?

The Wizard lived in an old RV illegally parked on an empty lot at the end of a forgotten dead end street.  He'd been there for as long as any of the kids could remember, and they'd never see the faded Winnebago move.  The weedy dirt patch had been spruced up with a homemade tire planter, a string of fat Christmas lights, and a wooden wind chime the kids said was really made of bone.

Most of the adults thought The Wizard was a meth-head, cooking in his RV, but they didn't know any of the signs and were just judging based on appearance.  If any of them had gone into the RV, like Jake had, they'd know it was clean and followed what The Wizard taught him was "feng shui".

If you could be any item in Wal-Mart, what would you be and why?

Shani was tired.  She felt her way through the shoe department's opening procedures using muscle memory more than her brain, but she had never needed to use her brain much at her job.  The mornings came early, especially after a hard night's sleep in her car.  Every day she slept in her car made her bones ache more, and last night, she could barely sleep at all.  At two in the morning, some drunk teenaged boys noticed her and banged on her hood and trunk until she managed to lay on the horn and threaten them loud enough with the cops.  They ran, not knowing Shani would never call because the police would have hassled her, too, for living in her car and parking overnight were she shouldn't.

Pageant Question: What living man is the best role model for your generation? Why?

There was a man on an interview show promoting his book about poverty.  He was very controversial because he was advocating for eliminating poverty from other parts of the world because America's poverty wasn't as bad as it was elsewhere.  People in the United States were outraged, but it started conversations, and, as it turns out, the author was right.

Father Francis walked the streets of Rome in darkest parts of the night.  He carried with him food and blankets.  The street children came to know him and they all called him Father.

Pageant Question: Before you, there were Baby Boomers and Generation X. How do you think history will remember your generation?

The first lesson to learn is that humans never learn their lessons.

The world we knew and loved, cherished and abused, lived in and died in, was destroyed, beginning long before we noticed we were destroying it.  Humans mentioned "the tipping point" over and over for decades, but hadn't realized we passed that point before the words were ever mentioned in conjunction with humanity's destruction.

But I digress.  In the moment I'd like to describe, I was in a food line, hoping to get to the front before they slammed the gates shut.  My mother told me that back in the day, she heard about food lines like this in Russia, where they waited hours and hours for a lousy loaf of bread.  She had wondered how it had come to this in the United States.  I hoped to get that bread.

On this day, I was alone as my mother had died about ten years ago.  God, ten years?  Time slips, though the days are the same.  I had no other living relatives, as far as I knew.  Cholera took my mother.  She laughed as she died; laughing that cholera, a disease she associated with slums in India, would kill her.  "Love in the age of cholera," she said.  "I love you," she said.  That was all.

I had been in this line for three hours when, at least thirty people ahead of me, they slammed down the gates.  It had been brewing for a long time, but this was the start of the worst riot in memory.  Even without television or internet to spread the news, the news spread, and the whole country rioted.  Hell, maybe even the whole world--what was left of it.

Pageant Question: Which freedom do you value the most: life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness? When do you think these rights should be taken away from a person?

People officially started calling the neighborhoods "Camps" when I was eight, but they were already camps long before I was born.  My family has been living in the same Camp for five generations.  Fences went up in my great-grandmother's time, and my grandmother was the one who told me the history.

Grandma Nonna, at eighty, was the oldest person in our Camp.  Life expectancy was in the sixties, so Grandma Nonna was revered for her age and wisdom.  She told me that when the Camps were "neighborhoods", the houses stood shoulder to shoulder, and only family owned each house.  A single family lived inside.  Grandparents lived in their own homes.  Aunts and uncles had others.  The use of so much space for just four people seemed outrageously decadent to me.

When she was small, Grandma Nonna said there were still roads and even some cars in her neighborhood.  Once she told me about roads and where they used to be, I would wander our Camp and look for signs.  I found hidden curbs and even, what she called, a "manhole cover".  That sounded dirty.  I found a rock that she said was probably rubble from a road.  I carry it with me.

Pageant Question: How do you overcome adversity?

"Talia!"  Her mother's tone meant she was not to be ignored and Talia scrambled from the kitchen so fast she knocked over another box of empty bottles and garbage.

"I'll pick it up, Momma," Talia promised even before she was close enough for her mother to hear.  A fist flew out of nowhere and caught Talia on the mouth.

"Don't sass!"  Stars shone in Talia's eyes, but the protest that she hadn't been sassing was locked behind her bleeding lips.  Her mother stood, thin and dark, frayed around the edges, and wound around her addictions.  "Watch your brothers and sister."  Then she was gone.  Talia didn't know it, but it was the last time she'd ever feel her mother's touch or hear her voice.

Pageant Question: What is your favorite charity and how do you help their cause?

The Friends of Night People is a soup kitchen downtown.  The dining room is small, only about ten cafeteria-style tables with long benches attached to each side.  They turn a brisk business every evening for dinner.  The people who come for dinner eat fast and they don't linger.  Clear the seat, wipe the table, and it ready for somebody else.  You can also pick up bags of non-perishable food to go, or "shop" for clothes in the jam-packed donation room.  Whatever you do, you hardly ever get a good dessert.

I promised myself, if I ever got out and really made it the way I wanted to, I would donate the best damn desserts to The Friends of Night People.  Fresh cakes, brownies, cookies and ice cream with all the fixings.  No more quarter slice of a rock hard blueberry muffin, I'm talking real desserts.  It was what I missed most when I found myself down and way out.

Pageant Question: When you look into the mirror, what do you see?

The big, yellow wrecking machines were at it again, this time on the next street over, but Jenny still jumped when she heard their diesel engines roar to life.  It was her street that had been the most recent victim of the city's progress.  Her block, which in its heyday had shoulder to shoulder houses, was now toothless and grey.  Rocky lots with the tops of filled-in cellars poking through the third-rate fill the demolition crews used to fulfill their city contracts were more common than living houses.  Now the block behind Jenny's house was getting the same treatment; onward the machines would churn, block by block, until they hit the expressway that decades ago replaced what had been an award-winning park.  On the other side of the cement scar, people still prospered.  On Jenny's side, people hung on.

Jenny was lucky that she owned her house without a mortgage and she had enough to pay taxes and bills on time through her unconventional work.  She spent most of her personal days on the upper floors as her front rooms were devoted to her business: fortune telling.  Jenny shoved her feet into work boots and threw on a sweater before setting the house alarm.  Even a lived-in house wasn't safe from copper pipe thieves, even in the daylight.  The early morning dew from a devastated former front lawn dampened her boots as she scanned the last and newest empty lot on her street, created only a week ago.  While she liked to get to the demolition sites before the crews were completely done, she hadn't been able to get out because of a sudden string of appointments.  It seemed like the word-of-mouth was finally gaining momentum.

A sudden sparkle in  the mud caught her eye.  It was a fragment of mirror.  Jenny freed it with her right hand and planted her boots firmly against the rocky clods.  Angling it over her left shoulder, she rotated the piece from side to side, up and down, peering beyond the reflection.

Pageant Question 25: If you were given ten dollars, what would you do with it?

Perspective, thought Gabe, picking through a recycling bin.  It's all about perspective.  He pulled out one last returnable liter bottle and dropped it in his bag, being careful to lower the lid of the recycling bin quietly.  He didn't want the cops to chase him away again because next time, they might not be so friendly.  Perspective again.  Gabe thought about how he used to hear sirens and bask in the security of his warm home and silently thank the security forces that kept him safe from all the junkies and drunks outside.  Perspective.

Back in the day, Gabe never even returned his own bottles.  Hoisting the nearly-full garbage bag over his shoulder, he cursed his past self for wastefulness and cursed himself again for wallowing in what he couldn't change.  Change was what his life was about now, wasn't it?  Change from what it was and what had been pocket change that now meant food or the special treat of a cup of coffee.  He used to have a pot of imported coffee every morning, ground and brewed just for him.  Gabe balanced himself on his bike, one bag of cans and bottles perched sideways across the handlebars and the other he held with his left hand, balanced on the narrow, improvised platform on the back, and began the treacherous ride to the bottle return.  When both bags were full, he could guarantee at least ten bucks as long as there weren't too many of those liter bottles.  Ten bucks.  I'm rich, he thought, and, surprising himself, he meant it.  Perspective.

Pageant Question 22: If you won the lottery for ten million dollars, what would you do with it?

Niagara Falls, New York is a natural wonder surrounded by a slum.  The city used to be a jewel brilliant enough to match the dramatic setting, but no longer.  After the closing of many companies and selfish mismanaging by mobsters, people moved out.  Homes and buildings and general infrastructure aged without repair.  Out of town businessmen own properties, but hold them empty and crumbling, possibly for tax deductions, but also because they're asking ridiculous amounts of money for them.  The City of Niagara Falls has been left to rot.  Most people remaining, either living in the city or running it, are struggling.  City managers recently called for a meeting, asking for ways to bring Niagara Falls back from the brink of poverty and despair.  I firmly believe the answer lies in two areas: helping those who are living in the city to stabilize their homes, and getting faster turnover of empty properties into new owners' hands.

Tops and bottoms: the two most important parts of any building.  Neglect the roof, and you ruin the structure.  Neglect the foundation, and you ruin the structure.  These are also the two most expensive parts of a house to repair.  In a city like Niagara Falls, most of the housing is well past the point where they have needed new roofs, repaired gutters, stabilized foundations and improved drainage.  Most of the homeowners cannot afford such repairs and, therefore, let the homes deteriorate past repair.  My proposal would start a "Tops and Bottoms" homeowner grant to make these repairs before more properties are destroyed.  Another path to property destruction is when a property is in the hands of the city itself.

The City of Niagara Falls allows properties under its ownership to crumble.  Their negligence has allowed thieves to vandalize properties and to steal basic house systems, making the homes unaffordable.  Their negligence has allowed roof and foundation problems to slide for years making demolition the only option for many properties.  I believe that unfocused solutions and lack of foresight on the part of the city government has exacerbated Niagara Falls' problems.

360

Entering online sweepstakes makes me feel as if I'm working towards my future.  As if I am planning for a better life, though I know in reality that the odds of winning are worse than my chances of being struck by lightning, and far less than the frighteningly high odds of being killed by a hippopotamus.

I entered the "big money" sweeps, usually ten thousand dollars and up.  I spend the money in my head, being practically and reserving nearly half for taxes.  One hundred thousand is my favorite fantasy.  Debts paid--such a small portion of the whole, really!  House purchased--once there is no more rent, I would be saving more than five thousand dollars a year; that's taking into account taxes and new insurance and upkeep!  Gifts given--thoughtful, long-lasting gifts, and not frivolous trinkets, either.  I would give a new, used SUV to my parents, with regular maintenance.  It wouldn't be a brand new vehicle, but newer than theirs now.  I would give my brother a duplex--a real fixer-upper.  He could handle the repairs, and he could rent out the other half to pay for taxes.  Finally: savings.  No fancy cars or clothes or jewels or cable TV.  I want to live free.  A garden.  Solar panels.  Freedom.

How many people could say one hundred thousand dollars would change their lives, and those of their families, so completely?  So I enter another sweepstakes, and become one of the hopeful.

343

We watched from inside the house, my sisters and I, as people came and picked through the piles of garbage we had put out earlier that day.  It was expected that some would show up to go through what we had sorted and left on the porch as "good", but what we hadn't expected was that grownups would dig into the bags and boxes at the curb, stuffed with trash.  One man, cigarette dangling from his mouth and coughing into the frigid night air, loaded the garbage onto a tarp and dragged it across the street to his small house.  My younger sisters were horrified and wanted to yell at them to go away.  "Don't they know we put the good stuff on the porch?  Why isn't anyone looking up here?"  Annabelle was probably mad that all her hard work wasn't being appreciated, though she had done the least of the three of us.

331

Estate Sale - All Must Go!  No reasonable offer refused!  Some antiques, tools, jewelery and collectables.  Lots of nice items, furniture, housewares, clothing, nic-nacks, '98 Oldsmobile - super clean, 56K miles.  Books, books, books!  Kitchen, office equipment, toys, games, yard equipment.  Attic, basement and garage all full!  Too much to list.
Sat & Sun 9 am - ???
NO EARLY BIRDS


The ad wasn't completely professional, which was either good or bad.  Professional estate sale organizers tended to overprice, especially when "antiques, tools, jewelery and collectables" were singled out; however, private estate sales could be way overpriced if the person running the sale knew the original cost of the items.  I was leaning toward it being a good thing because the brand names of the items weren't listed.  Some sellers even listed original prices, and then the whole sale was useless to me.  Intriguing was, of course, the books and games, but also the fact there was an attic, basement and garage--those are the real deals.  People who put together estate sales tend to think the treasures are already on display, but I find them buried and dusty.  Even buyers shy away from dirt and mold, but not me.  I can't afford what they know is great; I have to find what they don't know.

329

My mother always told me that a trailer park is only depressing if you let it be, and she did a very good job keeping our trailer fresh and inviting and well-decorated, inside and out.  We didn't have a lot of money, but Mom was a savvy thrift store, yard sale and estate sale shopper.  I already knew if we couldn't afford it, we didn't buy it, but my mom added, "If you can afford it, but it's junk, don't buy it."  Our trailer never had wood cut-outs or plastic gnomes or spinners or LED light-up ceramic cats.  We had an English garden.

When Mom passed, everything was depressing, especially the trailer park.

322

Most people think that when you lose everything, it goes in a blink, but "everything" encompasses so much, it takes a while to finally get to nothing.  You keep redefining "everything" and "nothing" as you lose what you have.  Taking the bus is better for the environment.  Well, my job wasn't everything.  The house was starting to get to be too much anyway and apartments are low maintenance.  We're saving money by not having a pet.  And by not being able to bury him properly.  Hey, this generic food from Save-a-Lot is just like the food we used to buy at Trader Joe's!  Hey, these food pantries get the same food we used to get!  Hey, this shelter serves some good meals.  I could stand to lose a few pounds anyway, so skipping a meal or two won't kill me.  I don't need more clothes than I can wear at one time.  At least we have each other.