Who Will Help the Hungry and Homeless?

A few years ago we were driving down a Canadian highway towards a point of interest when we saw two young men, probably in their late teens or early twenties, struggling to push a shopping cart down the thick gravel shoulder. They had a cardboard sign that read, "Calgary" attached to the cart. Although they were hitch hiking, they weren't wasting time sitting by the road. When returning to our motel a few hours later, we noticed that they had advanced by a couple of miles, and wondered how they had made it that far.

The next day, miles on down the road, we stopped to spend the night at a motel, and saw the same boys using a pay phone outside the motel. By the time we got checked in, they had finished their phone business and moved on.

My husband mentioned the boys to the lady running the motel and she said, in a rather disgusted tone, "Oh, they're just homeless guys. I wouldn't bother with them."

It seems to me that many people look on homeless people in the same way they would look at derelict drunks or drug addicts. They all need help, but people are not always homeless because of some failure on their part.

After checking in at the motel, we drove a mile or two on down the highway to a grocery store and my husband went in to purchase a few items. As he came back to the car, we saw those two young men coming, still struggling to push the cart through the gravel. They looked so weary and discouraged that we felt compelled to try to help them.

My husband was afraid to approach them in an isolated area, since there was no way of knowing what their situation might be. So he pulled the car across the road so he would be on the same side as the boys. He parked in front of a restaurant which was next door to a motel and waited for them to get there.

When they did, he walked over and started talking to them. They said they had left their homes in far Western Canada to work for a circus, and had traveled with the circus hundreds of miles away from home. After a while, one of them had been fired by an unreasonable boss and the other had quit in support of his friend. Now they were trying to hitchhike home. They just couldn't bring themselves to call their families and ask for help.

While the cart, which contained all their belongings, was a hindrance both to walking and to catching a ride, they said they had had no trouble catching a ride in the back of pickup trucks till the last few days. They had been on the phone calling a friend who was a truck driver in hopes he might be hauling a load their way and would give them a ride. But they had been unable to reach him.

To make a long story a little shorter, my husband took them into the motel and paid for a room for the night, and went next door to the restaurant and paid for a couple of meals for them. He will not give money to people in such situations, for fear it might be used for drugs or alcohol.

One of the boys seemed very grateful, and the other a little embarrassed. My husband asked if they needed more groceries to take along with them, as they said they had some in their cart. They said no thank you, that they had plenty.

My husband asked about buying them a bus ticket home and one of them said, "Oh no, that would cost a fortune. We live all the way over in BC." We certainly did not get the idea that they were trying to take advantage of us.

Were the young men telling us the truth? We'll never know. But we feel we need to try to help unfortunate people when we can. If they weren't being honest with us, that's their problem. We know what little we did for them didn't make a huge difference in their lives, but it did give them a chance to take a shower, get a good night's rest, and have a couple of hot meals, which might have given them a little strength to face another day or two on the road.

This morning I saw on TV two young single mothers talking about the problems they were having feeding their family. One said her children sometimes had to go to bed hungry and it broke her heart. But she was afraid that if she asked for help, her children would be taken away from her, because she was unable to support them as well as she wanted and needed to. I wondered if she wouldn't qualify for food stamps, at least. Was there no one in her life to help or at least advise her where she could get some assistance?

The other said she would feed her children however she had to, even if it meant stealing or "dumpster diving." She said she had been caught dumpster diving before and had been run off. Seems to me whoever ran her off could have at least asked her if she needed help.

While we might wonder how things like this could happen, the sad truth is that it happens all around us, even when we are unaware of it. One of my close relatives told me a few years ago that when she was growing up, she hated to see the end of school, because when school was in session, she always knew she would have something to eat, and that wasn't always the case otherwise.

Her father was one of those who just wouldn't stay with a job. At the time, she said, her mother was drawing a very small disability check, and her dad was supposedly working at a job a couple of hours' drive away, and staying in the area where he worked. She said he never sent any money home, but would come in on the day he knew her mother's small check would arrive, take the check, and leave them with no food money. They lived for weeks at a time on nothing but "water biscuits and homemade syrup."

Why did her mother not tell the rest of the family that she and the kids were hungry? And why didn't she leave her unsupportive spouse? I don't know. Although our whole family was struggling at the time, some of us would have found a way to feed those kids had we known they were hungry.

Her mother eventually worked up the courage to leave her husband, and due to her poor health, got help from the Department of Human Services. But her kids were almost grown by then.

How many times do we see people "dumpster diving" or perhaps have a neighbor child who tries to hang around till meal time, and think of them as merely a nuisance? Maybe we should think, instead, that they're hungry.

How many times do we say most homeless people are in that situation because of their own neglect or failure? I'm sorry to say I've thought that myself at times.

I know many people are in the situation they're in because of poor judgment, bad management, or just plain laziness. But because some fit in that category, it seems unfair to assume all homeless or hungry people do.

Some of the younger generation may not be aware that many of the homeless are, or at least used to be, people who had been confined to mental hospitals. Then a law was passed that forbade keeping most of them there against their wills. Turned out to fend for themselves, they just couldn't make it. Even if they were given assistance checks, many of them lacked the mental capacity to take care of the money. There are still many mentally ill people living on the streets because they have fallen through the cracks. There are many more homeless people who could get back on their feet with just a little of the right kind of help.

Now, of course, many homeless people are victims of the financial crisis in our country. I recently read in the AARP magazine about elderly people, some of whom are still working at jobs, who are sleeping in their cars because they can't afford to pay rent, or have lost their homes.

We who are fortunate enough to have a roof over our heads and food on the table should say about such people, "There but for the grace of God, go I."

I think most people are turned off by people standing on a corner holding a sign that says,"Will work for food." There is one particular corner in Little Rock, AR, near some hospitals, which we have never passed without seeing one or more people there holding their signs. I never feel the urge to help them, as I have been told that such situations are almost always scams, and beggars in such situations often bring in more money in a day than working people. In many such cases, though, my husband will buy fast food and return to hand it out the car window to them.

Others find ways to get money out of people when they are responsible for their own situation. Years ago when we stopped at a rest area along interstate 40, there was a crude, hand-made sign propped up in front of the mirror in the women's rest room that said, "Stranded. Broke. Out of gas. Any help appreciated. In Plymouth Duster parked in front." Outside I saw a young couple in the car, both smoking, with a carton of cigarettes on the dash. They had planned ahead insofar as their cigarette habit was concerned, but not for gas to get home. I wondered if that was the way they got all their money--taking advantage of people who are "dumb" enough to try to help.

Another time we passed a stalled car and seeing the occupants were women, we exited at the next opportunity and went back to offer help. At the on ramp to the lane returning to the car, we saw a strange sight. A plump man who might have been in his 30's, wearing dress pants, a white shirt, and a tie, was sitting cross-legged on the shoulder of the road surrounded by no less than a dozen plastic bags, such as those used by Wal-Mart. Across the access road from him was a car that appeared to be stalled. We returned to check on the women and they said they had called a family member who should be there soon. So we continued on to the point where we had turned around. We could see the man still sitting there in the hot sun.

My husband exited again and pulled up the access road close enough to the man so he could roll the window down and talk to him. The man's face was red from the heat and he was perspiring quite heavily. My husband asked if the parked car nearby was his. He said no, that he was hitchhiking from Tennessee to Iowa where there was heavy flooding. He had some sort of training, I'm thinking as a couselor, and was hoping to find work there. He had hitch hiked to Fort Smith, AR and had spent his last money on a motel room there. My husband asked if he needed food or something cold to drink, which he offered to bring back to him. The man wanted money. My husband told him he couldn't give him money, but would be glad to buy him some food. He said, in essence, his face getting even redder from anger, "No, if you can't give me money, just don't bother!"

As we drove away, we wondered why the man didn't use the money he had spent on motel rooms to buy a bus ticket. He could have slept on the bus. We also wondered why he would be out in the heat in a long-sleeved shirt, dress pants, and a tie, when he could have dressed more comfortably to travel. There was shade nearby where he could have gotten out of the sun to cool off. And why would he attempt to travel with his belongings in numerous Wal-Mart bags? None of it made any sense. We later wondered if we should have called the highway patrol to check on the man in case he had mental problems and needed help we couldn't give.

Situations like that tend to sour me on trying to help people. But I know it's wrong for me to judge all people by what some do.

I truly believe most people I know would help anyone who was hungry or homeless if they could. But we have to be aware of their situation in order to help them. Never having lived in a large town, I have never had to deal with large numbers of homeless people. I have to think one may become jaded to such a sight after seeing so many homeless for such a long time, and not knowing how to help them.

But we should all be aware of those around us who need help and help where we can. We should support efforts to legislate help for the homeless. It breaks my heart to see homeless people on the streets when the government has bailed out banks whose executives are paid obscene amounts of money.

There is little I can do about that. But I can share what I have with those I encounter who would benefit from a hot meal or a few groceries. Through the years we have learned that you can't outgive God. Anything you do for others will come back to you many times over. Not that that's a reason to help others, but it is a fact.

As my dad, who grew up fatherless and hungry, used to say, "I think the Good Lord put us here to help one another." He did that all his life. What a wonderful world it would be if we all lived by that standard.