Waterbug Quarters

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I realize I'm not painting a very attractive self portrait.  In fact, I don't even like myself.  How could anyone else want my company?  The nearest thing that I have to a friend is Harold.

We met that day when I returned to find my van/home towed away.  He helped me out by showing me the ropes to surviving on the streets.  He actually had a job--an honest-to-goodness job as a parking attendant and security man at an old, downtown parking garage.  It didn't pay much, but hey, it offered him a bit of security himself.

As an ex-middleweight with mangled features, Harold made a good security person.  No one messed with Harold, especially after he had a few swigs of Ripple. 

Between the entrance to the decrepit parking garage, and the exit, was a tiny "room" that was meant to be a ticket booth for parking.  Harold was allowed by his boss to use this tiny space for his living quarters as part of his pay.  The tiny six by eight foot "room" was completely filled with his belongings (trash), so after lockup for the night, he would take a double thickness of cardboard and use that as his mattress on the cement floor of the parking garage.

"It's cool in the summer and warm in the winter," he would say, "and I can have a drink whenever I want it (which was quite often I noticed)."

Harold took a fancy to me, so he let me take up residence in a small area in the darkest, lowest level of the garage where no one ever parked.  He showed me a boarded up window at ground level that I could climb through to get down to my place if I should happen to return after lockup.  It was comforting to be able to count on having a place to call my own.  When I saw the water bugs crawling around on my piece of cardboard, I went kind of nutty.

I started having flashbacks about that time when I was a kid and a cockroach crawled into my ear while I was sleeping on the floor.  It was horrible.  It made all kinds of noises and movements right next to my eardrum and I couldn't get it out.  I screamed so much that my mom finally took me to a doctor to have it removed.

I knew that if I was going to continue to call this place "home" that I was going to have to take drastic measures.

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Photo:  Derelict bridge over the Kaw River
used by the homeless from the West Bottoms
railroad yards