Stories from the Streets and Buses of Seattle
First noticed Fone Guy at a bus stop sitting inside the shelter on a wet, wintry day speaking passionately into his old-style flip fone while I waited for the bus. His voice was as crisp and clear as a lawyer arguing in court and as fiery as a street activist bellowing into a bullhorn. Most of the time, however, he could’ve been one of those YouTubers pontificating like Joe Rogan on the state of everything from wars to boxing matches. We were up in the north end of the City of Seattle where the neighborhoods of Greenwood, Bitter Lake, Carkeek Park/Broadview, and Crown Hill come together in one of Seattle’s somewhat chaotic, funky, octopus intersections. There I stamped around waiting for the southbound # 5 to head south down thru Greenwood and up along Phinney Ridge. Fone Guy was dressed like a laborer but without any particular jobsite uniform. His heavy coats hung open around his burly, middle-aged frame. Dawned on me he was probably homeless and the bus stop shelter was his office. In those moments, however, he was King of the Shelter and Emperor of the Flip-Fone.
The man spoke on his fone with a mastery of current affairs and history all mixed up with football talk. His eyes lit up as he shifted tones over the fone and enunciated with the confidence of a college professor atop his game before shifting into armchair quarterbacking and sofa coaching. Felt strange, it did, and then again have met a number of homeless folks who were well educated but down and out for a variety of reasons.
Maybe it was the loss of jobs, careers, and wealth. Maybe he lost the companionship of lovers and the respect of his children. Maybe it was the consequence of various neuropsychological traumas including addiction illnesses. Drugs and alcohol, cancer and car wrecks. Maybe it was the result of the death of a love affair. Or too much doom and gloom in the world with ten hard losses too many, ten more than enough to crush one into the foggy mist and dusty ashes of one’s once wonderful life. Shit, maybe it was too much Trump. Or Seattle Seahawks drama.
Usually it’s a combination of things. Then again it’s easy to slip into the fog of speculation and eventually confuse truth with facts and interpretations. And then again twas I the one who was lost in circles of maybe-maybes. When the bus pulled up and I stepped aboard and sat down, the man on the fone stayed behind in the bus shelter fiercely engaged with barely a pause. One arm would circle around in deliriously serious pantomime. Was anyone listening? And if so, who? Gosh, maybe there wasn’t anyone on the other end? And the wheels on the bus rolled forward down the hill and up along the ridge.
Fone Guy would sit there at the bus stop day after day holding court with the world via the captive audience on the other end of his fone. He rarely looked up. The man seemed to speak more than he listened as he weighed in with his opinions on this and that. All politics, history, and football. Donald Trump’s bullshit and all the maddening, passive aggressive drama among the Seahawks between Coach Pete Carroll and QB Russell Wilson.
As soon as one conversation ended, he would dial up another person to begin another round of monologues clashing with dialogues. His voice, while at times energized with the passion of his beliefs, maintained a semblance of respectfulness, friendliness, and courtesy towards the others. Now, did he maintain these attitudes in all of his fone calls? No idea. Probably not. He seemed almost professional in an odd out of sorts way. Sometimes he would pause to swig from a canned beverage. First I thought twas beer. Maybe sometimes it was beer. But I never saw him drunk or slurring his speech. Once or twice I peered more closely than usual and each time the can was labeled as an energy drink. He would also pause to drag on a cigarette, often a hand rolled and licked one, and while preaching into the fone with one hand, the other arm was outstretched as he waved the cigarette around in the air as if painting a giant masterpiece. His shaggy graying hair and beard made him look almost Renaissancey. Sure did remind me of some of those New Yorky-California style attorneys lawyering away on some big time TV show.
A coupla gristly wet months dragged buy and didn’t see him anymore. Then a few times I recognized him sitting in different bus stops along the same route as I gazed out the window of the # 5 on my way to work. In a strange way I realized, yeah, I kinda missed him. Wished I’d at least said hello, but, dammit, man, he was always yakking on the fone. Reminded me of my Mama back in the 1970s and 80s when she would stand over the stove cooking while gabbing with the fone cocked between ear, chin, and shoulder while dragging a long, crazy-curly telefone cord behind her stretching and twisting all the way back across the kitchen.
Then one day in early April I saw him standing outside one of those PCC organic grocery stores, the one on Aurora/99 near Green Lake, selling “Real Change” newspapers to help support himself. The day was a chilly and silvery spring day in Seattle. The rain poured down. The wind gusted. Fone Guy seemed despondent and not very much into hawking newspapers in the rain. I almost bought one from him but didn’t.
Why???
I don’t know, not really. Ugh! Hate feeling guilty, especially when I didn’t do anything.
His lack of sales savvy and enthusiasm put me off. I’ve hit rock bottom during the course of my own life, and I know I wasn’t an always fiercely jolly “A!B!C! Always Be Closing!” salesman. Plus I had the lame excuse of carrying bags full of groceries thru the rain. I was too tired blah blah blah wah wah LOL wah aye I was such a big baby compared to what he had to endure. Felt conflicted and angry and sad about the state of our economic and social systems with the lack of democracy when one walks into work or the state of housing, policing, mental health support, dental, substance abuse, addiction, and so forth. Exhausted. Fone Guy seemed as if he’d lost all of his superpowers by not being on the fone. He could’ve been a news anchor, a geopolitical analyst, a football coach, a lawyer, an ironworker, a broker…and, wow, maybe he was one of those at one time. Now he stood in the rain like a ghost, and the truth is, not being his former self unnerved me.
One eyed man with black eyepatch also rode the #5 like a silent cyclops at peace with losing all of his goats and sheep. First time I saw him he stepped up onto the bus in the manner of a tired old sword-and-shield warrior in his sixties and still fighting or an old time whaler from the age of tall-masted sailing ships. He plodded down aisle of the bus and sat down next to me without a word. We both nodded briefly at each other and stared straight ahead. His eyes didn’t seem to blink, for I was pretty darn good with my peripheral vision. Had to be to kayak class 4 and 5 whitewater as I used to paddle all the time BC, Before Children. And to watch my little kiddies out the corner of my eyes when busy focused on something else.
Eye Patch Man wore a thick, knit cap pulled down with the ends rolled up once. A thick, whitish-grey beard rounded out his jaw and chin, and he wore a thick, green coat over many layers of sweaters and shirts. A stub of a cigarette, pinched out before he got on the bus, jutted from his lips as if he was General Douglas MacAthur with a corncob pipe. I felt dwarfed by this hulk of a man who smelled of tobacco smoke. Eventually he got up and stepped off the bus, and I continued on my way.
Once in a while I would see him on the bus or outside at a bus stop. Always the same, a giant of a fellow dressed in wool, rubber, and waxed canvas for a freezing cold day on some old whaling ship. His backpack and flannel shirts and boots gave away his 21st Century presence. I wondered what stories he had. What led him to be homeless?
Never saw him together with Fone Guy. As if they discreetly avoided the other. Doesn’t mean they never got together and shared good times over a bottle around a campfire. What I saw were only snapshots of long lives across time and space. So, who knows? Adversity shared makes for many a great if temporary friendship. Who knows?
One week day up on Phinney Ridge after I got a hair cut over at Rudy’s, I walked over to the other side of Greenwood Avenue to stand near the Phinney Ridge Neighborhood Center, a bulky complex of renovated old buildings. The Center had been a vibrant hub of community and activity with meetings and workshops multiple times a day everyday between two huge buildings and a scattering of smaller ones. Now the Center was shuttered in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Death was everywhere. Even Eye Patch Man wore a mask on the bus…I think. Never saw Fone Guy with a mask. Gosh, everyone had to on the bus.
Anyway, there at the bus stop next to the Center and partway between Rudy’s Barbershop and Red Mill Burgers there was Eye Patch Man smoking a cigarette. By then we had seen each other multiple times on the bus, and so we nodded at one another. Felt surprised to realized he stood shorter than me. Just the way he carried himself like an aging cyclops at peace but still having a hard time. It was one of those cold, gray days where late winter merges into early spring.
“How ya doin’?” I asked. “Doing alright?”
“Yep. It’s cold out here,” he replied with a British accent. “The worse part is looking for a place to sleep when it’s so wet and cold.”
“Damn, sounds rough,” I said and nodded as if smoking a cigarette myself, except had quit many years ago. “Was homeless once myself. Was kinda lucky, tho. Always had a tent or a car to sleep in.”
“Don’t have nothing,” he said, calmly and without any trace of emotion, just being matter-of-fact. “Hardest part is finding a place out of the weather. To sleep.”
“Hmn,” I grunted. “Where are you from, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“England,” he said. “The UK.”
“Oh yeah? Where in England?”
The wind picked up and a gust lashed the branches in the trees behind us.
He mumbled something I thought was Liverpool, which I knew used to be a major port city in western England on the Irish Sea. But truthfully, his mumble could have been Bristol or Birmingham or God knows where else, but it sure wasn’t London or York.
“You?” he asked.
“Virginia. Grew up on a farm in Virginia. Been out here about 30 years now, tho.”
“What brought you out here?” he spoke between puffs on his cigarette as another gust of wind rattled the branches. Little buds were beginning to form on those bare branches.
“Love.”
He snorted.
“Yeah, love,” I said with a laugh. “Chased a girl out here from Virginia. We were in love. Also fell in love with snow covered mountains in the summertime out here. And all the giant trees. And all the water. I love the water.”
“What brought you out here?” I asked him.
“Long story. Got off a boat. Never got back on,” Eye Patch said. “Something like that.”
Then the #5 bus rolled up, stopped with a squeal and a bounce, and I pulled my mask back up and got on. Eye Patch Man did not. He turned and headed on back up the street, turning his head to look in the spaces between buildings.
And that was the last time I’ve seen him, the one-eyed man with the black eyepatch. Wondered if he really was from Liverpool. What kind of songs would the Beatles have written about “all” of us “lonely people” here in the 2020s? And where do the Homeless belong? Where do we all belong, really?
William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 19 April 2022
Friday 13 October 2023
Seattle/Shoreline, Washington
United States of America
Planet Earth
The Sol System
The Milky Way
Galactic clusters galore
Multiverses and different timelines
Do we live in a holographic simulation?
What kind of sick joke allows for such suffering?
Copyright © 2023 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.