♦
♦
street roots
14
D ec. 20. 2013
Lysol
By Jay Thiemeyer
unday in Hotlanta. Blue Sunday. Sunday on Ponce De
Leon Avenue. Ponce, the homeless main drag in Atlanta,
Ga. Ponce and Georgia Avenue and Fulton and Forsyth.
On and on. In the Reagan Revolution '80s, deluged with an
army of hundreds (some said 5,000) of homeless and near-
homeless. The downtown was awash with us.
De-institutionalized. Laid-off workers from outside, from the
Rust Belt, from the oil fields, from the tent city spilling outside
Galveston, Texas. Workers come to Hotlanta, looking for
construction jobs. Hundreds. Camping in the weeds or empty
low-slung buildings. Intent on cadging a job.
Hotlanta was booming. Building commercial towers, some as
high as 80, 90 stories, would lie fallow come the crash in
commercial real estate development at end of the '80s, and the
workers would be left to go back to the Rust Belt. My friend
back to Detroit to sleep again on his sister’s couch. “Better
than nothing,” he said. No doubt still there. Lost in the Motor
City.
Others dispersed to camps on the periphery of Atlanta, still
hoping for work. Others would just disappear on the streets,
finding in the booze a pliant companion. Just to get by during
the hard times. Which surely would pass with the next election.
Nameless and dulled in the feed lines at the handful of sites
where the homeless were somebody. Lined up at midday, four
or five hundred at St. Luke’s on Peachtree, within spitting
distance of Margaret Mitchell’s home, due for repair. Blacks
from the nearby projects. Whites from the SROs and shabbily
regulated hospices, and refugee workers from the distant tent
city. Indelicate mix, prone to volatility and eruption. The
women few, anonymous, avoiding notice as best as possible.
No question there were some on the run. From something.
From no jobs, from the law. Getting lost in the mass. Some
refugees from the '60s, from lost ideals. Getting lost in the
growing mass.
Juiceheads, potheads, hopheads, alkies, hope-to-die junkies
and alkies, down-and-out and headed for slaughter.
Down-and-out on Ponce. Blue Sunday. Hotlanta drowning in
homeless.
The gentleman’s club of the four of us would gather in the
weed patch off Ponce, out of sight, and drink. Pass the Pepsi
jug of Lysol. Lysol, with just a dash of water. Cleanest bowels
in the South.
S
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Package stores closed, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Sundays
in the Blue Southland were rough.
Pursuing the idling dream. Peace and freedom is all in how
you look at it. And it would last till that squalous squad car
would slip soundlessly down the alley. Which was only on odd
Sundays. But we were as easy to snag as the opossums hanging
from the overhead wires.
Our heads full of Lysol cocktail, we could give a good
goddam. At least we had our afternoon “in the fast lane, as
Fred put it. Sitting on a cinder block dreaming of the fast lane.
Better than nothing.
Ripping off cannisters of Lysol from the Piggly Wiggly.Then,
Fred, our Vietnam war vet, trained in the arts of deception and
the keeper of the key, the sacred nail, would pound it into the
can with the sacred brick. Let out the aerosol, pour the
alcoholic contents — Lysol was 40 percent alcohol — into the
sacred vessel, the ancient but trustworthy Pepsi jug, and save
our souls from another Hellish “Blue Law” Sunday. Away down
in Dixie was somewhat cool except on those withdrawing, dead
Sundays.
If we had money we’d go to the bootlegger’s garage. It was
just down the alley from where we sat in the weed patch.
Bootlegger’s garage to one side, Open Door Community to the
other. During the week, Open Door served a meal. But it was a
vegan compote that didn’t digest well with Vodka, Blue Label.
The community, developed by young Presbyterian clerics who
also protested racism, war, the death penalty, thriving then in
Reidsville - then like now - and homelessness. They were the
only people who had beds for the homeless. Them and the
Catholic Worker house.
I had once, in more opulent days, stood in line with a
discipleship of others, waiting on a Sunday morning outside
the bootlegger’s door. It was wide open. The depths of the
garage were clearly visible. On the unmade bed a naked girl,
sprawled, looking like spilled milk, was busily giving the
bootlegger head. Gray people vaguely lit on gray tangled
sheets. The only reaction in the line was that everyone wished
she’d hurry up. The shakes were merciless.
It was after that that I decided on Lysol as the easier,
quicker way to go. I joined several others who felt the same.
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