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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 12, 2014)
Street roots 13 Sept. 12, 2014 What I iearned from Ben BY LAURA MOULTON C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T y friend Ben likes chess and bad puns, and he cooks a mean pot roast on Sundays. He is a seasoned Dumpster diver, and his scores include a taxidermied armadillo (whom he calls Armando), and an ancient Spanish-English dictionary. He has a funny, wry wit and keeps a neat apartm ent The apartment is important to this story, because when I first met Ben, he was sleeping outside on the ground each night. It was the first summer of Street Books, the street library I founded in June 2011. Twice a week I set up my bicycle library, pulled out the drawer of books and hung the sign: “Street Books is a bicycle-powered mobile library serving people who live outside.” My shifts were at Skidmore Fountain on Wednesdays, and the Park Blocks, near the art museum, on Saturdays. After a few weeks, patrons began to show up regularly. I checked put the Twilight ‘ series to a girl named Stephanie, and Louis LAmour to a tiny wizened man named Erie. Richard had met the author Anne Rice in New Orleans, dressed in Victorian Goth. He said she’d climbed into a ¿ a ss coffin, which was driven around the streets (apparently research for the new book she was working on at the time). He checked out an armload of her books. My summer felt rich with these stories, with the conversations about books I was having. Soon I looked forward to seeing my regular patrons, and connecting them with books they’d requested. Ben showed up each )yeek at Skidmore Fountain, ready for conversation, and serious about reading. I saw early on that he was very well read. He was not afraid to tease me good-naturedly. You haven’t read P.G. Wodehouse? He’d shake his head as if to say, What kind of street librarian are you? Ben gamely helped spread the word about the street library. One day he appeared with a man named Mike, whom he’d met down by the waterfront. Mike wanted to read the book Ben had, but Ben wanted to make sure he checked it back into me before Mike checked it out. That’s when I knew he M Haikookoos by William Adams was a serious, card-carrying patron. other? Meet you at the comer.”) The last time I checked out books to One winter day as we sat in the café, Ben happened in late autumn, on a he called about an apartment in sunny day with a chill to the air. He Southeast Portland. After he hung up, I showed up to Skidmore Fountain in his said, “If you get any static from them, professorial glasses and a thin jacket I and you want me to call and have a remember that he seemed particularly conversation in a more dulcimer tone, glum. just say the word.” “Despair is actually the most deadly “I think you mean dulcet, sweetheart,” sin,” he said. “Worse than all the others, he said. greed, avance, all of that.” He gestured I couldn’t know then how much vaguely to the books on the c art “I knowing Ben would change the way I think I read that in one of these honks.” thought about people out on the streets. I asked him if he’d looked into the My initial impulse to start a street possibility of a warmer coat for winter, library had come from the idea that and he said he knew of two different books and conversation about books, coat drives in the past week, where he could be enriching and enlightening, and could have gone and gotten something could transform time, especially for free. But he just hadn’t done it. people living outside. But now I had “Why are you being so hard on seen through a window into one yourself?” I asked him. person’s experience, as he fought with a He shrugged. “I gotta go. All this debilitating depression and for a period introspection is getting me down.” of time, struggled to find a place to He’d taken two titles: “No Country sleep cn the ground each night. When I For Old Men” by Cormac McCarthy, and see someone pushing a shopping cart “Down and Out in Paris and London” by downtown, or sleeping alongside the George Orwell The former, a story along waterfront, I understand they are in this the U.S./Mexico border about a drug same state of vulnerability. ! sée that the deal gone wrong, and the latter, a line for some is very thin between memoir of a descent into poverty. sleeping outside on the ground and '^Tm not sure those particular books being able to tuck clean sheets on a bed, will cure ypu,” I called after him. and sleep somewhere safe. Ben waved without looking back. Ben now maintains an apartment that Two years later, in the fall of 2013,1 is tidier than my own place, with a filing looked up from my shift at the corner of system for his papers and towels folded Fourth and Burnside, and there was neatly on the rack in the bathroom. Art Ben. He was grinning. He said he was hangs on the walls, and he packs a lunch still sleeping outside, but that the each day for his new job as a depression that had dogged him during maintenance person at a cemetery. the summer we’d first met had finally And I finally read a book by P.G. lifted. We walked to the Mediterranean Wodehouse. Café after my shift and ordered cups of “Prove it,” Ben said. Coffee. I didn’t know then that we’d “Okay, well Bingo is always falling in begin meeting there weekly, Ben love and Bertram wears a bright sash - arriving in a hat that resembled a dun- and purple socks that Jeeves can’t stand.” còlored sock, pushing a cast-off baby stroller full of aluminum cans, and “You coulda got that much from the CliffNotes,” he said. usually bearing sòme kind of Danish or creampuff in a brown paper bag. I didn’t know that later that fall, he would invite Come meet Ben Hodgson and hear him me for a gourmet fish dinner, cooked at speak at the annual Street Books his campsite in the southwest hills, and Benefit, Wednesday, September 17th, that by February he’d have an apartment. I couldn’t know then what an from 6-7:30 p.m., at the Ecotrust rooftop terrace, 712 N W 9th Avenue. Ticket essential part of the Street Books information here: www. project he would become, organizing our brownpapertickets.com/event/781411. No library books, making recommendations one will be turned away due to lack o f and offering bad jokes at our board meetings. (“What did one wall say to the funds. TlaeTait Home DINE O U T , DIGjN. MAKE A ' , DINING Learn, understand not Brain snapped shut like a clam si Enter T.V. Land That chair is broken . Your radio is also It plays stuff that sucks Those guys that sing “help!” To the Raid Company, “help!” Those guys really bite Water is running, Damn, I am really getting soaked Umbrella needed I got the munchies! Fritos makin’ me thirsty Pepsi, where art thou? That crazy old man Plants an egg in the soil To grow an eggplant Just bought a new car? Wanna be a bad driver? Answer that cell phone So what came first then? The chicken or the eggplant? You crazy old man Turn the key to start Kamikaze driving skills! Smart phone, dumb users Coffee is icy It sure is hot out there Sunburn this coffee. Hey you guys, miss me? Get those umbrellas ready Im’a cornin’ soon. IJ DIGHITY DIFFERENCE. JUST 2 WEEKS LEFT ! PARTICIPATING RESTAURANTS: Sunday Monday Yuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Gram & Grade Com piny i zza w : Special Benefit \ Dinner: Art Í Institute of f Portland Call us for more information (503)223-2144 1337 S.W. W ashington, Portland, OR 972051 www.tafthome.org (a fte r 23 L i nco l n i17 1 Room 24 : Las Primas 25 i (take a break) 19 18 U J- : ITdidU ; 12 " Tl 3 ..... W here senior and disabled adults receive th e care and respect th e y deserve. : f o j Harlow * 26 " i qmm M ic h e s Marketplace 28 Daily Cafe 30 i Biwa SISTERS OFTHE ROAD
