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.
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