Commentary
Recounting a life at the corner of hard times and end times
BY JOE MARTIN
C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T
n indigent white family of four resides
in their van, their only home.
A
They have arrived in the teeming
city of San Francisco and are soon
navigating a network of free meals and food
banks.
Safe and legal spots to park their vehicle
are not an easy find.
There is little privacy. Locating clean
places to wash and use a toilet become a
part of their daily excursions. Having once
had a modest but honest-to-goodness house
and what seemed a secure place in the
world, now their collective life has become a
painful descent into confusion and
uncertainty.
Sixteen-year-old Abigail Parker narrates
the story of her family’s frenetic journey
from their small town in North Carolina to
California’s metropolis by the bay. Their
hometown was dying: “All the big stores
were gone, leaving behind a collection of
flea market-style booths that were as
aimless as the people who still shopped
there.”
Her father, Dale, has lost his job at a local
plant. He is a kindly dad and a religious
man. Dale, his wife Kat, Abigail and her twin
brother Aaron are regular parishioners at
the 'F irst M e th o d ist C hurch. As h o u se h o ld
apocalyptic rants of a radio preacher known
as Brother John. With his personal and
financial world unraveling, Dale is ripe for
eschatological visions. The preacher, who
talks of “The End Times,” predicts this
sinful world is soon coming to an end. The
tinancial re se rv e s steadily r u n low er, h o th
her parents borrow what little money the
twins had managed to accumulate. Abigail
had saved about $500 from babysitting jobs.
“That was before we got rid of cable and
internet. Before the yellow late-payment
warnings began showing up at our front
door and we started getting bags of
groceries from our church.”
In the midst of their travails in North
Carolina, Dale becomes obsessed by the
u rg e n t m essag e of finality provides D ale
sp iritual com fort, a re assu ran c e th a t no
matter how dire life has become, everything
is in God’s hands.
He becomes immersed in the belief that
the unpleasantness of the present will be
abruptly transformed, for according to
Brother John a new beginning awaits the
faithful in the near future. The tantalizing
preachment ignites in Dale a single-minded
recklessness. He decides that it is time to
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sell the family home, rid themselves of
unnecessary possessions and join the
preacher’s congregation in San Francisco.
Kat defers to her husband’s decision and
the twins become involuntary sojourners in
a dubious pilgrimage.
“No Parking at the End Times” is Bryan
Blips’ first novel. He earned a Master of
Fine Arts degree from Seattle Pacific
University and now lives with his family in
Minneapolis. In a recent interview, Bliss
expressed his sensitivity regarding the issue
of class: “I grew up poor and can still feel
the injustice of not being able to have the
things kids want — toys, basketball shoes, all
that. That definitely comes out in my fiction.
It’s not that I don’t care about wealthy kids,
or think that having shoes and toys makes
you a happier person, but the struggle of
being a kid/teenager compounded with
economic realities is something I want to
highlight”
Instead of creating chaos for his family
due to alcoholism or drug addiction, Dale’s
irrationality stems from his fall into
unquestioning religious fanaticism. It is a
different form of compulsion but no less
destructive to this family’s cohesion and
affection. Whether Brother John is simply a
smooth con-man or an eloquently deluded
lunatic, Dale is a willing captive to the
preacher’s theology. And his wife Kat goes
along. Abigail comes to suspect that Brother
John is a fraud. She laments that
“everything I’ve ever known is disappearing
and I can’t stop it.” Meanwhile, Aaron’s
anger is simmering. He has taken to leaving
the van at night to hang out with some
homeless kids he has befriended. Aaron’s
resentment of his parents is palpable. He
says to his sister: “I want to get the hell out
of here. As soon as possible.” He invites
Abigail to join him in the effort to get back
to North Carolina. It is a desperate
proposition with tenuous prospects.
The book’s genre is young adult, but it
deals poignantly and convincingly with adult
themes. The disappointment, discomfort
.and humiliation th^ttindiyitjual^^pd. families
experience when homelessness overwhelms
their lives are limned realistically in this
tale. Though fiction, it is as relevant as
today’s headlines that detail the myriad
issues of growing homelessness in Portland
and elsewhere throughout our nation.
Reprinted from Street Roots sister paper,
Real Change News, in Seattle, Wash.
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