Unemployed and working hard. Well that is quite a sentence isn’t it? That gets the gears rolling. How it is that one can be unemployed and working hard? In this essay I have read a lot of new interesting facts about homeless that myself I would have never assumed to be true. I read of a boy the author Simon Wykoff whose own father was homeless for many years and mainly whom the essay is written about, Wykoff often stayed on the streets with his father.
Wykoff speaks of his fathers struggles but also of all of his father hard work. He tells how his father wakes every morning and immediately checks all of his belongings, he has often woken to all of the clothes in his back pack to be completely gone, stolen, as he had been asleep in the night. He then goes on to check his money stash and counts all of it, if any is available, if he has money or enough he will go to the cheapest coffee shop and buy himself breakfast. Although if he has no money he will have to find the nearest bakery and dive in the dumpster to look for the four day old thrown away bread. As long as it were not moldy he would be able to eat it.
Then off to his next task the most recent newspaper. He would sit inside a coffee shop sometimes for hours, until he could lay his hands on the days paper. He didn’t see the point in buying one when he knew that with patience he would get one. Also know how very precious what money he had was he couldn’t buy one. He would comb through in search of a job. He would find one and tear that part of the paper out and place it in a safe place, for later recall.
Afterwards he would travel, he traveled by bicycle he was very fortunate to have this. Did I also mention he did not use facilities at all he believed that he was safer on the street than in a homeless shelter. His belongings were safer the conditions were all around safer without staying there. He usually travelled many miles a day and sometimes this was very hard without