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Sept. 29, 2004 I get closest too success in doing good when I stay out of the way and do no harm. I’ve found a wonderful place to stay out of the way. There, I don’t worry about doing harm because most of the possible harm has already been done. Between 9:00 and 11:00 weekday mornings, the Washington Street Mission serves a free cup of coffee and a donut or sweet roll that was yesterday’s “day-olds.” In a fitting kind of way, the Washington Street Mission isn’t where its name suggests. The mission is actually on Fourth Street, nowhere near Washington Street Yet folks who are lost; losers in the sophisticated minds of some, have no trouble finding the Washington Street Mission. In the back of a sometime-sanctuary, I pull up a chair and make myself at home at a table where three other men are waiting on a refill of their mugs. The youngest, maybe to impress me, stands up, wheels a bicycle to the table, and begins to tell us how he is going to modify his means of transportation. He says he will cut the handlebars so he can raise them higher and adjust them so it will have the look of a chopper. He goes on about cutting this and bending that, hoping that we capture his vision of his grand intentions. I’m confused by it all because I am trying to make sense of his planned alterations. I ask myself, “Where will he get the tools to cut and weld and bend to reshape the steel of this badly abused bicycle?” Doubts about his qualifications to do such remodeling creeps in on the silence of the other two men. I begin to get the picture that they know something about this artisan I don’t know. One of the apathetic souls finally interrupts the grandiose eloquence and says, “I hear you gotta ticket for ridin’ on the sidewalk.” The silence that followed allowed the man’s dream to fade and a new project rushed in. “Yeah, I got a ticket, but it wasn’t the first one I ever had. The city wants me to pay them ten dollars for riding on the sidewalk.” “Where you gonna get ten bucks?” “What do you mean? I ain’t paying no ten dollar fine. In a week or so they will find me and put me in jail – where I get three meals and a place to sleep.” “Three hots and a cot, huh?” “They say they want ten dollars and I tell them I want a place to stay. I win every time.” The young bicyclist, smiling from ear to ear, walked his bike out of the mission and on to the street to begin the day’s version of the game he plays with “them.” With the young man gone, the attention of the other two turn toward me. “Do you work here?” one asked. Why would he think I work here?. Looking down at my cup, I notice my hands – they are clean and his are not so clean. I guess that is how he came to his conclusion. “Nah, I just hang around here sometimes,” I said. On my way back to my ranch home in a subdivision with green, well-trimmed lawns, I think about the young man on his bicycle. How long will it be until he gets a night off the streets at the city’s expense? Did he ever run into anyone on the sidewalk? Then my thoughts drifted to me. When was the last time I spoke eloquent nonsense? Have I paid the price for dreaming too big and expecting too little? Have I accepted being what no one else aspires to be? Maybe the nut with a bicycle and I, a Christian loafer sipping coffee at the Washington Street Mission, have more in common with one another than my neighbor and I. He drives a beamer and never sees the guy riding his bicycle on the sidewalk. The only thing my neighbor and I have in common is that both of us stay out of the “wannabe Lance Armstrong’s” way. But have we done him no harm? ------------ About the author: John Stahlman writes from Springfield, IL. Prairie Prison, a work in progress, offers a "fly-on-the-wall" perspective of life in a medium security prison. Email: nonfictionwriter@sbcglobal.net Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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