Angels
House
© 2007 by Tony Hearn
Chapter Five
"Man does not live by bread alone!" Yeah!
But the belly tends to groan louder than man's other essential part. I, myself,
do not like the pain of an empty stomach. I have never been too keen on
fasting. I like breakfast most. And, of course, lunch is nice, and dinner can
be nicer. "Food is fine," I've always thought.
"So I finally found you," I offered mine
to shake the hand of Cynthia Perez. She was by then holding a wet hand towel
and was wiping the counter top. She reached under the counter for a dry one and
wiped her hand. Before we shook hands, she bellowed a few words in Spanish
toward the back of the restaurant for another person to come handle the cash
register by the front door.
"You've found me!" Cynthia said, as she
grabbed my hand. "Like you've been looking for me for how long?"
"All my life!" I said. Cynthia laughed.
"Would you believe for at least two weeks? I've just moved here from San
Antonio, and I was told to find you. I was told you would be able to help
me."
"Yeah! That's what I do best! Like I help
everybody. But I'm supposed to be running a restaurant! What can I do for
you?"
"My friend, (gee, I still can't remember his
name), says you will help me start up a soup kitchen."
Cynthia's smile faded. "A soup kitchen?"
she repeated my words, and I believe I recall she gave them the inflection of a
question.
"Yes!"
Cynthia
reached again for the wet towel. She again wiped the countertop.
"How about another taco? That I can help you
with! A soup kitchen, I don't know!"
And so my friendship with Cynthia began and with her
sister, Libby Perez, the other owner of Las Manitas. Eventually, I met her family
back in San Antonio's West Side: mother, father, and many, it seemed, brothers
and sisters, nine younger Perezes in all. And, of course, a brother-in-law, the
famous, or should I say infamous former
mayor of San Antonio, Henry Cisneros and his wife, the lovely and patient Mary
Alice Perez Cisneros.
Cynthia and Libby Perez became a crying towel for me
in Austin. The two sisters. Every morning I sat at the counter in Las Manitas
to order and to eat one potato and egg taco, juiced liberally with picante.
That was my elixir, to gain strength for the day, to continue the search for a
location for Angels House.
I had moved out of my friend's apartment at the
Bluffs of Barton, just south of Austin's famous Barton's Springs. To force some
sort of climax I had vowed to my friend, Martha, I would sleep on a park bench
until I found a place for the soup kitchen. I had become a connoisseur of city
parks in central and south central Austin. Let me tell my readers a little
known reality. "The sprinklers come on at precisely two-thirty every
morning." What a bummer! I got very wet a number of times before I put two
and two together. When I realized "the system," I awoke and moved
from my chosen park bench just in time to avoid another drenching. "A
bum's life has its own schedule!"
My tennis shoes – that source of blessed energy –
had gotten wet, too! When I suffered, all of me suffered. We were motivated to
get off the benches and into a more suitable space. And our prayers and our
entreaties were met with what seemed to me, at least, indifference by God. He
had, apparently, set his face against me.
But, lo, when I was almost at the breaking point, I
stumbled upon what I named "Angels House." Actually, the shoes led me
to a cemetery, a quiet place without sprinklers timed to the middle of the
early morning. I began to camp out there, among the sacred dead of Texas. It
was while I rested at the Texas State Cemetery that I got my first glimpse of
the original "Angels House," on the corner of Navasota and East 7th
Streets in East Austin. A "For Rent" sign had appeared in the front
yard of a little house with a white picket fence. I left the place of the dead
and inquired of a man I saw working in the backyard of the house. It was on a
corner lot.
"How much?" I inquired. "I'm looking
for a place just like this!" I told the man.
He told me he wanted $300 a month. "Save it for
me!" I said bravely though I had only $100 left to my name. "Let me
go get the money. I'll be back!" The Hispanic landlord removed the sign.
Talk about crying out to the Lord! I bombarded
heaven with my prayer. "Lord! Lord! Lord! I cry unto thee! Three hundred
dollars, Lord! Gimme! Pleassssssse!"
Well, it seems, the Lord does hear a poor man's
prayer! I left the little house with the white picket fence and headed west on
East 7th Street. I was heading over to Las Manitas. Without a coin in my
pocket, I was asking God also to let me make a phone call to my friend, Martha.
I looked down at the pavement as I crossed the street. There I spotted a quarter.
Obviously, dropped, of course, by another angel. With my tennis shoes, my right
"angel" to be specific, I pushed the coin out of the oncoming
traffic. "Thank you, Lord!" I said audibly. Things were beginning to
break for me, for us. I, and my shoes, literally skipped toward Interstate 35.
And then I saw a sign, "Help Wanted." That's exactly what I needed, a
job, a place to earn rent money. I entered the establishment, the Tex Mart at
the corner of I-35 and East 7th Street, across the interstate from the Austin
Police Department's headquarters. I applied for the job: the graveyard shift
cashier. "Please, Lord, let me get the job! I'll do anything!
Anything!" The boss was not in. I put another friend's name and phone
number as my contact. With the quarter, I phoned Martha.
"I've found 'Angels House'!" I gushed into
the phone. Now I've got to find at least $250 to pay the first month's
rent!" I mentioned I still had $100 tucked in my suitcase. I was, of
course, holding back $50 to finance my breakfast tacos.
"How interesting!" Martha answered.
"I just got a check for $500 this very morning. Half is yours!" she
said. Martha, though often hard-pressed, had several rich friends who gave her
money at variable intervals. She was a single parent with five children. She
prayed much, and the Lord blessed her when she turned to him in want. She met
me at Navasota and East 7th Streets with cash in hand. I paid the rent on
"Angels House." I moved in promptly, sleeping for the first few
nights on the floor, the blessed floor. I had a pot to pee in, at last! And no
sprinklers in the middle on the night! "Thank you, Lord!"
A week later, I received word from my other friend
that a man who said he owned the Texaco Tex Mart up the street across from the
police station had called. "The job is yours!" she said. I was to be
the overnight cashier! "Praise the Lord!" I cried out in joy, for I
had spent $48 of the fifty I possessed. I began that night, working from eleven
o'clock till eight the following morning. I slept on the floor during the day!
I awoke in the afternoon and fixed "rock soup" on a two-burner hot
plate I had installed in the kitchen of "Angels House."
"Rock soup," by the way, has as its two
basic ingredients rocks and boiling water. It's nourishing! Other ingredients,
gleaned from dumpsters and from elsewhere, garnish the rocks.
In the following days, I moved my few belongings
from the rental unit. A single bed, a small chest of drawers, two large boxes
that served as couches for the sitting area in the front of the one-bedroom
house. I had, besides the kitchen and the bathroom and the bedroom, two other
rooms. One was designated as the conference room and the other was designated
as the chapel. "Angels House" was functioning. I invited guests to
visit. I set up a weekday for a discernment time, to plan for the soup kitchen
for I had decided I still needed a better space, more adaptable for handling
people for an evening meal before, of course, I went to work at the Tex Mart.
This was all occurring in the late summer of 1982.
My friends and I met on Tuesday mornings. I was trying to follow a procedure:
discernment, with qualified people. I had a lawyer, a nutrition teacher from
the University of Texas, a minister, and others. We met and we prayed and we
tossed around ideas. And I became impatient. "We've got to start the soup
kitchen," I told the group. I didn't tell them I was under the gun or I
would end up in a breadline.
"It's important that we find a location for the
soup kitchen!" I implored those who discerned with me. I was trying to
shift the burden. I had found "Angels House." Now we needed to find a
space to feed the multitudes.
The name of a downtown church came up! An
Episcopalian was part of the group. "The rector of Saint David's Church
tells me we can use the gymnasium of the church to run our soup kitchen,"
the person told us. "Good!" we all agreed. "Saint David's it
will be. And what shall we call the soup kitchen?" another person asked.
The name "Angels House" designated the little house with the white
picket fence. "How about "The Open Door?" someone volunteered.
"Good!" we all agreed. And so "The Open Door" came into
being. "When shall we start?" another person asked. "Soon!"
I volunteered. "How about next week! How about October 4th?" I asked.
I had grown weary of the process of discernment. "Are we ready?" came
the response. "I, for one, say, 'Yes'! We've got to begin!"
And so it was decided that "The Open Door"
would serve the first meal in the evening of the day designated in the church
calendar as Saint Francis of Assisi Day, Oct. 4, 1982, in the gym of Saint
David's Episcopal Church at East 7th Street and Trinity Streets downtown.
"The Open Door" was ecumenical. The group had a Methodist, a Presbyterian,
a Lutheran, an Episcopalian, and, of course, me, a Roman Catholic.