Angels
House
© 2007 by Tony Hearn
Chapter Eleven
Some time after I pushed the lost of my own son from
the front of my mind, I recall that a handsome young man arrived to volunteer
at Angels House.
"Hi, I'm Nick!" the attractive, cheerful
person said as he offered his hand. "I've come to help out if I may!"
he said.
"Sure! We can use another worker! You look like
you have a strong back!" I said. "How about lifting that sack of
beans onto the shelf."
Everyone who came in the back door of Angels House
was asked to sign his or her name into a register. This was my record of who
had helped even for only an hour on any particular day. I asked him to sign in.
"Hmmmm!" I said. "I see your last
name is Vanderbilt. Any relation to the Commodore?" I asked, meaning the
fur trader in American history.
"He was my great grandfather," the young
man answered with humility. "I stand convicted!"
I was impressed with the young man's manner. He had
not a trace of any aristocratic air though he had the bearing of a
well-brought-up person. He told me he had recently arrived in Austin after
graduating from Harvard University.
"And what are you doing here?" I asked.
"I'm writing a play!" Nick responded.
"I'm impressed!" I answered, having taught
college for a time though I had never written more than articles for
newspapers. "I've never written anything creative, but I promise you there
are many ideas to inspire a writer here!" I said.
"I'm a friend of a lady who recommended to me
that I come down here. Her name is Susan Overbey," Nick said.
"You have a very lovely friend," I said.
Susan, the gracious wife of John Overbey, a former partner of George H. W. Bush in an oil business
around Midland, had become a generous donor to the soup kitchen.
For a number of weeks, Nicholas was a regular
volunteer. I recall one day while we were serving meals through the window onto
the patio, Nick excused himself from the line. "I need to give that man an
apple he just forgot on the table. I'll be right back!" Before I could
respond, Nick was out the door, scooping up the fruit, and took off after the
man walking toward the Interstate. He caught up with him. He tapped on the
homeless man's shoulder. "You forgot your apple!" Nick spoke as the
man turned to face him.
"I didn't forget! I have no teeth!" the
homeless man told Nick. He turned back toward the Interstate and continued
walking away.
Nick came back inside the soup kitchen, considerably
disheartened. I could tell he was troubled. "He showed me he was
toothless!" Nick told me later. "I see what you mean about material
for a novel, but this is real. I've never seen anyone without teeth!" Nick
said.
One day, Nick told me he would be away for a couple
of weeks. "I've promised a friend I would accompany him out West to climb
a mountain," Nick explained. "He's never been, and I have, so I will
show him the way."
"Well," I said, "Never have I. I am
only trying to climb the Seven Storey Mountain of which Thomas Merton wrote.
Merton was a Trappist monk from Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky.
"Maybe I should climb that one, too!" Nick
said. He left the soup kitchen to start the trip out west. I never saw him
again.
Tragically, Nick and his friend fell into a crevasse
while they were climbing the peak. A search and rescue continued for days. People
magazine wrote a story about Nick's disappearance. His picture appeared on the
cover and I told a writer about Nick's gentle service at Angels House. I
recounted the story of the apple Nick tried to return to the homeless person. I
know quite certainly that Nick climbed the Seven Storey Mountain in his stride.
He climbed right atop the Mountain of the Lord. Of that I have absolutely not a
doubt!
So many stories I could tell of what went on at
Angels House or around it. Some gave me such uplift to my spirit; others caused
me to give off lamentation to the Lord. I grew to hate expressions some persons
uttered with goodwill. "How many persons did you feed today?" some
would say with great enthusiasm in their voices. I had a stock response waiting
for them. "We only feed persons one by one. I have no real idea. We give
up counting after awhile. I wish we had none to feed!" I really wanted to
work myself out of a job. I was growing weary. Not everyone who showed up to
eat for free at Angels House needed to. I would watch certain
"eaters" finish their meal and then watch them cross the street to
the corner drugstore. They would go inside and then reappear in a few moments on
the sidewalk, pause to open a new pack of cigarettes, put one in the mouth,
light it, take a long drag, and then open a can of beer. The store sold single
beers. All but a very, very few had money in their pockets. Some would show me
they had money. I would sigh.
"I'm trying to work myself out of this
job!" I would complain to the Lord.
"You wanted this!" I would hear the reply.
"Yes, Lord, I did! Now help me to find a way to another calling!"
There is, of course, the human services industry.
It's possible to earn a good living providing for the poor, and those who keep
themselves penniless on purpose. There are many who are dysfunctional
deliberately. It is possible to enter into co-dependency with unproductive
persons. I could go on and on about that, too. I tried once to compute the
number of persons I was feeding who did not need the food. Too many, I figured.
Something like 90 percent of those who ate at Angels House didn't need to come,
except to find something to do with their time. The soup kitchen had become a
social activity, for the eaters, and for the servers. I was there by order, I
thought! But I was getting over the notion that it was the Lord's voice that
ordered me to cook and serve soup. I slowly came to the awareness that the
voice had actually told me to help others. I jumped to the conclusion that I
was to run a soup kitchen. I went off half-cocked. I began to think of making a
course correction. It took me many months before I resolved to shut down the
soup kitchen and move the ministry to another approach to serve.
I was helped to the awareness that I was enabling
the dysfunctional to evade embracing the responsibility to make something of
themselves. I was actually helping a very few persons – maybe one in a hundred
had an authentic need to eat a meal. Many people in the so-called "helping
industry" justify what they are doing actually to help themselves. They
lack wisdom, just as I lacked it when I went off half-cocked. "Watch
me!" they say. "I'm doing good! Look, I've put food in the mouths of
many, many people. I'm doing good!" They do not entertain for a moment the
reality that they are really doing something to prolong another person's
dysfunction.
One day outside Angels House, I noticed a small
crowd gathering on the front lawn of the house next door on the corner. There was
a man holding a television camera, a woman with a clipboard in her hand, and
others, conducting an interview. I went outside. I encountered, for the first
time in my life, a real live activist. Her name was Lori Renteria. She called
out to me. She motioned to me to come over to join her in front of the camera.
I complied.
Lori Renteria asked me, pointblank, "Are you
aware your soup kitchen is ruining our neighborhood?" I was taken aback. I
had to reflect upon her question, standing on my feet, cold turkey, in front of
a camera.
"Uh!" I mumbled, "I'm feeding the
poor!" I answered, seeking some justification for what I was doing at
Angels House.
"You may believe that's what you're doing, but
you are actually creating a magnet to draw dysfunctional people into a quiet
neighborhood!" Ms. Renteria said.
(I am paraphrasing what I thought I heard Ms.
Renteria saying to me that afternoon before the TV camera.)
I was keeping up a front that had already collapsed
in my own mind. I was well aware of how the so-called homeless who gathered
around Angels House were literally destroying the blocks surrounding the soup
kitchen.
Let me give a perfect example. Angels House was
about two blocks from a public school, Sanchez Elementary School. One day I
distributed to the so-called homeless out the window of Angels House many boxes
of candy I had received from a major drugstore chain. I was passing on the
candy free of charge to a bunch of dysfunctional person. The drugstore chain
got a tax write-off for their "charity." I permitted them to dump
their unsold Halloween "treats" – their "waste," onto me.
I, in turn, dumped the "waste" onto the "poor." And guess
what happened next.
I had a police scanner in the kitchen of Angels
House. I listened daily to the channel used by the police. I had purchased the
special radio so I could get some idea of what was really going on around
Angels House. I wanted to know who was coming to dinner at the soup kitchen. I
got an "early warning" many times. On the afternoon I had given away
all the candy, I heard a message coming over the scanner. It said, in effect,
"Several homeless men are reported to be giving away candy to pupils
outside Sanchez School!"
I froze in horror. "Damn!" I yelled.
"Those bastards are using MY candy to entice kids! Just wait till I see
those idiots again. They are joining THE LIST of the uninvited." As any
reader must know by now, I tend to speak frankly, even rudely. I'm really not a
nice person. I tend to call a spade a spade and there were many of them hanging
around Angels House. That was just one more nail in Angels House's coffin.
So I knew to what Lori Renteria was alluding as the
interview continued. There were neighbors gathered in front and behind the TV
camera. I watched the segment later that evening on my television. It was the
beginning of publicity attacking the soup kitchen. It continued and continued.
Little did Ms. Renteria realize it at the time, I was one of her most loyal
supporters. I didn't need convincing! I knew the truth of which she spoke.
Again, I knew it in spades.