Free Falling
Re: "The Free Way," by Max Linsky (June 8-14)Your story was excellent. I once was homeless and found that since I did not look the part I was able to do just as you did with little to no attention. I was able to get out of the situation I was in and go on to become an advocate for the homeless in PA and NY.
Your story showed that people that are homeless are inventive as well as afraid. Most are ashamed and hide in the shadows, but their ability to survive and make it through each day is a testament to their force and imagination. I know that it was easy for you to get into places and find food and showers but we both know it is because you were not KNOWN or seen before. If you had been out on the streets for any length of time, in time you would have been prevented, stopped, laughed at, put down and even arrested. The homeless have little access to travel, and they become known by businesses and law enforcement and that limits their ability to survive without handouts. The shame most feel is then medicated by drugs or alcohol.
I thank you for your article. It made me remember and showed those who have never had the misfortune to sleep in a vehicle or in a park a safe view into the devastation and shame.
Brenda Kron
Via e-mail
I enjoyed the article on living the free life for one week. Inspired by Jack Kerouac's On the Road, I did the same thing about 12 years ago. With only $200 in my pocket, I left Detroit, and was able to live for almost three months in and around Naples, Fla., without ever having any place to sleep but my car (a VW Scirroco), the occasional lounge chair by the side of some apartment pool, or in a tent I had with me. I still remember the feeling of having to wake up at 7:30 or 8 a.m. because the sun had heated up the inside of my car past the point of tolerance. After a while I eventually got used to the lack of sleep, and welcomed it as a way to pass the day with my mind a bit numb.
I spent most of my time on the beach (Marco Island). Toward the end of my adventure I started becoming a legend of sorts among the regulars that played volleyball. They'd be all… "Hey that's that dude that lives in his car." By the end, enough of the regulars had gotten to know me to offer me a place on their couch if I was interested. For some reason the women were especially generous, and especially moved by my experience.
After taking the "couch" offers for a few weeks, I decided it was time for me to take my life a little more seriously and get an apartment, and a steady job… but those three months are still looked back on as the best of my life.
Bil Cadaret
Via e-mail
Tamarind, Stat!
Re: "One World Under Jeannie," by Max Linsky, June 15-21I greatly enjoyed your article on Jeannie Pierola. The piece reminded me of the only time that I met this whirlwind (although we have sampled her culinary artistry many times). I was in a local supermarket earlier this year on a quest for tamarind paste, a necessary ingredient in a South Beach Diet recipe for which I was the designated chef that evening. The employees in the supermarket were thoroughly stumped. Suddenly, a fast-moving dynamo approached me from the end of the aisle and demanded to know what I was cooking. She expressed her approval, flipped open her cell phone, called one of the chefs at SideBern's and told him to give me two little canisters of the mysterious tamarind paste when I showed up there. Jeannie Pierola then introduced herself to me and dispatched me to SideBerns. Thanks to the crucial missing ingredient, the designated chef was a hero that night, as the executive chef of SideBern's is most nights of the week. Thank you for an entertaining profile.
Richard Lehfeldt
Tampa
This article appears in Jun 22-28, 2005.