TOWNSHEND — When you're in high school, you meet people who make an impression on you for the rest of your life. For some people, it's a coach or a teacher.
For me, it was it was someone on the fringes of society.
Stan the Can Man worked the edges of the high school ball field on the prowl for returnable cans and bottles, an insurgent in an undeclared war on poverty and mental illness.
Nobody knew where he lived. He could have been homeless, not that anybody cared. He would show up around the high school at random times carrying a huge trash bag filled with his treasure.
Every time I saw him, he was wearing the same outfit, a mismatched collection of army fatigues.
On warm days, we had gym classes outside, and sometimes Stan would shout at us: “Hey, get in line! Put your uniforms on.”
“Just ignore him,” the gym teacher would tell us.
“I used to be like you,” Stan would shout. “Then I lost my arm in Korea. All my friends died there.”
We looked away or laughed nervously. Somehow, things had gotten too serious. We were, after all, just kids.
* * *
One year, Stan just stopped coming around. I don't know if he died or disappeared into some gulag run by the Commonwealth.
There were lots of other homeless guys in the town where I grew up. People didn't use that term then; they called them “bums” or “winos.” Decades ago, jobs were plentiful and available for the asking. You could rent a room in someone's house for $20 a week.
There were street alcoholics who hung around the bus station, dozing in the hard plastic chairs or checking the vending machine coin returns for forgotten quarters. They wore old black raincoats that made them look like sick, grizzled crows. lf you passed by at night, you'd see one of them outside drinking from a brown paper sack, a lone sentry against the darkness.
I don't know what they sought or found in those bottles; maybe it was just some temporary relief from misery.
There were run-down bars on Main Street, places that had sawdust on the floors and urinals bolted to the back walls. Every morning, a small congregation would wait outside for legal opening time.
In the eighties, the town got gentrified, and the old dives turned into upscale fern bars. Cultures clashed.
I once watched as a homeless guy stumble into one of those places with a handful of change that he had collected panhandling. He counted out enough for one shot with trembling hands. The bartender, in a crisp white shirt, looked on in horror. A flock of college students watched, bug-eyed.
He drank his whiskey, then walked back out into the rain.
* * *
If you went to the big city, it was the same - only on a different scale.
There was a small encampment of homeless guys living on the benches on Boston Common. “They chose to live that way” my employer said, in a thick Hungarian accent.
I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now.
Once I saw a homeless guy in broken shoes and layers of rags step out into a congested intersection in the financial district.
When he reached the center, he was transformed. His posture changed, he stood up straight, and started directing traffic with the precision of a State Trooper.
Drivers obeyed him, and for once, Boston traffic flowed smoothly.