In the middle of downtown stands an old church.
It was built in 1912, surrounded then by a scattering of tidy Victorian homes, and an inn still under construction. It must have made an impressive sight then, with its cross-topped steeple, plain and tall, rising high above the orange groves and dusty avenues.
Today it huddles in the shadows of nearby office towers. Homeless men buried under filthy blankets try to catch a moment’s rest on the front doorsteps, while fire engines from the next-door station blast air horns as they pass the old church.
Inside, it’s really nothing like the plush megachurches that have sprouted like weeds in the nearby upscale suburban neighborhoods. Inside here, the pews are hard, the carpeting is worn, and the amenities few. Still, the stained-glass windows—dating back to 1916—are breathtakingly beautiful.
From the back alley, a flight of concrete steps leads down to a basement door. Inside is a kitchen and large dining room, where every Wednesday night, a bunch of volunteers—mostly elderly and teens—make dinner for the 250 or more homeless and low-income folks who crowd the front door at 5:30 each week.
I make my way down these stairs every Wednesday that I can.
This afternoon, when I paused to open the door, there was a stench. I looked down. Someone had defecated beside the basement door.
I didn’t spend a lot of time wondering who or why. For someone living on the streets, there’s not a lot of privacy—someplace to be alone for a few minutes. And this stairwell is certainly out of the way.
But it had to be cleaned up. More volunteers would be arriving soon, and while the teens (I assumed) would pretend not to see it, the sweet old ladies would be disheartened.
I’ll leave out all the details, except to say that I finished the job by scrubbing the concrete down with a bleach solution. And soon the landing at the bottom of the stairs was once again being stacked up with empty boxes and cartons, just as it is most weeks.
During dinner service, as the kitchen staff piled plates with hot food to be served to our guests in the dinning room, someone pointed outside the basement door. There—where not more than an hour earlier I had been cleaning shit off the doorstep—slept a raggedy man, huddled among the flattened cardboard cartons and bags of trash.
The next minute I was standing over him, my silhouette blotting out the late afternoon sun and casting a shadow over him, as he slowly opened his bleary eyes.
(To be continued...)
It was built in 1912, surrounded then by a scattering of tidy Victorian homes, and an inn still under construction. It must have made an impressive sight then, with its cross-topped steeple, plain and tall, rising high above the orange groves and dusty avenues.
Today it huddles in the shadows of nearby office towers. Homeless men buried under filthy blankets try to catch a moment’s rest on the front doorsteps, while fire engines from the next-door station blast air horns as they pass the old church.
Inside, it’s really nothing like the plush megachurches that have sprouted like weeds in the nearby upscale suburban neighborhoods. Inside here, the pews are hard, the carpeting is worn, and the amenities few. Still, the stained-glass windows—dating back to 1916—are breathtakingly beautiful.
From the back alley, a flight of concrete steps leads down to a basement door. Inside is a kitchen and large dining room, where every Wednesday night, a bunch of volunteers—mostly elderly and teens—make dinner for the 250 or more homeless and low-income folks who crowd the front door at 5:30 each week.
I make my way down these stairs every Wednesday that I can.
This afternoon, when I paused to open the door, there was a stench. I looked down. Someone had defecated beside the basement door.
I didn’t spend a lot of time wondering who or why. For someone living on the streets, there’s not a lot of privacy—someplace to be alone for a few minutes. And this stairwell is certainly out of the way.
But it had to be cleaned up. More volunteers would be arriving soon, and while the teens (I assumed) would pretend not to see it, the sweet old ladies would be disheartened.
I’ll leave out all the details, except to say that I finished the job by scrubbing the concrete down with a bleach solution. And soon the landing at the bottom of the stairs was once again being stacked up with empty boxes and cartons, just as it is most weeks.
During dinner service, as the kitchen staff piled plates with hot food to be served to our guests in the dinning room, someone pointed outside the basement door. There—where not more than an hour earlier I had been cleaning shit off the doorstep—slept a raggedy man, huddled among the flattened cardboard cartons and bags of trash.
The next minute I was standing over him, my silhouette blotting out the late afternoon sun and casting a shadow over him, as he slowly opened his bleary eyes.
(To be continued...)
VHL-Stock
This baby is a hybrid of the famed 50’s Gold Top and the highly sough-after rockabilly rod, the Epiphone ES295 with Bigsby tremolo. Just sneak a peak at that naughty Florentine cutaway, and the hand-painted, cream-colored pick guard with gold flowers. Whew! 
