On Saturday morning I moved Corrina, my 18-year-old daughter, 95 miles south to Rochester, Minnesota where she will start college on Monday. No furniture, but her belongings filled my Dakota. She will live with three other girls in a 2 bath, 2 bedroom apartment. This is gonna be interesting! I bet within a month they won't talk to each other. That's just the way girls/women are. I say this from experience.
I worked for a homeless program out of the Minneapolis VA. It had 8 houses that the VA had foreclosed on, in and around South Minneapolis, filled with 2 to 6 houseless male veterans.
We had two unbreakable rules: 1) keep and maintain sobriety (most were former crack addicts) and, 2) keep and maintain that $15.00 a hour housekeeping job the VA Hospital trained and gave you.
We took 25% for rent which was used to pay the utilities. I had a '68 Chevy pick up that I had dragged out of the woods. I had a built 355 Edelbrock motor, with a 400 tranny, 4;10 gears and dual exhaust. All the S. Mpls cops knew me and this nasty lookin', loud-ass pickup, which I used to haul donated furniture and residents to their new house.
More than once the Mpls Hwy Patrol had escorted me down the freeway- tedlights and siren at 110mph- to Hennepin County Hospital with a suicide bleeder in the back. 110 mph was my top end with those 4;10 gears and the cops would tease me- their computer hot Mustangs would easily do 140 mph.
Anyhoo, me and the '68 were well known. From 3-11 pm I drove it to all these houses daily, checking on residents for contraband. If I found drugs, the Mpls Police had a special squad. We had worked out an agreement. They could enter these “safe houses” without a warrant and remove people when called.
Everything was going great until the VA decided we should open some houses for women. I have been
married three times, so I had a little inkling. I thought I knew what women were all about. Was I wrong. The VA shoulda hired a woman instead! At the time Bill Clinton was in office and was gonna balance the budget, which he did using veterans and the military. He cut veterans programs and “RIFFED” (Reduction in Force), this was after the first Gulf War.
A whole shitload of women were “Riffed”. They were lifers for the most part- 10-12-16 years they had been in-and they were pissed. One of these women walked into the VA and fired a 9 mm into the ceiling. She held off a bunch of Fed S.W.A.T. who were gonna kill her. After she was subdued and disarmed, the Fed wanted her locked up. One of the better men I have known in my life- the builder and director of the hospital- said NO! She needs her meds adjusted. They sent her to the VA psychiatric hospital. She was back in 3 months. She said her issue was She Was A Lesbian! When I told her so was I, we got along great.
I had to witness her taking her meds daily. The issue was that this veteran had been gang raped...while in the Army! I would find out 3 things about former military women: 1) They won't listen to a man, 2) they don't like other women, 3) THEY DIDN'T LISTEN TO ME!
After about three months, I had been run ragged by these women. I'd hear complaints like “she leaves hair in the sink”. I would say, “Fuck, throw it out” and then they usually would complain to a social worker (scourge of the earth) at the VA. One of the tricks they'd use to try to get me fired would be to answer the door naked (I had to knock at the women's house) to try to entice me. By this time I had learned to have a ridealong witness.
One day, I got a call from the VA housekeeping where I had previously applied for a job. At first, I was hired to work weekends, so I kept my homeless job. So for a year I worked seven days a week until the housekeeping job became full time. Within another year I would become too disabled to work. By then, my old bud- a Vietnam combat veteran- who was the director of the homeless program, and who had hired me 5 years before, had been set up and fired by members of his non-profit Board. The transitional housing program was now getting the BIG MONEY from the Feds and these BUTTHOLES WANTED IT!!
I remember Dick Gregory saying “There's money in poverty.”
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