Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Dallas, Texas; 2009


A Freeman House Christmas

Current mood:blissful
2:30 p.m., and I'm packed and ready to move out of "Homeward Bound," the residential detox and treatment center. My buddy Ronnie looks around and finds that I've already beat a retreat, and headed for higher ground.

3:00 p.m., and I'm checking into the "Free-Man" house in Northern Dallas, Texas; it's a beautiful trio of homes for the addicted, a safe place to start anew. Pool tables, big, wide flatscreen televisions, and leather sofas everywhere I look. At around six o' clock we all load into large 3/4 ton passenger vans and head off to the King Of Glory church for a short rendition of the Biblical Christmas Story. When the service is over we load back up and head back to the main house for an epic meal-a feast worthy of many, many greenbacks.

9:00 a.m., Christmas morning-I'm hustled out of bed by Anthony, one of my roomates; and we head back to the church to prepare an outstanding assortment of foods and desserts to take around and give out to the local homeless, also included is a gift bag of assorted hygiene essentials.

As we pull into the back of an old scrapyard full of sailboats and old, retired SUVs we find that our target audience is nowhere around, it seems the boys in blue, rather than serving or protecting them have run them off instead, so now we can't feed them here. Sure, the weather is nice today, but fuck that, no one has been served by the police eviction-not even the owner of the scrap yard. I can't fathom how a heart could be so cold. . . . ..

75 North Central Expressway, and some random intersection. . . . there is a large bridge that houses a transvestite and his/her beautiful Labrador pup, we score a victory by giving what we have, and our time-we all feel better for this. As the morning progresses we make stops at the back of liquor stores, and abandoned lots serving both hot and cold nutritious meals to the homeless. Is there any doubt that each and every one of them has spent time in our nation's long list of "Graybar" hotels found nationwide?

"No, no question at all," answers Ronnie.

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to you all-before you enjoy yours, help someone in need