Eddie

A group of friends have been discussing the unreasoning and vitriolic animosity which is directed at the homeless, in western societies at least. Any such discussion has to recognise that the great majority of homeless people are not homeless because they wish to be so, but also that a very few really do choose to live in this different way. One of that small minority is Eddie; so I dug up the following, written in the summer of 2002...

Fri 28/06/2002 11:59

Eddie is a tramp. I've never heard that word ("tramp") used in the US in the sense it is used in the UK; perhaps it is, but not in my limited experience. The nearest equivalents I know are "hobo" and "drifter", but the emotional overtones are different; those terms carry a background colour of disapproval and unease, while "tramp" (although sometimes used as "bogeyman" in middle class ghettos) generally has a neutral or even romantic gestalt around it. A tramp is not the same as a "vagrant"; s/he will "tramp" the countryside, from place to place, living on the road, but is perceived (however accurately or inaccurately) to have at some level chosen this as a preferable lifestyle to fixed house and home.

Anyway ... Eddie is a tramp. He spends most of every year on the roads and returns to south-westerly seaside towns (usually, but not always, to the one in which I live) for the winter. He is, so far as one can tell, happy with this life and has indeed willingly embraced (if not originally chosen) it. I've gotten to know him as well as anyone, over the years I've lived here; if I come across him on the Beach Lawns, I stop for a chat - and then have trouble getting away, because his intelligence is starved of conversation. He looks the part of a stereotype tramp: unkempt; a wild furze-bush of hair, beard and moustache; wearing an ex-forces greatcoat; smelling strongly of tobacco and the road and the difficulty of bathing too often. He's one of the most interesting people I know.

Although he was once in Germany, after his National Service (WW2 conscription, which continued into the 1950s) his life since then has been entirely on the roads and byways of England and Wales (he has never crossed the border into Scotland). He reminds me of Thoreau: "Though I thoroughly tried New York, it is here in Concorde County that I have most widely travelled."

This year, for some reason, he is here in the summer; perhaps, having now in his 70s, he feels like taking it easier. He is working some hours in a burger bar kitchen wash up, refusing money or shelter but taking his pay in food. I was talking with him on the sea front when a police panda came by and stopped. The two coppers inside came over, and one of them said "Hullo, Eddie; telling him about your hour of glory, are you?" Eddie looked embarrassed, and tried to change the subject; but the copper wouldn't let it drop, so eventually Eddie told me this story:

"It were the night England beat Denmark. I left t'burger place, about two in't marnin', headin' back ter t'woods fer t'night, an' t'streets were full o' youngsters pissed out their 'eads wi' celebratin' an' such. I never bin threatened so often; every young lad what passed said 'e were goin' ter flatten me; but I never bin so unbothered by it neither, they was all too pissed ter stand up.

"As I came out o' Regent Street, there were three young lassies there, all swaying an' clutching onter streetlamps ter stay upright, all dolled up like, make-up, blonde hair, about one complete dress between 'em. They comes ter t'zebra crossin' place, just as I did, an' two of 'em leans forward, looks at t'traffic, an' runs. They was alright; they got t'other side. T'other one, though, she hesitates; then she leans an' steps out too. There's a car right on top of 'er, goin' fast; brakes, but too late. So without thinkin', I reaches out an' grabs. It were dark; I felt I'd got hold o' some kind of strap, thought probably it were a bra strap, so I just yanked. Luckily it were her handbag, an' she kept firm hold of it, so she flipped back out of t'way. Then there I was, standing there, with this beautiful young girl in me arms, an' I thought, oh christ, I'm in trouble now; she'll think I'm attacking her. But she just looked up at me, smiled like an angel, said 'thanks, Dad', an' went to sleep.

"A bunch o' lads coming up t'same way started shouting at me – pervert, dirty old man, t'usual thing – so I just dragged her into t' club entrance, gave 'er ter t'bouncer, an' legged it like. The police stopped me up Church road; t'lads had called 'em, said I was molesting a young girl. I spent t'night in a cell; in t'morning, t'bouncer told 'em what had happened, so they let me go."

That Eddie went on the road after finishing his military service may be significant. The only other tramp whose background I know chose his way of life after demobilisation from a special forces unit in the 1980s; one of the friends in the discussion with which I opened this post knows a Viet Nam veteran who made similar choices.