JUANITA LOUISE “ANITA” ROBINSON 1967-2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
I try not to judge people too harshly; I've learned the hard way that the very act of judging seems to unleash an entire host of unseen problems, and that whatever devices you employ in its practice will sooner or later be turned against you. I often reflect upon the fact that when I was fresh out of the Army and working in a service station in San Bernardino, I was approached by a homeless man asking for money who said he hadn’t eaten for two days. He looked it. I pulled a gob of greenbacks out of my pocket and waved it in his face, declaring: "Yeah, I got money! But I'm not giving any to you! I work for a living, why don't you get a f-----g job?" Little did I know that by the time I was 40, I would be him. Condemned out of my own mouth.
Having discovered how the easily the sword of judgment cuts the man who wields it, I nevertheless sit down to write this letter. It is addressed to you.
The people of Santa Barbara, especially those who try to sell this city as some kind of bastion of informed and compassionate liberalism, need to pull their heads out of their lattes and take a look at what is going on in their own back yard. With Barack Obama’s ascent to the Oval Office now a page in the history books, one would think that the Democratic ideal would be in full bloom here in our fair city, that the trees and the buildings and the streets themselves would be growing fuzzy and warm and City Hall would take on a coating of sugar. Instead, we have two more "homeless deaths" on the secondary pages of the local paper while gallons of ink are used to inform us that: After a multi-year investigation the City of Santa Barbara and about 70 other agencies staged a raid in which 800 chickens were seized, and that our there is now a self-serve "pet spa" available at Arroyo Burro Beach. Practically the only human suffering reported on locally is that associated with the tragic Tea Fire.
Where is the concern over the asphyxiation of two human beings in a bus just a stone’s throw from State Street? Let’s face it, if the bodies of two wealthy homeowners had been found asphyxiated in a bus beside the railroad tracks in Santa Barbara at 7:00 a.m., it would be headline news everywhere the English language is spoken by 11 a.m. The imbalance, I suppose, is due to the fact that the two unfortunates that actually did die in the bus didn't have any money to speak of, owned no home in Santa Barbara or Montecito and were, therefore, easily filed away under the label "homeless,” which is barely distinguishable from invisible.
The funny thing is, the gentleman that succumbed to carbon-monoxide poisoning and died Monday night never described himself as homeless and the lady who died with him shouldn't have been, not if Santa Barbara stood by the image it projects instead of hiding behind it.
His name was Michael Allen Payne but I, and most of his friends, knew him as Easy. Easy was 55 years old. Though the authorities described him as "homeless” he actually had a home, a home with every modern convenience you can name short of a tennis court, and he had lived in it quite comfortably for years. The fact that his home had wheels and an engine should have made little difference; it was his home. It shielded him from the rain and it gave him a sense of security, a sense of place--something we all long for, I think. His yard, wherever it ended up being, was always clean and his neighbors uncomplaining.
Most nights found him watching movies: He had an astounding number of DVD's and VHS tapes. It was difficult to name a movie he didn't have and if he didn't have it he would check it out from the library or have a friend download it from the Internet. He simply loved movies and if you did too, you were invited to watch along with him, as long as you didn't wear out your welcome. He valued his privacy.
Less than a day before his passing, he and I sat and watched several episodes of Farscape together, the first season I believe, which a friend had burned for him. He was parked on Montecito Street; he would move to the tracks later, around midnight. As we watched the show he kept up a steady recounting of his past glories and his early years here in Santa Barbara. He had, as nearly as I can recollect, migrated out from Oklahoma and landed, initially, in San Jose. (Please, anyone who knew Easy well, if you can correct me on any point-of-fact, feel free.) His path then described an unhurried line up the coast and down, ending here in Santa Barbara where, in his own illimitable fashion, he decided to lay down roots.
He described, in detail, many things that I had previously only heard about in passing: Santa Barbara in its heyday, when it was still a beach town and not just a collection of buildings which happened to be located on the coast by default.
He pointed across the street at the Spearmint Rhino. He asked me if I knew what it used to be, years ago. I admitted ignorance and he filled me in: Sambo's. It was a Sambo's restaurant back when it was OK to be a Sambo's restaurant, back when even the residue of an American education imbued people with enough knowledge, both literary and geographical, not to be put off by the name. He could have gone on and on about the injustice surrounding that sad chapter in the history of family dining, but stopped short and mentioned instead that Sambo's was where he met his wife, the mother of his daughter. He drew my attention to a photograph taped to the ceiling: "My wife,” he said. "Very pretty,” I replied.
I had to work the graveyard shift at the Salvation Army that night so I couldn't stay longer. I think I left about 8:00 or 8:30 p.m. Easy had mentioned that he'd been half-expecting his friend Anita to show up but he was alone when I left. He followed me out, chattering the whole way. He was standing in front of his bus in his shirt-sleeves the last time I saw him.
JUANITA LOUISE “ANITA” ROBINSON 1967-2009
I've only recently discovered the full name of my second friend: Juanita Louise Robinson. Everybody called her Anita. Anyway, Anita used to live next to the train station in one of the tunnels that went under the freeway. You may have seen her there, if you've lived in town for any length of time. She was so thin, just a wisp of a girl. It was no wonder that Easy fired up his generator in an ill-fated attempt to warm her bones that cold Tuesday night; there was barely enough of her to retain heat.
Her hard-scramble existence under the freeway was the result of many things, but grew mostly out of her inability to get a handle on life. Some of us are born with the tools it takes to navigate those years that stretch between the cradle and the grave, and some of us are not. But she was, at bottom, something that many of us fail to become: She was a good person.
When I was a homeless bum, many was the day that Anita would offer me something to eat out of her own meager fare. She had very little in the way of personal belongings or money or food, and yet she knew that I had even less, so she gave. Think of that the next time you wonder if or how much you should donate to the poor or the homeless or anyone.
Living on the streets can be rough on anybody but it tends to be brutal on a woman. Women who are less able to produce the physical strength and bravado that survival on the street sometimes requires often find themselves relying upon a male partner for support and protection, and Anita was no different.
Her protector though, aside from a couple of on-again, off-again boyfriends, was a four-legged behemoth appropriately named Cyclone. Cyclone was the archetypal pit bull: ugly, thickly built and ill-tempered, he was Anita's constant and loyal companion all the time I knew her, and woe to the unfriendly shadow foolish enough to darken her path. I barely escaped his jaws on one or two occasions myself, simply because I arrived in their vicinity unexpected and unannounced. I can only imagine the demonic reception that would have greeted my arrival if I had been someone bent on doing Anita harm.
When Cyclone developed a painful, infected cyst Anita moved heaven and earth to see to his care and to cover the cost of a veterinarian for his surgery. Anita, who existed on the barest minimum, somehow produced several hundred dollars out of thin air because, well, because she loved Cyclone.
Anita loved lots of things: Pretty clothes when she could get them, her friends, sunshine, the park. In fact, I don't recall her mentioning anything or anyone she hated. I'm not sure she had the capacity to hate.
The City of Santa Barbara cleared out the tunnels a couple of months ago and sealed them with iron bars in February. They may as well have sealed her inside and hung a wreath on the bars. Anita wandered from place to place after that, from couch to couch, friend to friend, and the end result of this wandering was her last night there in the bus with Easy. Yes, she finally made it over after I left and I'm glad she did, in a way. At least she didn't die alone or cold--or unwanted. Truth be told, I think Easy was in love with her. I hope he doesn't mind me saying that but if it's true then the Universe managed to retain a measure of its equilibrium that night. In my eyes anyway.
I don't care what your religious beliefs are or if you have none at all, it seems to be the prevailing opinion among most people that apathy is a negative condition and that we are, in fact, "our brother’s keeper." Outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins even goes so far as to theorize that altruism is part of our evolutionary/genetic heritage. If that is so, then I'm afraid that Santa Barbara, despite its vaunted neo-liberal underpinnings, has fallen short of it's evolutionary goal. It also fails to achieve even the rudiments of what most people regard as the Judeo-Christian ideal; it was Jesus who stated, "As you have done unto the least of these, so ye have done unto me.” My own beliefs fall somewhere between Dawkins and Christ; I simply believe that we, the human race, are the organs of perception that the Universe has evolved over billions of years in order that it may experience itself, understand itself, maybe even enjoy itself.
In any case, I feel that it is our responsibility as individuals to exhibit, for the glory of our god or our universe or our fellow humans, at least a faint appreciation and concern for those who may have less than us, or those who may seem unworthy of our notice, or who live in homes that have wheels.
In the end, the death of my two friends may be something that seems distant to you, something existing outside of your daily concerns. However, if you believe that we can only determine another human being’s real worth by spending long, painful hours within the fearful silence of our own hearts, and even then know only half the story, I invite you to observe a moment of silence with me as I say goodbye to two departed spirits, Easy and Anita.