Gregory Freeman: From A Small Farm In Oklahoma To The Streets Of St. Louis. 10/5/1997

Headline: FROM A SMALL FARM IN OKLAHOMA TO THE STREETS OF ST. LOUIS
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., Oct. 5, 1997
Section: NEWS ANALYSIS, Page: 4B, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

I DON'T KNOW what drew me to her.
She was like so many of the people you see on the streets, pushing a shopping cart with all of her belongings in it. The kind of people you rarely stop and talk to. Maybe I was attracted because she looked like the pictures I'd seen of my great-grandmother, who died nearly 40 years ago.
There was something about this woman with the stooped shoulders, thinning white hair and a face like mahogany that made me want to talk to her.

I asked her name. It's Bessie, she said, although she wouldn't give me her last name. She was 67, she told me, though she looked much older.
   I offered to buy her a cup of coffee. I'm not so sure that she trusted me, but she liked the coffee suggestion and took me up on my offer.
   We walked a few steps to the restaurant as she pushed the cart. All sorts of things were in it: soda and beer cans, papers, plastic trash bags, a few clothing items.
   She parked the cart outside the restaurant, right by the window where she could see it, as if she was afraid that someone would steal it. I got the coffee, brought it over to the table and sat down.
   Bessie embraced the cup with her withered hands, took it to her mouth and savored it like it was a fine wine.
   "Ahh, that's good, " she said.

Slowly, Bessie began to tell her story.
   She was born in a small town in Oklahoma, the oldest of eight children. Her family worked for people who had a farm.
   It was a big farm, she said, and she recalled it fondly. As a child, she loved the outdoors. "The air was good and fresh, not like this city air, " she said. "It made you feel good just to breathe it in."
   When she was 9, she lost her 3-year-old brother to pneumonia. "That was the first time I'd ever known anybody to die, and it scared me, " she said. "My brother just took sick one day, and he was sick for a while, and then he died. I cried like nobody's business. He was a good little boy, never did cause nobody no trouble. But I guess God decided he wanted him."

In 1948, she met William. "He was the tallest, best-looking man that you ever did see, " Bessie said. "He was older than me - I think he was about 27 when we met. He was from St. Louis, but he was in Oklahoma to visit some of his relatives."
She pulled out a withered black-and-white picture of a wiry, unsmiling man, dressed in his finest. A dark man with wavy hair.
William and Bessie fell in love. They wrote letters to each other constantly.

Finally, in 1950, the two married, and he brought her to St. Louis.
   "I had never been to no place like this before, " she said. "Everything was so big, there were so many people."
   At first she had trouble adjusting. "This was a lot different from home, " she said. "I kind of wanted to go back home."
   But William told her that this was home now. He was a janitor, and she took on "day work, " cleaning homes for people.
   "I liked doing what I did, 'cause I had done it for years, " she said. "I was the oldest, so I had to work with my mama to keep the house clean. I didn't have no problem doing day work.
   "Some of the people I worked for were real bug-a-bears, " she said. "Some acted like I was their slave or something. But other folks were real nice. They'd give you stuff sometimes, stuff like clothes or even silverware."

Bessie looked out the window for a moment, keeping a cautious eye on her cart. Then she resumed her story.
   William and Bessie had their first child in 1952. "Her name was Carolyn, and she was a beautiful baby, " Bessie said. "She came out a little fat thing. We loved her so much."
   One morning, when Carolyn was 5 months old, Bessie went to her crib to check on her and found that she wasn't breathing. "We don't know what happened, and the doctor wasn't sure, either. All I knew was my baby was gone."
   Two years later, the couple had a second child, William Jr. He thrived, and became Bessie's joy. "He was a good-looking boy, like his father, " she said. "He grew up to be tall, and he was pretty good in school."
   In 1969, William Sr. had a heart attack and died. "He'd had heart trouble, but we didn't think it was that serious, " she said. "I miss him now, after all these years."

With a teen-age son to raise, Bessie had to move forward. She continued working hard and continued to put all of her efforts into her son.
   When William Jr. graduated from high school, he decided to move to California. His mother didn't want him to leave. "He had never been there before, and I thought that place was too wild for him to be going to, and he didn't have a job or anything, " she said. "But he just thought that place was special and he moved to LA."
   He found several part-time jobs there and was doing fairly well, she said. Then one day she got a call. He had been killed in a car accident.
   "That broke my heart, " she said. "I didn't feel like I had anything to live for."

She stopped working and eventually lost the little home that she and her husband had worked for. She lived with a friend for a while, but eventually left when that friend became ill.
For some years, she took on odd jobs here and there. Finally, getting older and being down on her luck, she became a street person.

And a very proud street person. I suggested several shelters and homeless programs that I thought could help her, but she would have nothing to do with them.
"I can take care of myself, " she insisted. "I've lived all these years without somebody helping me, and I'm not about to go to some homeless place now."

She'd finished her cup of coffee, and we'd finished our conversation, so we headed out the door.
  I offered her some money, but she refused. "Don't want it, don't need it, " she said.
  We stepped outside. She grabbed her shopping cart.
  I handed her a business card and urged her to call me if she needed help.
  She smiled, took it, and pushed her cart on down the street.
  I doubt that I'll hear from her again.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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