Marie Chose Homelessness

It's that time of year when we don't need the extra quilt and blanket, we're sleeping with the windows open and waking to the sound of birds chirping. So I was ready to not only change the sheets on the bed, but to swap out the spread and shams, dust under and behind the beds and put the off-season stuff into Space Bags and get them up to the attic so we can be refreshed and ready for Summer. In my little town, off the beaten path and out of the way of the trendy traffic, I can park right in front of the Post Office, buy my birdseed at Agway while also visiting the Farmer's Market where one can set up a table for free, buy a sipper at a fancy coffee shop or incredible pastry and icecream at a bakery. This little town has nothing to attract the general public and yet serves anyone who takes the Main Street Extension to just explore and get those hard-to-find items. At the ACE Hardware that's been here forever, I was finally able to duplicate the keys for my son't 80 year old front door lock that couldn't be found at any Walmart, Lowes or Home Depot Key machines. One may just spend some reading time in the library who will happily courier the book you want from any of the dozen other county facilities and let you know they're holding it for you at the desk. They give you online access to electronic resources nation-wide so I was able to follow the entire Outlander Series, including all the little side novellas and "back story" audiobooks without spending a fortune. I hadn't discovered this series until 2018 when NPR announced the results of their poll of the best 100 books of the last Century and Outlander was the top-listed. How did I not know about it? So I went online to my library's electronic resources and downloaded the audiobook. When I buy with my audible.com credits, the books cost me $14.95 and I subscribe monthly. I usually look for books that run about 18 hours or longer so when I see that Outlander books run into the 40 and 45 hour length - quite the money's worth for your credit - I'm stunned. Not only does it take 45 hours of listening to hear the more than 40 chapters, it takes listening all day every day for the two weeks the library loans the audiobook in order to finish the book by the time it is due to be returned. But Diana Gabaldon wrote and published 8 of the books in the series which first appeared to the reading public in 1991. Intermittently thereafter, July 1, 1992, December 1, 1993, December 30, 1996, November 6, 2001, September 27, 2005, September 22, 2009, June 10, 2014, November 23, 2021, another sequel followed and fans waited patiently for the four or five years for the next installment to appear. In 2014 it seemed the series was complete - except that Gabaldon revealed that #9 in the series was in the works along with #10. Now it took nearly 5 years for BEES to be delivered and by then, having already audited the entire series I am waiting with everyone else to see how the cliffhanger of William riding to the Ridge to cry for help from Jamie and Claire turns out, and enduring "Droughtlander" by re-listening to all the books. It puts me in a new place, a place where I can more appreciate what the Pioneers, Patriots and Pilgrims contributed to the founding of these United States. Americana in full blast shows throughout the series and displays the spiritual struggle of people living with Integrity, insisting on being free from Tyrranical rulers who tax and threaten them. Courage-driven every-day people So I find myself with my about-to-be-stored bedding at the Laundromat where large front-loaders offer quick turn-around for the oversized quilts and bedspread. Recently Arcade type video games showed up at this location, offering kids a place to play under a well-lit, camera-secured roof where the biggest washing machines make those oversized items as simple to launder as towels and socks. So that's where I go, probably once each season, to start my "spring cleaning" stuff in earnest. Last winter, when I was getting the Christmas linens and blankets washed, I noted a woman standing outside near the entrance "preaching" to the otherwise empty parking lot save for the recently plowed piles of snow. At the time, I thought her a little crazy; supposed the police kept an eye on her and hoped she had a warm, secure home to go to at closing time. I found myself there Saturday making the trip a threefer, dropping off my library books, buying birdseed and finch food then getting the quilts and blankets into an oversized machine at said laundromat. There she was, folding her jeans and making a neat little pile on the table while she acknowledged me and smiled. She was looking out the window and noticed that I still had my Trump bumper sticker on my rear windshield, parked next to her vehicle. She pointed out that she, likewise, had several Trump-supporting stickers on her car. She, being a black woman, got a lot of flack as the result. "So why should I not?" she wondered, "I'm a Republican!" Apparently, that's the problem, say those she can no longer call friends. "I now live in a "Commonwealth!" she adds, "but I have no idea what a Commonwealth is." I assured her that Butler County, where she was, is strongly Republican. She reveals that she now lives in her car and had to pack her laundry carefully in order to leave room for "living;" she could no longer endure the negative atmosphere of her $90,000/yr job in Washington D.C. and had to move out of her bedroom community home in Louden County, Virginia. She was no longer using her Ph.D. in Economics and found work with a temporary agency programming the road signs and replacing the batteries in the orange-striped plaquards and barrels with the blinking lights found in Road Construction zones. (Little did she realize she was in the jackpot zone of road construction - Pennsylvania.) It became evident to her that she required a cash-flow job in order to catch up on her car payments which she confessed were four months behind. It was a nice enough car, I didn't pay attention to what kind it was but it certainly didn't seem like one for which her monthly payments should have exceeded the $600 she said she was having difficulty meeting. Christ, for that she could get something she could "live in" like a Cadillac or a previously owned van! As she folded her jeans, she engaged me in conversation explaining how she came to be in this place. I asked her where she parks her car when she sleeps and she explained it was a movie theatre parking lot. She seemed more and more rational and less the crazy I thought her to be a few months earlier when I observed her Preaching to the Wind. An acquaintance had urged her to attend a church service with her, but her instincts told her this wouldn't be for her and she declined. So my suggestion that her church might help her find safer, warmer shelter wouldn't work. This woman was doing what I had done forty years ago: climbing out of the Rabbit Hole that is the insanity of a section of society. Rejection and humiliation escorted by the realization that this just wasn't right drove her to innoculate herself through isolation. Yet she longed for companionship, gentle reassurance, affirmation that she was a woman of principle and cherished.