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$5.00

#62

JUNKYARD
ANGELS

By Dustin LaPres

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JUNKYARD
ANGELS

By Dustin LaPres

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I beseech you to make a conscientious effort to begin
taking notice of those “Invisible Citizens” living
everywhere you go all across your country. They are
not a Blight or an eyesore but rather a wealth of
human value with a heart that bleeds just like yours
and a story that may just inspire you more than
anything you have ever experienced. They are gifted,
talented, beautiful—though often broken.

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We were dreamers living under the bridges and in the train yards of my
hometown. I was the youngest member of a small band of vagabond
romantics who had, for various reasons, shrugged off the traditional
yoke of young adulthood and had chosen to live outdoors as sort of
self-realized urban survivalists and junkyard angel romantics. We held
court during the daylight hours at various locations around our small,
northern Michigan town, drinking and hustling by day and drinking
even harder and singing/playing guitar by night.

We were a closely knit group of friends and dreamers, all bound
together by a common dream: the dream that we could forego the
meaninglessness of adult responsibilities and live our days out as free
rebels.

Many of us were alcoholics.

We were unburdened with societal convention and dedicated to the
art of experiencing the fullness of unfettered existence in the grand
tradition of our homeless literary, musical, and artistic heroes. We were
young, we were in love with life, and we had nothing.

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I can’t speak for the others, but I had experienced a somewhat normal
upper-middle class upbringing. Although adopted and problematic as
a child, one could say that, for the most part, I had every advantage
regarding my childhood home and education; and yet, just beneath
the surface, I had always experienced something very different. I had
always been wild, rebellious, and discontent with what I perceived
as the expectations of regular society—especially my parents. Their
lifestyle was something so alien to me in terms of satisfaction, and I
was ever the disinterested third person observer in that life. That all
changed for me when I left home for the first time and experienced
the boundless freedom of the street life. It was as if I had been set free
from prison for the very first time while yet completely unaware of
the fact that I was ever a prisoner until I finally stepped outside of the
boundaries of that middle-class paradigm of social control and struck
out on my own to live on the street and explore.

I was in love with it from the very first moment, as were the others
whom I inspired to follow me. There was my friend Sean, 23, who
had been a waiter and barely made enough to live in a motel and eat
sparingly. Shortly after I left home and took to the street, he followed

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suit and joined me for an adventurous two-year journey across America.
Then there was my friend Dano who had moved here to escape his
abusive stepfather and had worked various factory and restaurant jobs,
always toiling so hard to barely subsist on cheap junk food and booze,
drinking and singing his only form of entertainment, and a room in a
shoddy hotel that was the final resting place for many of the chronic
alcoholics, addicts, and mentally disturbed—his only refuge.

Dano and I shared countless campsites on and off over the course of
the next 15 years and remain solemn blood brothers to this day. There
were others too. Most of them had met us at some point while we were
drinking and caterwauling under the bridges or in the rail yards and
had fallen in love with us and our devil-may-care lifestyle, but most of
them were part-time hobo’s at best. They came and camped for a time,
and then they went home to their loving families when it got cold
outside or they became sufficiently homesick or the street life had,
for them, lost it’s luster. Dano, Sean, and I, however, we were chronic
homeless cats from those days forward.

In retrospect, I often wonder if those early homeless roadtripper years

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were the greatest days of our lives or if the greatest days are yet to
come. We lived. I mean we truly experienced life on a level that I wish
everyone could share because it was more than just a string of drunken
street adventures. It was a truly spiritual experience whose lessons have
made me a better man and have accompanied me throughout the rest
of my life. Though we had nothing in any material sense, we discovered
a vast fortune in the non-material realm. For a few years, the entire
North American continent was our playground, and we explored it as
daytripping bodhisattvas, living and learning, and writing, and loving
our way collectively across the country and even into Mexico. We
played concerts under bridges—sometimes with audiences of 20-30
people drinking and singing along. We met the local homeless people
in every town we drifted through, and we broke bread with them,
shared our stories, shared our art, our music, our poetry, and most
importantly we shared our hearts—we loved them as our brothers and
sisters, mothers and fathers.

Being joined by similar circumstances in our homelessness cultivated
a familial love and bond like something I have seldom experienced
in “normal” society. We shared the last of what little we had without

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second thought. We protected one another. The older more experienced
taught us survival skills like we were their own children, and in return
we loved them with a fierceness and broken-hearted compassion that
still evokes tears to this day when I think of them or speak of them. I
met men and women whose creative/artistic/musical talent surpasses
that of anything I hear on the radio or television. I shared campfires
and meals with people whose propensity to love and care for their
street brethren outshines that of many of the churches I have entered;
whose kindness, compassion, and generosity shines like a million
candlepower compared to what I experience in my daily life today.

I also experienced another strange phenomenon during those years: I
witnessed my situation bring out the very best in many of the working
and average citizens of communities I visited. There were so many
wonderful people who had homes and jobs who ventured out to meet
us and hear our stories, to feed us, buy us things, or give us their spare
change. They stopped to tell us God loved us, to offer us temporary
shelter in their homes, rides to their churches, food and clothing, even
the occasional day’s work.

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One time, while drinking on Pacific Beach San Diego, a local
gentlemen came and joined our campfire. There were about six of us,
including Sean and myself, and, after drinking and sharing our fire
and stories for a few hours, he told us the least he could do was to
rent us a motel room for the night because it was cold out! I saw so
much of the best in people during those years. Sometimes I wonder
if I ever will see so much of the divine spark, which is so fastly fading
in these times, with the frequency and magnitude that I witnessed it
in the heart and spirits of the people I met along the way during my
drifting years.

In the end, I lay back at night and I smile and sometimes I laugh
quietly, and still yet other times I softly weep mourning those angelic
vagabonds whom I met and lost along the way. I hear so much talk
these days of “Homeless Blight” and so many tales of misery and
destitution, and I have no doubt that it is all very real because I too
experienced my fair share of that as well. There are those who live on
streets because of no choice of there own and who suffer immensely. It
saddens me because there is so much stigma attached to homelessness,
and so much of it is spawned from ignorance and misunderstanding.

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We all, as a collective race of human beings, have the ability to lov—-
and thereby change—the experience of another person for the better.
Even when it is merely in the smallest of ways, like dropping off a bag
of burgers to a homeless person. So why don’t more people do it?

I also hear the common rationale that “God loves those who help
themselves,” and that angers me because it is so blatantly senseless.
Whatever the reason behind their economic situation—whether it be
by choice or as a result of misfortune and tragedy—is not everyone
worthy of being treated with the same love and compassion, regardless
of their financial status? I believe they are; and if you are of a similar
mind, then I beseech you to make a conscientious effort to begin taking
notice of those “Invisible Citizens” living everywhere you go all across
your country. They are not a Blight or an eyesore but rather a wealth
of human value with a heart that bleeds just like yours and a story that
may just inspire you more than anything you have ever experienced.
They are gifted, talented, beautiful–though often broken. They are
sometimes the most spiritual people on Earth, while other times,
perhaps more than just a little lost and in need of spiritual comfort.
They are gravely misunderstood and tragically underappreciated.

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One of the greatest lessons in my life has come as a result of my
experience as an alcoholic, an addict, and an invisible citizen.

That lesson is, and was, the essence of what it means to have a spirit
of humility. Christ spoke highly of the poor—funny thing, him being
homeless and all—he said, “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit; for theirs
is the kingdom of Heaven.” If I can leave you with one final thought
today, Invisible Citizen and Visible Citizen alike, let it be this, the
summation of that greatest lesson which I try to live by as my guiding
principle today: live without expectation, love without condition, and
obey your God without question.

If you do, you will shine a light on/into the hearts and minds of others
and illuminate the darkness of the night sky, and the butterfly effect
will carry your lumens into a brighter future for all.

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