true story

Just before closing time I walked up to the counter of the Goodwill store on Fillmore with a shirt and pair of pants. The clerk was beautiful, a Polynesian transvestite with long dark hair, but impatient and ready to go home. I stood in line with 3 other people--a girl with 7 nose rings, an old lady with a back pack and a little dog on a leash, and a fat guy about 30 whose visible flesh was one big tattoo. As I waited to pay for my things, I made up stories about each of the people in line.

(I know it's a form of judgment, but I can't help myself; I make up a story for almost every human I see. There must be something wrong with me.)

The girl with the 7 nose rings for instance. She was blonde with black highlights, wore a short jean skirt, red leggings, short black leather boots, a Pendleton vest, and a golf hat in the style of Ben Hogan. She'd pinned a button to the hat, bearing the likeness of Bob Marley. A pile of used clothes were draped across her arm, ready for purchase.

Having been poor once, I tried to imagine what it might be like to be poor again. I was poor when I was young. I could handle it. I was skinny and didn't eat much, macaroni & cheese in the boxes that cost .19 cents, big cans of Progresso minnestrone soup for a quarter each, eggs, bread from the bakery thrift store. I was so busy being young then, had so much energy both focused and diffuse, that I don't remember thinking much at all about my poverty. Like the young girl with 7 nose rings, buying at the Goodwill Store, making the best of what little she had, trying to look good on a severe budget, going in for a job interview tomorrow with Twitter or Yelp...

(If I was poor again at this stage in my life, I'm pretty sure my poverty would be all I thought about.)  

Thomas Hardy took most all the plots for his novels from the newspaper--true stories of murder and mayhem. To know where a writer as great as Hardy got his source material is enough reason to read the morning paper, as I do almost every morning.

Erica Goode, a reporter for The New York Times, is a very good writer. Whenever I see her byline, I read the story, no matter what she's writing about. She begins her story this morning, "Hard Times and a Killing in Kentucky's Coal Country," with this sentence:

The last good person to see Dradrick Fleming that Wednesday evening was his stepfather, who pointed him to a parking place outside the Neon Church of Christ, where his favorite uncle lay in his coffin.

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/g/erica_goode/indexhtml

I paid for the shirt and pants, $15.39, and started walking up Fillmore. The sun was setting and big gusts of cold wind swept up and down the street. I walked slowly, looking in store windows, seeing people eating and drinking in the nice restaurants. The beggar in front of Wal-Green on Fillmore & Pine had her cup out for change, but was sitting on the pavement, slumped over, tired after another day at the office.

There, on the other side of the street, was the blonde with 7 nose rings, waving her arms frantically for a cab.