I was getting rid of this couch one winter—a few winters ago—and junking it. I had seen that camp of homeless people in the woods between Eastern Avenue and Eastern Boulevard, down by Middlesex. Rich and I drove down there one Sunday and he carried the pillows—for big pillows, we figured they could use them in their tents, and they yelled at him to leave, to go away. So we dropped the pillows in a dumpster.

Then, we were getting rid of some of his clothes and I had always noticed this homeless boy on the median at Rossville and Pulaski with the sign that says ‘I will work for food.’ We pulled up and Rich tried to hand the bag of clothes to him and the kid got angry, saying he didn’t want clean clothes. So we took them to Good Will.

Then, the Sunday after Christmas, we saw those homeless people huddled out in the cold in the woods by Martin Boulevard and Middle River Road. We packed them up a container of food with paper plates and plastic flatware and took it to them together. By now we were gun shy. But they were so nice, and so thankful—and stunk so bad. This woman kept hugging me and I wanted to gag. We felt really good that we had helped them out, then, as we walked back to the car, we began to stumble over this pile of beer cans—my God, it was a mountain of beer cans. I guess that was what they did, stay in the woods and drink beer. They were nice people and it was so sad to see how they lived.