I Met a Man With No Shoes

 I saw a man with no shoes this morning. He had woken up from the front porch of the house where I had seen him sleeping, and was walking down the street. The dogs were going crazy, which got my attention. He walked about half a block, tugged off what remained of his socks, and shuffled onward.

He's not the first I've seen with no shoes, but it's not common. 

How they end up that way I'm not sure, but I suspect some kind of mental crisis that gets them evicted from whatever living arrangement they had going on.

While we were walking our dogs earlier, we saw another homeless man walking the other way, and he asked if he could borrow our lawnmower to mow the grass around the club down the street.

The manager of the club down the street complains a lot about the homeless, but he also pays them next to nothing to do odd jobs for him. So they tend to hang around.

I felt bad, but told the guy no. My experiences loaning out my mower have not been positive, the manager would only pay the guy about ten bucks anyway. I know this because that's what he pays the other homeless. When I asked the homeless guy what he was going to get paid, he said "I don't know, I was going to mow it and see what he gives me." Good lord.

I have seen shoeless people pass by later with shoes, so it's not necessarily an indicator they're on an irrevocable downhill slide. 

We saw Shopping Cart guy a little later. Shopping Cart guy used to be an extreme example. He would push his cart laden with stuff, muttering darkly and never responding to any greetings. He smelled like piss. 

Then all of a sudden he cleaned up and left his shopping cart. Started doing odd jobs for the bar manager. Now he's somewhere in between, not as clean as he was but not as bad either. still no shopping cart. Still muttering, but at a lower volume.