I lived in Sellwood caring for my invalid father from 2021 to 2025. While in Portland, I met and interacted with Perry countless times as he picked up trash (usually wearing a clip-on tie!) and maintained the landscaping of the traffic islands. If I had cash on me, I always tipped him for his service and thanked him. He never solicited me. He was occasionally tipsy or stoned, but never addled. He always looked me straight in the eyes.

In time, I got Perry’s story from neighbors. He’d been homeless in the neighborhood for over a decade and performing the same clean-up duty the whole time. For seven years he had lived in an overgrown vacant lot along a creek, planted an informal community garden, shared his produce. That pastoral life ended when an absentee landlord showed up and evicted him. A little while later, dilapidated RVs, cars, trucks, tents and pallet shanties were erected near the area. Perry’s presence had prevented the encampment and once established, it took five inexplicable years for the city to clear it.

In my many conversations with Perry, I learned a lot about his history.

He hadn’t worked in 35 years. He was a full time “volunteer.” He collected no Social Security. He’d grown up in the neighborhood. He slept most nights in a mobile contraption. Would I like to see it? You’re damn right I wanted to see it.

Perry had constructed a makeshift tiny trailer covered in black plastic that he towed with a bicycle. It reminded me of a covered wagon on the Oregon Trail. Perry opened the wagon and let me peer inside. Someone had recently broken in and stolen some of his belongings. He wasn’t upset. Some people needed things worse than he did.

I asked him about the t-shirts I always saw him wearing, with PERRY emblazoned across the front and S.O.S Save our Sellwood across the back. Perry told me a man in the neighborhood was so taken with the ongoing beautification efforts that he had them custom made! We certainly need more of that ad hoc encouragement related to homelessness in Oregon these days.

He utterly despised the fentanyl and meth miscreants who defecated on sidewalks, left garbage everywhere, menaced Sellwood with their public addiction. He taught me there was a definite hierarchy in the homeless community and drug miscreants were the bottom dwellers. He refused to pick up garbage from their encampments. His metaphor for them was chumming. You tossed them chum (see Jaws the movie) and they would devour you on the subsequent attack. I didn’t necessarily agree but it was one of the most astonishing metaphors I’d ever heard and I wrote an essay about Perry and chumming that will appear in my forthcoming book about the crisis of Oregon homelessness.

Toward the end of my days in Sellwood, my newly adopted husky and I were out for a late morning walk when I saw Perry sitting in a chair outside his domicile wailing away on a harmonica, not playing anything recognizable. He loved the husky and previously warned me about needles on the ground. He waved me over.

I fished out a sawbuck (Dad taught me that phrase) and gave it to Perry. He asked about my state of mind. I said sadness gripped me, but I was also relieved at Dad’s death. He was ready to go. Those last weeks in hospice had been brutal.

Perry asked about my future. I said I wanted out of the big city. He asked where I wanted to go. Somewhere on the Southern Oregon Coast was my reply.

“Well, bring me back some ******** dungeness crab!” he yelled.

When a homeless man demands (with profanity) that you bring back dungeness crab, you better follow through.

“I’ll get you canned dungeness,” I said. “It’s damn good.”

“***** yeah!” Perry screamed.

Rest in peace Perry. I apologize for never returning to Portland and giving you that can of crab. Your great work in Sellwood will surely be missed. I got to know you when I lived there, that makes me lucky. Doubtless the landscaping in the traffic islands will need some weeding soon.

I began writing this newsletter about homelessness from Portland in the summer of 2021 and continued after moving to Coos Bay in the spring of 2025. The story that has unfolded so far here on the Southern Oregon Coast is both drastically different and tragically the same as it was in Portland.

The subject has not yet run its course and I have decided this next year of the newsletter will be the final one. I want to conclude this project with the publication next spring/summer of a collection of essays that largely originated on this platform.

I hope all readers will continue to subscribe and if you are reading for free, consider a paid subscription for this final year to support the effort. All paid subscribers will receive a free copy of the book.

Thank you for reading my words on what I believe to be the biggest domestic humanitarian crisis of my lifetime and for doing what you can do to alleviate it in some small or large way. Every effort helps.

Matt

I laughed at the sight of the bare ass, but also felt perturbed. That guy was eating my stash! My free stash, not the $5 carton at the farmer’s market that I never purchase because I always pick my own blackberries. Thank you abandoned homes and yards gone to seed! And thank you Empire neighborhood for all your dishevelment because the blackberry picking here is excellent and feeding the homeless and me some fresh fruit this summer.

That reaction surprised me at first, but then I came to realize that I always appreciate books addressing/documenting public policy/cultural problems that provide solutions.

Since the book’s release in the spring of 2023, a new (old) idea has emerged. This coincided with my reading a history of the US labor movement and seeing how direct and relentless outreach IN THE FIELD proved successful. It’s that IN THE FIELD mentality that really struck me.

From my long study of US history, I also knew that one of the most disastrous policy decisions ever made by the Reagan Administration (among thousands of others) was closing the VA outreach centers (in his first week in office) that were then serving the increasing numbers of Vietnam veterans turning up drug addicted and homeless across big American cities. (I know this story well, because I wrote my senior research paper in Oregon City High School in 1982 on the subject—my first piece of writing about the homeless. I still have the paper and reread it recently for the first time in 40 years. It shocked me how well it held up. I might retype and share it on this platform.)

My idea: storefront homeless service centers sited in various city neighborhoods in Oregon with extreme problems connected to homelessness, (like Empire in Coos Bay) staffed by paid city, county or non profit employees and volunteers from that neighborhood.

I am not talking about a massive industrial building and policy that requires homeless people who need help to travel to that building (such as in Portland) and schedule appointments, fill out useless forms and meet with general indifference. I saw that crushing indifference face to face when I tried assisting homeless men and women from my Portland neighborhood to find housing.

These centers would not provide shelter. They would not supply tents, tarps, sleeping bags, clothes, etc, only water, power bars, toiletries, a device charger. They would create and foster relationships and help homeless people who want off the streets or out of the woods and willows and into housing if such housing options actually exist. One on one interaction with the staffer from the center and a homeless person. That staffer would also regularly tour the neighborhood on foot or bicycle and meet the homeless where they are, get the conversations started, meet their dogs, find out the reasons for homelessness. Sure, many of these outreaches would fail, but not all. I know this from personal experience.

As readers of this newsletter know, I have tried many times the past five years to assist homeless men and women into housing. The only time I was truly successful was forming friendships with members of the Old Crow Book Club, a collaboration that required incredible persistence. That kind of thing isn’t possible in my Coos Bay neighborhood. Different people, different scenario. I’m different.

I know before I left Portland to start over again at the Oregon Coast after Dad’s death,

some of the Sellwood residents I knew who were concerned about the homeless crisis in that area, and advocating for more, improved action, discussed such a storefront center idea. There were plenty of vacant spaces and plenty of homeless people in Sellwood. Unfortunately, nothing transpired that I am aware of 18 months later.

Now for some good news! Because can’t we all use some these days?

Two months ago, I drove by what formerly had been a vacant office building that had stood empty since I’d moved here and was rapidly going to seed. It’s less than a mile from my house.

I did a double take when I saw all manner of trucks and construction going on with the facade, parking lot, and doubtless the interior.

Great, I thought, we need more of that Empire, a lot more.

I observed the ongoing construction and wondered what this new business would be. When was it going to open?

One morning, I saw a new sign: Coos Bay Outreach. It instantly struck me that its function might have something to do with homelessness.

The parking lot was empty or I would have pulled in right there to investigate.

Back home, I researched Coos Bay Outreach online and discovered it was a newly relocated Native American Housing and Social Service Department. I felt somewhat deflated but also glad to have learned there outreach at the street level to tribal members that are homeless in the area, or on the verge of homelessness. I just wish the city or county would set up a similar shop.

Gray skies, drizzle as lint.

Elmer and I on the move.

Discarded shoes everywhere,

pairs from the homeless.

Sneakers, loafers, slippers.

Why?

Why sometimes only one shoe?

A Zen koan never answered by10,000 monks.

As the old axiom goes:

I’ve walked in these discovered shoes,

many years now.

They’re almost shot,

sole shredding,

holes in the mesh,

stitches unraveling.

We pass two men smoking something in a red sedan.

We pass a homestead carved into a hedge.

A young black man with a sizable afro

rides a bicycle towing a trailer contraption

with a fishing rod sticking out the back.

He’s coasting fast to the boat ramp.

He stops beside the 40-year-old Bounder RV

with three orange tow tags peeling off a panel.

He leans the bicycle and trailer against the RV.

He carries a tackle box.

He places it on the parking lot,

approaches the open driver-side window

of the Bounder, climbs through,

opens the front door, emerges,

lights a cigarette,

starts doing something inexplicable

with shit around the rig.

Parking lot packed.

Forty boat trailers, more trucks and boats arriving.

Families prep to clam.

Seven dollar coffee drinks

kept warm inside space age containers.

A kid cries.

Dad threatens violence.

I hear terrible music.

Big black dog runs wild in a field.

A woman sitting in a chair wails

alongside the Park Host’s RV.

Black man yells “Shut the fuck up!”

Fisherman goes up to her.

I can’t hear his words.

More wailing.

She’s drowning the sound of ospreys chirping overhead.

Elmer and I hit the beach.

Smoke swirling from the encampment.

New tent,

new pile of firewood.

new shopping cart

toppled, charred

from barbecuing

roadkill raccoon.

Disembodied voices screaming profanities in the willows.

We’ll have to pass close by,

but we don’t.

I whip us around,

head home,

angry,

robbed this early morning on Coos Bay

of what I need to

contest the utter crush of American civilization

as Jim Harrison so accurately described it.

I pulled my car into a parking space ten feet away. I exited the car on a foggy Monday morning, headed for the front door. Elmer and I had just explored a secret beach at low tide and not a single person had appeared to taint our solitude and inspection of sea stars.

A classic black and white, speckled composition book with its cover resting open at a 45-degree angle rested atop the firewood bin. I noticed writing on the cover that looked like a title.

I’d written in hundreds of these composition books starting with my first journal in 1979, passed out a thousand more to students over the decades to serve as first journals.

It has long been my custom after seeing such compositions books in public to ask writers the nature of their writing. In my experience, their presence meant someone was writing something creative, something fanciful, something important, or somewhere in the middle.

The man was standing at profile to me. I noticed a fishing tackle box next to the composition book, neatly arranged with pens, pencils, markers, crayons and note cards. (Why didn’t I have a rig like that?)

“Hey, what are you writing?” I said, stopping a few feet away from him.

He turned toward me. His face was sunburned, weathered, exhausted—the face of a homeless man. I’ve seen enough up close to know. I put him in his late 50s or early 60s. In no way was he addled or his countenance exhibit evidence of hard drug use.

His face lit up at my question. No one I’d ever asked about the nature of their writing in composition books has refused answering. Indeed, all responses have astonished me with their enthusiasm, especially if the writers were homeless men and women.

He said he was writing a novel, a Christian novel. He handed me the composition book. I opened it and the first page was blank. I turned the page and beheld a two-page spread of a wild, sprawling Venn diagram that constructed some kind of outline, or so I surmised. I asked him what it was.

I learned:

The novel was titled Working Papers

It was about the store and Christ’s infinite capacity to love.

He diagrammed it after some kind of epiphany that occurred in the store 24 hours ago.

The employees were going to become his new family. They didn’t know this yet.

The core of the novel was his being abducted or abandoned as a boy in Coos Bay, his hometown.

I thumbed through more pages and saw a dozen chapter titles, illustrations, notes. It was all happening so fast I no longer recall any words from my perusing.

Was the epiphany akin to Saul on the road to Damascus but in his case inside the Charleston General store near the liquor alcove and display of beef jerky? Was it a genuine epiphany? Who I am to determine its veracity? Was this man insane? He certainly seemed saner than the current President of the United States.

“So when are you going to start writing it up?” I said.

“It’s hard to write if you don’t have any place to sit,” he said.

What truth! It nearly knocked me over. You can’t put your ass in the chair to write if you don’t have a chair.

“You’re homeless?”

“I’m sleeping in the jetty near the Coast Guard Station.”

How anyone could sleep in a jetty was beyond my understanding although there were plenty of huge flat rocks where a man could roll out a sleeping bag, listen to the tide, smell the brine, get up in the morning and fish or crab for breakfast.

Our conversation continued and he drifted into several non-political conspiracy theories I couldn’t follow and didn’t probe.

At one point he told me his name was Sean. I introduced myself.

I suggested he try writing at the picnic tables at the Charleston Marina. He thought that a good idea. I said I was a writer and would love to read anything he wrote.

He didn’t ask me about my writing.

I said goodbye and went inside the store for the purchase of cheap vodka. On my way out, I detoured to the man who was now writing in the composition book. I gave him ten bucks for him in gratitude for sharing his story. A bargain for sure.

He thanked me. I said I’d be seeing him soon at one of the picnic tables at the marina. I visited there all the time with Elmer. I might even bring along a folding camp chair and TV tray. He could set up a writing studio on one of the flat rocks at the jetty and get down to real work on Working Papers.

We began walking down the block and I saw what appeared to be a a large plush chair leaning against a power pole. I needed such a chair for my back patio, or what I call Lou’s Lair, my writing, editing, reading and napping studio.

But I knew the chair would prove worthless up close: soaked, molding, frayed, splitting, every spring, if it even had springs, busted.

Seconds later, after removing the FREE sign from the seat, I sat in the chair, rocking, pushing Elmer away so he wouldn’t christen it with a whiz.

It was is pristine condition: Hoto brand from the Midwest, union made, cherry wood, spotless wool green upholstery, no cigarette burns or cat piss smells, no mars, scars, rips, tears. The chair was probably 60-70 years old. It would go for hundreds in an antique store.

How in the world did it come to lean against a power pole in my Empire neighborhood? I surmised some old Coos Bay coot had croaked it in decades ago drinking a Hamm’s and watching Mannix on the boob tube. His grandchildren just got around to getting rid of it. I did know for sure I was claiming this furniture gem, carrying it one block uphill.

I nudged the chair, heavy. I tried to lifting it with one hand to test the weight. No way I could carry it a block uphill. A travois for Elmer? He’d love pulling it!

No, the idea was to walk Elmer around the block, stash him at home, then I drive the Subaru to the chair, pop the hatch, wrestle the son-of-a-bitch in, bungee it down, take it home, a new home, new purpose.

Elmer and I took our walk and I felt giddy at the prospect of my future with the rocking recliner. I hustled him inside, found the key fob, raced outside, started up the Subaru, backed out of the driveway, and peered down the street.

Someone was sitting in the chair and rocking! It could only be a homeless man or woman and doubtless they’d soon be hauling my chair into the woods, willows or lighting it on fire to heat up a can of chili.

I approached the chair and recognized its occupant: a homeless man of Indian descent I’d interacted pleasantly with near the encampment several times. He had never been addled during our encounters. We never exchanged names.

A great rocking recliner notion struck me. I turned right at the power pole, whipped the Subaru around, and parked ten feet away from the chair.

I jumped out and said to the man, “Hey, I’ll hire you for five bucks to help me load the chair into the back of my rig.”

He stood up from the recliner, smiled, and said, “You got a deal.”

I popped the hatch, we loaded the chair. The hatch wouldn’t close. I said I lived only a block away and would drive slowly.

The man offered to walk behind the Subaru and secure the recliner. He said no charge! I thanked him for the offer, but didn’t think it necessary.

Twenty minutes later I was rocking in the recliner on the patio. An afternoon snooze was surely about to begin.

Elmer and I left him alone and commenced our walk to the jetty.

What had driven this man to such a moment? A crisis of mental health seemed an obvious but inadequate explanation.

How had he come to be standing where he was, a remote area of the Southern Oregon Coast at such an hour? Where would he go after his outburst? Was it somehow connected to drug abuse or something more complicated.

At least he was raging at the ocean. Thankfully, the ocean does not respond with canned expensive therapy, homilies or religious superstition.

To quote E.B. White: The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way.

Forty-five minutes later, Elmer and I were driving home. I saw the man crumpled on the side of the road. I didn’t stop.

The man saw Elmer approaching and waved indicating everything was fine. I waved back and kept slogging. Fifteen seconds later the man and Elmer were playing! Elmer started barking and howling. It was then I noticed the man had a lit cigarette dangling from his lips.

I came up and apologized. He told me to forget it. He loved dogs and once owned a Lab for 16 years. What ensued as we walked toward the parking lot of the boat ramp was a hearty ten-minute conversation about dogs from our lives. We didn’t discuss why the man was meandering the mud flats at this early hour.

He certainly exuded the vibe of homelessness, but was in no way demented, addled or had a face disfigured by hard drug abuse. I put him in his 50s. He smiled a lot when he talked. I’d never seen him around the neighborhood before. I didn’t ask him if he resided in the encampment situated in the willows a hundred yards away.

We ascended to the parking lot. He then asked me if wanted some fresh crab.

What the hell?

He said he’d caught six Red Rock crabs at midnight during a bout of insomnia! Right off the dock at the boat ramp! Snared those son-of-a-bitches in a milk crate he’d rigged up for crabbing duty! He’d already cooked them in a boiling pot of seawater heated by a driftwood fire!

I envisioned walking Elmer home with a crab stuffed in the pocket of my coat. How would that work?

The man asked if I’d ever eaten Red Rock crab. I said no, only Dungeness. He said he preferred the taste of Red Rock over Dungeness and there was no limit (he thought) and you could keep any size or gender.

I said I’d love to try some Red Rock. He motioned me over to the boat ramp’s camp host’s trailer.

Before I could ask him anything, he said his new girlfriend was the camp host. I deduced he had been homeless, met her when she was performing duties such as picking up litter, and well, he wasn’t homeless anymore and was paying “rent” by supplying fresh crab, clams and fish!

I suspect this type of impromptu living arrangement between a housed person and a homeless person was more common than most of us can imagine. I’d seen several such arrangements unfold in Portland, but this was my first one in Coos Bay. Most ended in disaster.

The man disappeared into the fenced area of the RV. Seconds later he returned holding a crab leg and needle nose pliers. Three squeezes later, the pliers cracked open the leg. He extended it to me and I plucked out a hunk of meat while holding Elmer’s leash. It was undoubtedly the first time in world history a man holding the leash to his husky with one hand was going to taste Red Rock crab for the first time with the other hand, crab caught by a former homeless man six hours earlier in a milk crate, cooked in a boiling pot of seawater heated by a driftwood fire, and all because he suffered from insomnia!

I swallowed the hunk. Succulent! Delicious! Way better than Dungeness. I wiped my hand off on my corduroys and Elmer licked my corduroys.

The man’s name: Adam. I told him he had really made my day and he had.

On the walk home, I concocted a plan: I’d pay Adam for fresh, cooked Red Rock crab. He’d just text me when one was ready and I’d roll there lickety split.

The cause of the stoppage: an obese, scantily-clad homeless woman of indeterminate age, gripping a piece of rolling luggage, standing in one lane of the highway, screaming FUCK YOU ASSHOLE! (among other profane expressions) at the driver ahead of me. The driver didn’t honk; they simply eased around the woman by using the oncoming lane free of traffic.

It was a close call. The motorist almost clipped her. She reached out to pound the roof of the vehicle but missed.

My car approached the woman and she started walking my direction, staring straight at me from ten yards away, screaming FUCK YOU SHITHEAD! (Among other profane expressions.)

Her face evinced obvious drug abuse and mental derangement.

I could not ease around her the way the other motorist had because vehicles were approaching from the oncoming lane. At the last second before she would be pounding my front hood, I ripped the steering wheel to the right, locked eyes with the woman, raised my middle finger to her, and yelled FUCK YOU! so loud that Elmer bounded up and hit his head on a window. I barely missed a fire hydrant on the abrupt turn, and found a side street for safety and sanity.

I had never flipped off a homeless person menacing me (on foot or rising a bicycle or skateboard) while I was driving (something that happened with regularity in Portland and occasionally in Coos Bay).

Back home, I sat down in a chair on the back patio, sipped a bloody mary, and considered my outburst.

Vanilla fondles his Bowie knife sheathed in a scabbard somehow strapped to his baggy Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls shorts. I frequently detest him because he litters my front yard with cigarette butts, Doritos bags and Monster cans while waiting for his girlfriend. Worse, he often plays air guitar. Even worse, his presence displaces crows, finches, blackbirds and morning doves roosting in a majestic cedar tree and the occasional deer. Anyone who takes birds and deer away from me deserves my poetic detestation. Vanilla stands at the curb, carrying the pizza box with one hand like Walter Payton carried a football when he broke into the open field. Who holds a pizza box like that? The girlfriend emerges wearing a tight purple and black outfit. An argument immediately ensues. FUCK YOU! yells Vanilla nonstop to the girlfriend who screams FUCK YOU right back while I’m rocking in my recliner in the living room, staring out the window, trying to read a Jim Harrison novella, wishing Jim had written a novella about this couple, but he’s dead, as is Raymond Carver, who might have penned something placid about them in a short story with his signature detached style. Yes, Ray writing a story about a half homeless couple ripping apart a 7-11 pizza box (pizza still inside) during an argument that had nothing to with pizza in front of my house. A lot better than the streaming shows I bootleg and never finish.

The crows loved the pizza squished on the street. They fly so well with slices of pepperoni in their beaks.

The Black Keys played on the CD player. Elmer was snoozed out in the back. My body felt fit and creative mind fortified.

The speed limit decreased to 20 MPH and I slowed down. I saw a man bundled in black to my right, pushing a shopping cart crammed with possessions into the wind. Rolling behind the cart was a tethered baby stroller, also stuffed to capacity.

I saw the man’s face. It was a face unlike anything I’d ever observed in a sea of homeless faces the last decade. It reminded me of villainous ghouls from the Scooby Doo cartoon. But those ghouls wore masks to hide heir identities. Was this man’s face his identity?

Age indeterminate. He had no teeth. His cheeks were crushed, caved in, contorted, gray. Dead eyes. A totally blank visage. A faceless face most likely the result of prolonged fentanyl use, or so I’ve read and witnessed. Could he even talk anymore?

I could not look away, although many caring people, and I suspect this number is growing, are starting to look away.

Seeing this face collapsed my heart. It blew up the fortification within me. He was someone’s son, possible sibling, possible father, grandfather. He had a name.

How would he push that cart another 50 yards? Where would he sleep tonight? How would he rise in the morning and try to survive?

Ahead of us, 50 yards away, a woman walked her bicycle with one hand toward us. In the other hand, she held a leash tethering a little tan mutt. She wore a full pack and bedroll on her back. Lashed to the bicycle was a crab ring. How she could ride with such a contraption and a leashed dog was beyond comprehension. I only wish I could see it in action. I was already writing the poem in my mind.

I leashed Elmer up, but then he saw the mutt, and reared up, ready for play. The mutt saw Elmer and he reared up as well.

The woman and I stopped just outside reach of the leashes. She was in her 40s, missing most of her teeth, wearing traces of Gothic makeup, a Misfits (punk rock band) hoodie), and a massive smile. She stood a head taller than me and outweighed me by at least 50 pounds.

I’d never seen her before.

“Are you new here?” she said as the dogs danced around each other.

New here?

“No,” I said, “I visit here every morning. I live in Empire.”

It hit me! I was unshaven, windblown, wearing a frayed and patched corduroy coat (stitched by Communist women in Yugoslavia in the 1970s and purchased in a coastal thrift store for 99 cents), mud-stained pants, and ripped sneakers.

She thought I was homeless! Is that my style these days?! What a way to recon for stories!

It’s not the first time a homeless or housed person has mistaken me for a homeless person in my meanderings around Oregon. I kind of dig it when the mistake occurs.

She introduced her dog as Sadie Lou and I introduced Elmer. She remarked how handsome he was.

“Do you live in the encampment?” I said, the one 50 feet away from us, with its revolving cast of miscreants and generally nice outcasts.

“No. I was just here to check on Morgan.”

Morgan is a long-time homeless resident of Empire and I’ve chronicled my experiences with her several times.

“No. I was just here to check on Morgan.”

She said her name was Noble. She said a Crow medicine woman had bestowed the name.

I told her I was Matt and asked if Morgan was still around. I hadn’t seen her in weeks.

“Yes,” said Noble. “She’s living in a tent she borrowed from me.”

The dogs were now running around each other, twirling their owners grasping the leashes. It was merry chaos.

“You have any rope for my crab ring?” said Noble.

I was sure I had some stashed in the Subaru and said so.

A couple minutes later, Noble and Sadie Lou stood next to car as I searched for rope.

Goddammit! No rope! A homeless woman wanted to go crabbing and I failed her!

I offered her a hoodie a student had left behind on a last day of school three decades ago, a toiletry kit, and a chocolate/peppermint energy bar. She accepted the hoodie and kit but demurred on the energy bar. I told her to take it for an emergency. She took the bar and placed it on the ground as she removed her backpack. Sadie Lou started ripping it apart with his teeth.

I dug into my wallet and fished out a one-dollar bill, the only cash on hand, and said it was hers.

“I can’t accept it,” said Noble.

“Why not?” I said.

“It’s bad luck.”

I’d never heard of this particular superstition.

“Do you have one penny?” she said. “Then I can accept it.”

“Yes I do,” I said.

I returned to the car and scrounged up 30 cents covered in grime and husky fur.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Good luck out there,” I said.

I drove home and went immediately to the utility room. The rope was there.

It’s now under the passenger seat of the Subaru.

The police have responded with alacrity and some of the vehicles have been towed or the owners pushed them onto their yards.

Why undertake this effort? Because other residents don’t seem to care despite the vehicles posing traffic hazards, sheltering vermin, impeding street cleaning, and presenting general aesthetic blight.

I see my poor neighborhood trying to rally and one of the steps is removing these derelict vehicles.

But...

That one RV from the 70s, utterly decrepit, flying an American flag, parked on a public street alongside a dilapidated house, the same house on a corner lot with two camping decaying trailers from the 60s/70s marooned on the side yard. The RV has an extension cord running into the house. A former luxury sedan is parked facing the RV. Both are never driving again.

Elmer and I walk past this spectacle every morning on our way to the bay beach adjacent to the boat ramp.

The neighbors behind and adjacent to the house are screened by tall fences and overgrown hedges from observing the RV and the camping trailers.

The neighbor across the street, the owner of small, modest home, with a vacant lot on one side and a vacant house on the other side, is the only household that can see everything—from 50 feet away. They get the whole show 24 hours a day, and it’s been playing since I moved here a year ago, and who knows how long before that.

Something is going on with this house there that I need to understand as a person and a writer. How did this scenario unfold? Am I only the writer or journalist in Oregon who wants to dig into these stories? I hope not.

On our walks past the spectacle, I have rarely observed around the RV, camping trailers, around the property, and what they are doing when I do observe them is totally inexplicable to me. Who are these Americans? Is it drug abuse, complete dissolution, or something else?

The RV rests near an intersection and its presence blocks the view of the intersection. It creates a dangerous blind spot for children waiting at the corner bus stop and then boarding the bus; I have seen this blind spot in action multiple times and can’t believe school authorities haven’t reported it.

Why this RV hasn’t been reported astounds me.

Or does it? Perhaps the neighbors met the residents of the marooned domiciles. Perhaps they know their stories and empathize. Maybe they don’t care about the presence. There is zero garbage around the house. Someone even mows the lawn and weeds the sidewalk! They decorated the house for Halloween and Christmas!

Should I report the RV? Help clean up one block in Empire? That RV is someone’s home and the occupant is obviously connected in some capacity to the homeowner.

I live four blocks away and only have to see it once a day. Why should I care? Should I mind my own business. Is having that RV towed away a meaningful act of addressing the crisis of homelessness in my struggling neighborhood?

If it was parked across the street from me, I would have acted within days after moving here. Or would I have acted before meeting the occupants. Garbage strewn around the hulk or no garbage? I have yet to face this type of dilemma, but surely it’s coming one day, especially in Coos Bay.

One fine morning, Elmer and were walking home from our bay beach adventure, when I saw a young woman leave the house across the street from the RV and walking to a pickup truck idling in her driveway. She was probably on her way to work.

She saw me and Elmer and remarked how handsome Elmer was. I stopped and struck up a conversation, thanking her for the compliment and remarking she must be relieved that the house next to hers was now vacant and all the derelict boats, trailers, trucks, discarded appliances, barbecues and general shit had been hauled away last week.

Yes, she was incredibly relieved. Someone from out of state had bought the property and cleaned it up. I asked her about the house across the street and the RV. She sighed and told me the following:

They (meaning her partner) had discussed reporting the RV, but hadn’t done so yet. She had briefly interacted with the occupants of the RV and camping trailers (not the homeowner) and the interactions had been nonchalant, perfunctory. Infrequent bursts of late-night noise and chaos related to the occupants of the RV and camping trailers had alarmed her, but she had never called the police, nor had they ever showed up after an incident. She didn’t feel threatened at all. She considered them an atypical neighbor.

I said she had demonstrated remarkable tolerance by not reporting and that it had inspired me to rethink what I might do in a similar situation. She smiled and thanked me. She seemed almost relieved to have discussed the dilemma with a total stranger.

We said our goodbyes and Elmer and I walked away toward home.

I would file no report on this particular RV

A disturbance call along Cape Arago Highway in Coos Bay led to the arrest of a 44-year-old woman wanted on a parole warrant, authorities said. At 1:45 p.m. May 22, 2026, a Coos County Sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to a disturbance in progress in the area of 92444 Cape Arago Highway. When the deputy arrived, several people were contacted, including Shannon McKeehan, 44. A records check showed McKeehan had a valid warrant for her arrest from the Oregon State Parole Board. Authorities said McKeehan initially walked away on foot, but the deputy later located her in brush about a quarter mile north of the original location.

On May 23, I checked the Coos County Jail roster and Shannon was incarcerated with no release date scheduled. I emailed the jail that I was in possession of Shannon’s purse which contained an ID and personal letter to her that she probably wanted to retain. What should I do with the purse?

I never heard from the jail and Shannon was released on May 26.

We approached the piece of the driftwood. The umbrella had disappeared. The purse had not. I picked it up, stuffed it inside a coat pocket, and Elmer and I performed our sandy shtick.

A couple hundred yards later down the beach, I sat down at a picnic table that had miraculously appeared here a month ago. Elmer sniffed around while I opened the purse and began a thorough inspection of the contents.

The woman’s name is Shannon Adair. (I use Shannon’s real name here in case someone searching for her online might happen across this newsletter/blog post. Perhaps they will contact me.)

Born October 7^th, 1981. 5’3,” 123 pounds. Roseburg address. Anatomical donor. Issued October 2006. Expired 2014. Not a driver’s license.

I unfolded the piece of paper. The undated letter read:

Shannon

Good morning. Didn’t know it was so bad to answer the door. Not trying to harass you. Just need to talk. Shenna and Cynde have both been trying to get a hold of you. I have no way of getting a hold of you. I’ve called 20 times in the last few days to relay a message. He must really have something on you. The dope has won again. You are with another piece of shit.

I’m leaving today. Not sure where I’m going. The woman I’ve adored forever and loved so much is gone. I won’t bother calling or looking for you. Gone for good. Out of this shithole. Away from these reckless people.

Your daughters love you very much. Reach out to them. They need you. Don’t bring another man to Lilly’s graduation. It would hurt her bad.

I will always remember our great times together and our wonderful family. Oh how I miss it so so much.

You will always be on my mind. Love you forever and ever. You will always mean so much to me. We’ve gone through so much. I wish you could have loved me like I loved you.

Take care my love.

Be happy and keep smiling.

Love always Sean

Questions about Shannon and the purse fell like an avalanche on my mind, far too many to list here. Doubtless, the reader has many of the same questions.

Back home, I spent 15 minutes searching on the internet—nothing except advertisements to pay for public records and a possible presence on Facebook. I couldn’t probe the latter because I don’t belong.

Perhaps I will run into Shannon Adair and reunite her with the letter. She hung onto it for some reason, and to me that portends hope.

So, I guess I’m not done yet.

Elmer and I were cruising our regular stretch of Coos Bay beach at 6:30 in the morning. Low tide exposed acres of mud flats and the clam hounds would be digging soon.

The umbrella spooked Elmer so we gave it a wide berth. On our return leg, we approached the piece of driftwood from the other side and I noticed something resting near it, at precisely where high tide had reached six hours ago.

I investigated. I picked up a green zippered pouch in excellent condition and opened it.

Everything dry and neatly arranged. I inventoried the contents without any extrication: toiletries, cosmetics, Leatherman tool, phone charger, drug delivery devices, plastic bag of cannabis, pens, a folded piece of paper with writing, and an Oregon ID. I observed only the face on the ID and vaguely recognized it as a homeless woman seen frequently around Empire the last six months. Much had happened to that face since the ID was issued, if indeed this was the same woman.

I could have removed the ID and learned the woman’s name and age, but did not. I zippered the pouch and placed it atop the piece of driftwood. Maybe she would come searching for it. It also occurred to me that she purposely left the pouch behind at high tide, right around midnight, and walked into Coos Bay for a private euthanasia of hypothermia. At least her family, if she had any, might know how her life ended.

A few months ago, I would have taken the pouch with me, examined its contents thoroughly, and tried to find the owner. I had made three previous (unsuccessful) such attempts, two in Portland, the other Coos Bay.

Elmer and I walked away. Clam hounds were gearing up. The smell of cannabis drifted on the air. An osprey flew overhead with a writhing eel clutched in its beak.

Something has left me concerning the crisis of homelessness and the absence worries me.

I’ve talked to the man a couple of times in my local dive tavern, where he drinks a coffee, charges his phone, uses the restroom, and generally has conversations with himself or with someone who is actually not sitting next to him at the bar. I don’t know his name. There is something slightly off about him, but not so much that he hasn’t engaged with people to employ him.

He does not drink or gamble in the tavern. He did tell me he owned a landscaping business years ago, and retained a few tools to perform his new ad hoc landscaping service. I’ve seen him living out of a battered Jeep Cherokee from the 90s.

“All I need is a square shovel to scrape and edge and a rake,” he said to me one afternoon after I commended his work on behalf of the tavern.

“With a few tools, I can clean up anything,” he added.

I’ve seen his work. It’s impeccable. It’s a tiny attempt at beautification for a neighborhood desperately in need of some. I may hire him because I loathe edging! Next time I see him, I’ll ask his rate for a driveway.

The collection is organized into five categories, one of which is “Homelessness.” All 16 of the poems on the subject have appeared on my Substack newsletter New American Diaspora or Nestucca Spit Pres Meditations blog. None were submitted to regional and national reviews, journals or magazines that publish poetry. One was published in a Coos Bay zine that was primarily distributed in laundromats and street libraries.

When I collated all my poems about homelessness, arranged them (not chronologically) and read them multiple times to edit/polish, I was struck by the levity that surfaced in many of them via incidents of outrageous antics (with zero irony) that made me laugh when I observed them. Such as when a homeless man rode his bicycle handless while eating powered donuts from a box or when a homeless man wrote a haiku in mustard on a sidewalk.

Is levity the right tone for poetry about homelessness? Is there even an answer for that question? I just managed to find some light or dark comedy (not frivolity) in these moments and wrote exactly what I witnessed, never taking poetic license because I’ve never had to when writing about homeless men and women. It’s all right there in front of me, often a few feet away. I never have to search for precious obtuse metaphors, either, because mine are riding bicycles past me, eating corndogs, swilling from fifths of Southern Comfort, often pulling ingenious trailer contraptions to convey personal possessions and returnable cans and bottles. Some are even playing foosball in an encampment or barbecuing crawdads with a blow torch.

It has also occurred to me that if I don’t introduce some levity into these scenes of homelessness I encounter, I’d become too jaded to write anything about them. Finding this humor also helps dissipated my occasional frustration or anger related to these people.

And why can’t some poems make readers laugh? When is the last time you read a modern poem and laughed at a line or throughout the entire poem? I haven’t since I read some limericks on a restroom stall in a dive bar a decade or so ago.

Our meander begins at 6:45 AM.

Destination: the boat ramp and beach.

A woman lights a pipe

behind the grocery store.

I hear laughing.

A man standing near steps forward.

They break meth together.

A woman sleeps under the mural of Empire’s heyday.

They thought the big trees would never run out.

A man riding a red bicycle

gripping chopper handlebars

skids to a stop in a lazy intersection.

A woman sitting on his lap jumps off,

pants slide to her shins.

I see a quarter moon in the sky,

a full moon on the street.

A man harnessed to a rectangular rickshaw

pulls the contraption up a hill.

It is empty.

No passengers or possessions.

A prayer flag attached to a fishing rod

wedged into the rickshaw

waves in the breeze.

A maroon Jeep Cherokee from the 90s

rests near a thicket of blackberries.

All windows blasted out except one.

A master of applying black duct tape

has worked wonders.

I call this art of the survival,

displayed in street side galleries

all across the Republic.

Perpetual free admission.

We descend to the beach.

Low tide.

Salt suffuses the air.

Pilings from the old lumber mills still here.

A rotting graveyard of Empire’s former prosperity.

I hear disembodied voices

in the willows of Coos Bay.

An argument rages between a man and a woman.

Something profane about dueling

sexual inadequacies.

I was told there was once a Hooverville in the area.

Sunrise paints the bay a dull orange.

Nary a ripple, everything pacific.

An osprey flies clutching

a stick in its beak,

construction materials for the

nest cohering in the channel marker.

A sandpiper skewers a sand shrimp.

Pelicans glide inches above water.

Gulls dismember crabs in the mudflats.

A blue heron hunts in a slough.

I’m looking for my buddy the seal

and a freighter named Lily of the Sea

that conveys across the ocean

death from the clearcuts

in the upper watersheds.

I find a shaving kit washed ashore,

shells, and sentiments of love

written in the sand.

Back in the willows,

she bellows, “Get the fuck out of here!”

He says nothing.