The ’91 Chevy pickup owned by L., a spry middle-aged woman who has been living in the Slope for nearly 25 years, had no lid to cover the payload area when she bought it out west, years ago.
Since New York State law requires such a covering, L. stopped at a junkyard and bought a fiberglass cap. It had holes and loose windows, and didn’t fit well enough for the lock to catch, but this was in keeping with the character of the truck, which had logged hundreds of thousands of miles and was covered in progressive bumper stickers.
The cap served.
On a cold winter morning a couple of years ago, L. was about to throw something in the back of the truck when she spotted something unexpected. And therein lies a great story.
“I open the rear door, and I see a body in the truck,” she said. “It’s not dead, but it freaks me out. I don’t know what to do. I start walking away. But then I think, ‘Hey wait a minute. What am I doing?’
“I go back to the truck, and start banging on it. ‘What are you doing here? Get the hell out!’ The guy sits up. He’s tall, terribly thin, short-haired, about 60. I recognize him from the neighborhood. ‘You cannot stay here,’ I say, and he staggers off without an argument.
“A few days later, first thing in the morning, he’s back in the truck. It’s the same scene: I bang on the truck, tell him to get the hell out, and he goes. It happens again and again. No matter how many blocks away from home I park, he finds the truck. I’m pissed off, but my partner, D., is a serious humanitarian. She’s always feeding the sick and the poor. So D. reminds me that almost anyone can end up homeless these days. ‘Besides,’ she says, ‘what harm’s he doing?’
“One day that year, I was about to load some stuff into the back of the truck. The man wasn’t there, but I find this enormous TV. The next time I saw him, I asked him about it. ‘I brought you a present,’ he said. ‘I don’t want your presents,’ I told him.
“But then he told me, ‘You see how they don’t bother the truck anymore?’
“Every few months, the cab would get broken into. There was nothing to take, but they’d break a window and look around. It happened so often that I kept a brush in there especially to sweep up the glass. I realized that nobody had broken in for quite a while. He was right.” So the moral of this story is to let a homeless man sleep in your pickup truck? Apparently, yes.
“He’s got some clothes he keeps there now. He lines the floor with newspaper; the rain pours in through the holes in the cap. I remove the newspaper when it gets old, and keep a few things in back — a gallon of fresh water, a pillow, an umbrella.”
I suggested to L. that she’s accepted that her truck has a rent-free tenant. She denied it.
“Every time I catch him in there, I bang on the truck and tell him to get the hell out. If he thinks I’ve softened to him, who knows what he’d try to pull?”
But she has softened on him, I suggested.
“He used to see D., my partner, around the neighborhood. Some of the things I know about him — that he’s a Vietnam vet, that the hospital where his daughter died wouldn’t let him in to see her — I know from her. He also claims to be some kind of a minister, but I’m not sure I believe that.
“Anyway, one day he said to me, ‘What’s the matter with D.? She doesn’t look well.’ She was ill at the time. I let him know it and he started to ask after her. I ran into him the day after she died. He cried when I told him.” L. paused to collect herself.
“Maybe I have softened to him,” she continued. “But I wouldn’t want him to know it.”
I asked whether L. will get another truck when this one finally gives out — or will she get a car? She did not take the bait.
“I’d feel bad if the truck died because I haven’t got the money to replace it with anything. That’s why I’d feel bad.”
Umm, is that all, I asked. “I’m sure,” she said.
Touch blue to make it true.
Jimmy Wallenstein is a teacher and writer in Park Slope
The Kitchen Sink
Our pal Lenore Arons reports that her “Dining Out for a Cure” event was a huge success, “thanks to The Brooklyn Paper,” she hastened to add. After we ran a list of all the Park Slope restaurants participating in her breast cancer fundraiser, Arons’s little idea generated $4,600 to fight the dreaded disease. She says she’ll try to get more restaurants next year — with our help again! …
Second anniversary? That would be the sangria anniversary, right? Our friends at Melt, on Bergen Street between Fifth and Flatbush avenues, celebrated their second birthday with a party on Monday that featured $10 kobe burgers and all-you-could-drink sangria. Several members of The Brooklyn Paper staff congratulated Melt in the only way they could, by repeatedly telling the bartender, “Um, could you top me off on the sangria? Thanks.” …
MS 51, on Fifth Avenue between Fourth and Fifth streets, had a 35th reunion last week at Union Hall. Several teachers were on hand to remember the good old days when ties were wide and Bob Dylan could still sing.
