Happy Birthday, Chance - image and story
Happy Birthday, Chance
I spent several months at a post-Katrina camp just outside of New
Orleans in 2006. Nearby was a FEMA camp with armed guards, but the
camp I was at was formed by Rainbows and Burners and declared itself
self-governing. It had a bureaucracy too, but that's another story.
The camp served as many as 3,000 meals a day at its peak.
The camp attracted a wide range of individuals and groups who came to
volunteer. Among them were alcoholics, drug addicts, drug dealers,
rapists, as well as some ordinary people who genuinely came to help,
plus a lot of others. Chance was a good hearted alcoholic. During the
day, Chance rode around the camp on an adult sized tricycle handing
out trash bags. He'd tell you he was hauling trash, but I never saw
him take a trash bag to the dumpster. He was entirely harmless and a
good guy who made generally sensible observations about the goings on
at the camp.
Those in charge tried to evict him from the camp several times. They
even gave him a goodbye party and had "goodbye Chance" t-shirts made.
But he never left. He'd disappear at night and sleep under one of the
refrigerated trailers. When the camp closed down, he managed to get
sheltered at the local jail for 60 days.
One sunny morning the following spring, he showed up at my driver's
side window. That's when I snapped the photo. He made sure everyone
knew his 57th birthday was coming up that June. I made this for him
and gave it to him printed out as a card. I told him I'd put it on the
internet one day and make him famous. He was all for it. He said I
"captured" him. He said it like I hand painted his portrait.
He said he was looking for a job that summer. He claimed to be a heavy
machinery operator. One day he told me he had a job starting the
following Monday. The job wasn't far from where he was hanging out.
But I knew of a kid who'd left a bicycle in the backyard of an elderly
couple. I begged and cajoled them to let me give the bike to Chance so
he'd have transportation to his new job. Finally, they agreed to it. I
gave the bike to Chance. He was delighted to have it, but more so,
perhaps, that someone gave him something.
Monday came around and he didn't go to the job. He said he'd had a
better offer, but, at the end of the day, that fell through too. The
next day, he told me, he passed a construction site and asked worker
for a cigarette. The guy gave him five cigarettes and a ten dollar
bill. With that ten dollars, he could have bought a cheap lock for the
bike. He bought a pack of roll your own tobacco and a couple of
bottles of cheap whatever it was - MD-20, I think it was.
Then he was paranoid that the other addicts would take it from him. In
the afternoons, the only time it was quiet at this particular
community center, I would go in and occupy the one desk, one chair,
and one electrical outlet that was separate from the bank of old PCs
that the kids who didn't go to school would use all day for games and
such, and work on my laptop. Chance would leave his backpack in my
care, next to the desk. He'd come in every fifteen minutes or so and
roll himself another cigarette and have another swig of booze then go
back outside. The bike was stolen within a couple of days. And then
the booze and tobacco ran out. When things got this bad, he'd get
himself checked into the city hospital for a couple of days.
Later, I told him I was heading up to Tennessee. He said, "you know
840?" I knew 840. 840 is a four lane highway that spans the quarter
circle that covers the southeast quadrant, roughly 30 miles outside of
Nashville. "I built that," he told me. He said it like he built it
himself.
The verse on the card, by William Butler Yeats, A Drinking Song:
Wine comes in at the mouth
and love comes in at the eye.
That's all we shall know for truth
before we shall grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth
I look at you and I sigh.
Happy Birthday, Chance. If anybody sees him... tell him you saw this.
Peter
