No Camping on City Streets | The Sun - November 2006

No Camping on City Streets - Frances Lefkowitz
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Once upon a time, when I was a young man, my first wife and I parted ways.  I was on an extended business trip when the divorce was finalized.  She placed my belongings in a storage unit, packed up everything else, including our two children and moved thousands of miles away.  When I returned, I had a dilemma.  I had nowhere to live.  It didn't occur to me that she would simply move.  We didn't discuss it and, after 20 years, I still hold a grudge.  (I have a number of them from that time period.  Many involve her, but I've learned to successfully suppress them.  Or I maybe I haven't.)

What was I to do?  I've never been much of a YMCA guy.  Hotels were tourist priced and I felt that I would be burning up what little cash I had.  My divorce required about $1600 per month in child support and alimony.  I remember thinking that getting rid of her was worth any price.  After the fury dies down and the fiscal reality sets in, your tune does change.

So, I did what any newly singly guy in his mid-twenties would do in these circumstances.  I imposed on friends.  For two months I hopped around from place to place staying a few days at a time.  I slept on floors, couches, cots, sofa beds and the occasional futon and spare twin bed.  I even spent a couple of nights in my car (a Ford Pinto station wagon!) until I finally found an apartment that I could afford.  That apartment will be covered in my memoir, I'm sure.  I'll never live in a cinder block three story walk up again, I can say with certainty.

That has been my only brush with anything that resembles homelessness.  In this essay, Frances Lefkowitz, whom I am convinced would make a charming Mrs. Hutton, tells the story of her ninth summer, when her family receives an eviction notice and her father takes them from San Francisco to the country in search of "Land".

She is the middle child (as am I), the only girl (I am the only boy).  She and her brothers are piled into the homemade wood camper shell covered pickup and off they go on a summer adventure.  Ms. Lefkowitz doesn't dwell on many negatives.  She and her siblings miss their friends and the ease of play in a dense city neighborhood, but they adapt to their surroundings as only imaginative children can.

They rummage through empty campsites, they dig for clams, fish, play tag with the ocean, and have a grand summer.  Ms. Lefkowitz gives us knowing winks about her parents, such as the sometimes broken intercom that links the camper shell with the cab, and the direction from her dad that the kids should go play and not return to the camper until they are called back.  Wink wink, nudge nudge, indeed.

We can see some cracks in her parents' relationship, that makes you wonder if her mother continued putting up with it or if she finally dispensed with the often angry interactions with her husband.

The quest for Land collided with the realities of the American countryside--surprisingly similar nationwide--and the family heads back to the city.  There they arrive in that in-between time where it is too early and too late to interrupt the lives of others.  So they did what I did when this happened to me.  They slept in their vehicle.  They should have stopped near the city without entering, waiting for morning, perhaps at a wayside or a rest area.  Because as the title says, there's no camping on city streets.