under the overpass
Several months ago I received a quazi-belated birthday/Christmas gift from my friend Dave. It was a book written by Mike Yankoski and titled Under the Overpass. The book was altogether a very good, inspiring, eye-opening, and enteraining read. I read it in maybe two weeks, which for me was quite an outstanding accomplishment.
Mike writes about one of his summer breaks while in college. He and a semi-friend (the only other guy who was daring enough for the task and who didn’t care about how much cash he pulled in over the summer) decided to be homeless for their 3-month summer vacation. These guys were homeless in Denver, DC, Portland, San Diego, Pheonix and San Francisco. As I read the book and about them living and resting under overpasses, I consistently had a picture in my mind of them and the other homeless dudes camping out underneath a bridge that passed over a river, with nice grass in the park on either side of them, no traffic next to them…a little traffic over their heads, a nice little walking path along the river, and a scenic view to take in while they fished and hung out.
Maybe that’s not the kind of environment they were in.
My wife Maria (I’ll use the name Maria for sake of privacy) and I recently spent a night meeting homeless guys under the overpasses here in Chicago. We went with another guy from our church to give them food, talk to them a bit, and straight up just show them that we cared they were having a rough time. I learned that: living under an overpass is not nice…although it is pretty much the best place a homeless person can live…sucky. Overpasses in Chicago allow mass amounts of traffic to move freely on the interstates just above city-level. In most cases, there is a 7-foot fence to jump in order to actually get under the overpass. When inside the fence, you can walk up the steep incline to where the ground/incline meets the underside of the concrete bridge. In this crevis is where the homeless men sleep. The all have a bit of their area staked off, but their turf contains little besides a blanket (although one guy was insulating an area off for himself so that he could stay warm during the impending colder weather). There was quite a bit of garbage around, the smell of urine was rather strong, the “under the bridge” lights were pretty dang bright, and the sound of the traffic going over and under the overpass was…very loud. Honestly, the noise made it hard to talk with the people next to you.
And these guys sleep here…because it’s the best place besides a shelter to sleep. They don’t get wet when it rains or snows, it’s not too windy, the temperature stays warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer (b/c of the nearness to the ground/underground), no one will bother them up there behind the fence, and the police won’t kick them out or take their stuff.
I just think about how I live…and how they live. How would I deal with sleeping under the overpass for just one night? How would they feel staying in my apartment for a night…where it is very quiet, clean, warm…and a million other wonderful adjectives?
When I used to drive under overpasses in Chicago, I never thought once about looking up to the left or right to see if people were living under the bridge. Now I think about it, and I look. Hopefully soon I’ll think about people down there when I drive over the bridges; when I do I’ll likely feel sorry for making so much noise in a fellow Chicagoan’s home.
