I had an interesting, and confusing, experience earlier this week. I was sitting in my home office working on a project at my desk when a stranger appeared in my window asking for assistance. My home is located in the middle of a very large agricultural area in California, the closest “town” (of about 20 people) is located five miles away – it is where my post-office box is located (we are too far out in the unpopulated rural area to get postal delivery). There aren’t many (any) strangers wandering by out here. My office window opens directly onto the front porch, so anyone going to the front door passes with about five feet from me. It is extremely rare for anyone to come to the front door, so it is always a bit of a surprise when they do. This time I say a guy walk by my window and assumed it was an Amazon delivery guy or something like that. But it wasn’t.

The young man standing at my window asking for assistance appeared to be perhaps in his 20’s. He was pretty scruffy, bedraggled, and possibly “dangerous”. However, there we were so I talked to him. He said that he had gone to a local Indian Casino with a buddy the previous evening. He went into the casino, leaving his friend with the car. When he came out again the car and his friend were gone. So then he was stuck about 20 miles from town, without a car, without any money, and without a cell phone. Nobody besides his friend knew where he was, and he didn’t know his way around the neighborhood (or this part of the Sacramento Valley), not even knowing how far he was from his home. So he did what he did, which was to start walking toward his home (hopefully). He said he had walked all night, and all morning until finding me at around 2:00 pm.

He looked like he had just walked for hours in the 100 degree heat. It is only 15 miles, so even if he only walked 2 miles per hour it is only 7 or 8 hours, so I assumed it felt like walking for 16 hours. I suspect he actually slept under a bush or something some of that time. In any case, it was too hot to send him back out to continue walking and he was too scruffy (and potentially dangerous) to invite in (especially in these times of the pandemic). He was trying to figure out how to get the rest of the way home, about 60 miles on country roads. So that brought me to the question of “what do I do now?”

I thought about calling emergency services to get him some help. Being on the local fire department, I knew that would bring fireman and at least two big fire trucks – impressive, but would do no good. It would also eventually bring a local sheriff – who would probably take him to some sort of holding facility until such time that they decided that he was safe to let go. They would let him out, putting him ten more miles from home but still without money or transportation.

There aren’t any public transportation services, such as buses, anywhere around here so I couldn’t give him 20 dollars and tell him to get a bus. I suppose I could pay a taxi to take him home, costing at least $150, perhaps more.

I asked him to sit on a bench on my front porch to wait for a little while I thought about it and finished a project I was working on. My wife gave him some sandwiches and fruit (and the rest of my bag of Cheetos!!). I finished up my project in about 30 minutes and went to check on him. He seemed alright, polite and friendly. So I decided to give a ride home (a three hour round trip for me). It went fine and we shared stories along the way. His story of his life was a troubled one. His mother is in prison, he lives with his older brother, his car broke down and he has no money or income so it stays that way. His “work” seems to be a little gardening for people now and then and searching for gold in the Feather River. Neither sounded particularly lucrative. I left him with a few dollars that I had in my wallet – which probably went for beer. Now I will need to get a covid test in a couple of days

So there I was sitting in my office, wondering what the proper and compassionate thing to do might be. Was taking him home the correct choice? I felt like I was putting myself in harm’s way by doing that, but also felt like at some point you just do that sort of thing. I did it fairly regularly as a volunteer fireman – doing dangerous things for total strangers for no pay is part of that job. I asked my wife is she was good with me taking the chance, and she was – so we were sort of partners on this choice. I thought about what an old friend of mine that died last year would have done – he would have done what I did. Was giving him money helpful? Or did that just turn into a hangover? Maybe that is out of my hands – I offered help, if he accepted it as help that’s good, I hope it wasn’t leading him into a bad thing.

This experience reminded me once again that it is such a sad situation when there are so many young people in a similar situation everywhere you look. Homeless folks, people with homes but not enough income or potential for the future, people couch surfing as a way of living. I wonder if we (Society) are going to find a solution, or will this just keep getting worse? It looks to me like we have more people than jobs – so maybe there is no solution. That situation is getting worse as automation continues to increase. Right now there are lots of jobs open because of covid, but nobody is taking them I suppose in part because it is dangerous to do so, it is more fun to not work, and welfare might be sufficient to get along without working. The Federal government was providing assistance of up to $300 a week since last December, ending in three days from now on September 4. I suppose you could live on $300 a week ($16,000 a year), but not comfortably. This is the equivalent of $7.50 a hour and doesn’t get you very far. (For comparison, the poverty level in California is $12,500 a year for a single person.) There are other sources of income, such as food stamps, that help with this so perhaps it is workable. Cutting off that flow of Federal money in three days is going to make this a pretty tough time. I don’t think many people avoid working because their life is so cushy living on the dole. However, perhaps it is not very enticing to go to work when the pay for working is below the poverty line – and just cuts off some of the other benefits.

It doesn’t seem reasonable to me to let people live in abject poverty because employers can keep pay so very low. It isn’t like those at the bottom of the ladder have much bargaining power – they are in a “take it or leave it” situation. I have no answers, but spending a couple of hours with that young man really remindedd me to feel a tiny bit of the plight of so many folks today. I sometimes sit down and talk to homeless folks (at least I did before the pandemic), and found them to be just plain down and out, with no good way to claw their way to a better life. They are stuck – it seems like we need to find ways to be more compassionate and helpful.