Part 2 of “Carl’s” story:
Carl: I heard that will kill you, antifreeze. So, I said that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t have any reason to go on. I mean I don’t have anything left. Everything that I have been building since 1979.
***(Carl then went to a coffee shop where a man started talking to him. The man figured out what Carl was about to do.)
Carl: I told him my story and he says well okay but before you do that come go with me I want you to see something before you do that. I said well okay I’ve got nothing else to do. So he brought me here. His name was Ray. That was a very good thing he did. He brought me here. I come up here. I was filthy. I had not had a bath in a week. My clothes was filthy. I mean I was a mess. I was a bad mess. I was in a bad spot. That’s my story.
*** Where do you live now?
Carl: I live in the woods.
*** I asked Carl about work. He says the owner a company in the area wants to meet with him. His work documentation is on .pdf files but he has no way at the moment to get to them.
Carl: I guess the first step is finding a job. I’m a lot better off than most of these folks. Simply because of the fact that I’m not hooked on alcohol. I’m not hooked on drugs. I have a good driving record. I have no criminal background. I am a complete result of the recession that started in 2008. There are several of us out here. There are more out here. I have had friends that have sit in their offices and killed themselves. I am not going out like that. I aint quittin. I can come back. It’ll take a while and it’s hard. I have found a lot of people in the position (to hire), I tell them and they think, my God, that can happen to me. That could very well be me in the future. We are in an economy that is not, I don’t care what Washington tells you. It has not rebounded yet. We are still in an economy that is very tough. I do not have any doubt that I’ll make it. I think I’ll do things different.
*** How? Do you think you did you not plan well enough?
Carl: No. I think that when I leave my office to go home (prior to this event) I leave my office because I had a dinner engagement at the country club. I would go by the homeless guy at the off ramp. I would see him but never did see him. I was thrown into his world overnight. Now I am seeing and learning a world that I did not even know existed. This really taught me how to be a receiver. I don’t have all the answers. I got more questions than answers.
*** I asked Carl about church.
Carl: I come from a church-going background. But, in the last 5 to 10 years I was too busy worrying about making money. Money was my God. I love to work, but on top of everything else. The hardest thing for me right now is my heart is still broke over me and my little boy. I thought I had the type of marriage that would last through everything. It turned out the pressure was more than she could stand. It’s only something that time can take care of. I was her world as long as I had money. I don’t want my heart broken again.
*** Carl and I chatted for a while more about family and his future. He has little to no hope of ever reuniting with his wife, her true character came out. He would turn her down if she called him and invited him back. He misses his little boy, who does not understand where Daddy is, terribly. He has been able to call him a few times. Carl is determined to get back on his feet and to never forget those still in the woods. Carl says he will be one of the employers who goes out in the morning in a pick-up truck to pick them up and put them to work. “Let me let you work today so you can eat”. I invited Carl to church. He came for a while. He ended up in the hospital due to high blood pressure. Carl was given a pre-paid cell phone and then a lap top by complete strangers. I pray that he is getting his life back together. Like all the others. I pray for them all. He says he will never get too big for his britches again.
*** What do you think politically? Do you think the government put you here?
Carl: I think that would be unfair to say that. I think that what happened the first 6-8 months of the Obama administration was going to happen anyway. It was something that was already in effect. I'm not going to say I agree. I don't agree but again I'm not a liberal person. I'm a very conservative person. I'm going to blame it on the fact that Carl needed to be taught something and even though the Good Lord may have picked a real hard way to do it I don't think this has happened for no reason. But Lord, I sure hope it's about to end because it's about to kill me. There was an old boy in the Bible called Jeremiah and God told Jeremiah one time, I want you to go into Isreal and preach and prophesy to them because they are building statues worshiping false gods and they are a mess and I'm going to send you in there.... but the thing that caught my attention was he says but before I send you in there I want you to walk into camp and sit there for 7 days and don't say nothing and it came to me, you know, God, when Jeremiah did finally prophesy to Isreal I guarantee you he had a different message because he went for 7 days, he sat where those people sat. He seen what their world was. That had a significant meaning to me. I cannot come out here and walk in the woods a year ago, but now I know how to approach them. If I don't learn nothing else out of this, I learned there is a world out here that needs help.
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