Loaves as the Recession Deepens

Sister Libby Fernandez Photo © 2007 Peter S. Lopez

I spoke for about twenty minutes today with Sister Libby Fernandez, the Executive Director of Loaves & Fishes. Ostensively, our conversation centered on the organization's Form 990 filing for 2007, but quickly we were into other topics, including the deepening recession and the healthfulness of the daily lunches L&F serves to an average of over 700 people.

I will attempt a comprehensive, albeit amateur, analysis of the 990 in the near future. Form 990 is a report on the financials and activities of a non-profit organization. For now, I'll hit on some of the conspicuous highlights from the form and post on the other discussed topics.

Loaves should be lauded for the efficiency of its fundraising operation, which does its job using just 4.4% of funds raised during the year. That is stellar, an extraordinarily low percentage -- far, far below the 35% cap set by institutions that monitor non-profit organizations. AND, based on the types of expenditures the Fundraising Department had in 2007, most of their effort was very directly funneled toward getting out news of the needs of homeless people to possible donors.

On a more-minor topic, there is an indication that Loaves did not get a good return on its cash and temporary investments in 2007. Their overall rate of return may have been as low as 2.5%, due, perhaps in significant part, to a policy of leaving large sums uninvested. [At the beginning of 2007, L&F had >$600,000 in cash that was not earning interest; at the end of the year the amount was nearly $750,000. From earlier Forms 990, found at Guidestar.org, I learn that L&F had $550,694 in non-interest-earning cash at the beginning of 2006 and $1,277,235 in non-interest-earning cash at the beginning of 2005.] The organization may have failed to reap an easy extra $10,000+ in interest by failing in the chore of simple cash management.

Because California is in a quickly deepening recession, it is fortunate that Loaves & Fishes has reserves in excess of five million dollars, enough, by itself, to cover a year of its activities at the current rate of needed services. These reserves will be a God's send in the tough economic times ahead as donations become more difficult to gather and the needy population in greater Sacramento grows. Chunks of those reserves are, however, reserved for other purposes, including the purchase of a warehouse.

Sister Libby told me that donors have been sending in smaller checks in the last month and that the organization must brace itself for tough times. The Christmas season is primetime for receipt of donations, but it is sure to be difficult to inspire people to give if economic indicators are correct that signal more- employment, -mortgage-payment and yet higher gas-price problems.

A subject of interest to me is the healthfulness of food the organization serves in its Friendship Park in the morning and as lunch in its dining rooms.

The cover story in the June 23 issue of Time reported on the unhealthy lunches served to children. A tray of food, pictured as a full two-page spread, and cited as "From Bad to a Whole Lot Worse" for children, was not dissimilar to what denizens of L&F might eat for lunch. The menu was nachos topped with cheese and beef; salsa; refried beans; mexican rice; peaches; two chocolate-chip cookies and a beverage of orange juice. The portions pictured were much less than what people eating at Loaves & Fishes see. Such a meal was cited in the magazine as junk food.

Far better was a tray of food that Time pictured and captioned as "Lunch Like it Could Be." For this meal, the menu was a turkey wrap; grapes; vegetable soup; carrots and dip; and strawberries, with lowfat milk as the beverage.

While meals for kids is not the same as what adults should eat, what the two groups should and should not eat is very similar. Another article in Time, "Dr. Andrew Weil's Wellness Diet," offers some specific direction of what an adult's diet should include and exclude. Also, the USDA's Food Pyramid is a great guide for learning about what a person should eat. Here, two of the USDA's charts of how many servings of vegetables (and in which subgroups) people should consume.

Sister Libby brought up a possible fix to the vegetable-servings shortage: Gleaning fields something in the manner that the defunct Sacramento-area group Senior Gleaners had done to rescue fresh vegetables from local fields (or grocery stores?) that are edible yet not perfect enough for choosy shoppers. Actually, Sister Libby suggested that *I* look into the matter, and I will. Possibly, Senior Gleaners' methods were efficient such that vegetables from the thriving Central Valley -- where we live! -- can be delivered for preparation and consumption by the poor and homeless in L&F dining rooms.

There are many challenges on her to-do list, Sister Libby told me. County budget cuts threaten healthcare services for the poor and a suit against the local police department to compensate homeless folks for their confiscated belongings is slowly moving forward in the courts. A similar court case recently succeeded at compensating Fresno-area homeless people for their confiscated property, Sister Libby told me. There is also the threat that budget cuts will keep the Winter Shelter at CalExpo from opening late this year, leaving a great many homeless Sacramentans in the street during the year's coldest months.

We also discussed the bounty of pastries, cookies, cakes and pies that are given to people in Friendship Park weekday mornings. The food is good, but past fresh, donated by local grocery chains and bakeries.

I believe these sweets are a threat to the health of the homeless. Some people are gorging themselves, consuming large numbers of servings of the worst kind of junk food, larding themselves with fat and sugar every day.

There are people whom I could name whose lives have devolved into ones of sleeping fifteen hours a day and eating (and, perhaps, drinking) the rest of the time. Theirs is a slow path to suicide. The organization Loaves & Fishes may have an obligation to instruct people on how to eat healthfully, given the limited sources the poor have to keep themselves fed.

I don't know that Sister Libby disagrees with what is written in the prior two paragraphs, but she did seem more libertarian in her views than me, believing that L&F strives mightily with its role to make what food it can find available to the homeless. It is not L&F's role to rule people's lives.

The Sacramento Homeless Connect [Part 2 of 3]

This is the second part in a series about the May 31, 2008, Sacramento Homeless Connect held at CalExpo. See, also, Part 1.

Inside the CalExpo building, that is used as a shelter for homeless people during the cold winter season, there was a lot of activity as homeless and other poor people spoke with the services expert at the dozens of stations that were set up. Both the experts and the homeless/poor I spoke with were happy about the contact and information flow, feeling that a lot of good was coming from it all that would manifest in bettering many homeless people's lives.

I wasn't able to talk to people manning [and womanning] the busiest stations -- those that addressed medical conditions and housing needs -- but experts and staff at others of the stations were happy to talk with me as availability permitted.

Homeward Street Journal

Paula of the Homeward Street Journal told me of her bi-monthly paper and how it helps the homeless.

First of all, homeless people are invited to sell the paper on the street and keep all proceeds. The paper itself [Eight pages, reduced-broadsheet size for the May-&-June issue] both informs homeless people of activities and services for them and about political matters related to homelessness in the Sacramento area and beyond.

The paper is also very helpful at educating Sacramentans unaffected by poverty of issues that relate to the difficult lives of those living on the street and in shelters.

In addition to writing for Homeward Street Journal, Paula serves on boards and committees to help homeless people. She told me that the Ending Chronic Homelessness Initiative Collaberative in its first year of a ten-year run was very pleased to have exceeded its first-year goal in placing people in housing.

DHA - VOA - Aid in Kind

A woman whose name I failed to get and man named George were at a station at the event told me a little about Aid-in-Kind housing and the benefits for persons who sign up for that program.

[more to come]

The Art and Ethos of Bicycle Maintenance

One of two stations on the parking lot offered repair and tips and tools for homeless/poor people with two-wheel machines.

Jeremy of Sacramento Bicycle Kitchen talked to me a little about his day at the CalExpo event and the non-profit business, for which he is a member of the Board of Directors and acts as a volunteer and the "event co-ordinator." At about 1pm, I was told that two dozen people had visited the station -- staffed by three volunteers -- for aid or information. Later, when I passed by, yet more people were making use of the information, human help and tools at hand.

Jeremy told me the goal of Bicycle Kitchen was to promote bicycle use, generally, and to teach and help people to take care of and repair their own bikes. The back of a card Jeremy gave me says that nobody who visits BK is "denied service for lack of funds." The mission of Bicycle Kitchen is thus: "By providing free and low-cost bicycles and maintenence education, we promote cycling as a reliable, low-cost mode of transportation for everyone." Headquarters of Bicycle Kitchen can be found at 36th & Broadway in Sacramento. It's the place to go to keep your speedy machine in good operating condition.

Pet Corral

Another station located on the parking lot offered care for event-goers' animal friends [aka, pets].

I was told [and saw that] only three pets -- all mid-sized dogs -- were turned over to the corral for kennel care. The animals were made happy and comfortable by the four pampering staff members onhand.

The volunteers were each wearing a red Wooff T-shirt. W.O.O.F.F stands for "Welfare Of Our Furry Friends," a Sacramento-area non-profit organization and has as its mission to look after the wellbeing of animals of the homeless. Its services, including kennel care, are well known to animal "owners" in Loaves' Friendship Park.

Table Nearest the Door

To the left as one entered the event complex were two women at a table that was covered with stacks of brochures and a bin of oatmeal cookies.

The ladies told me the brochure getting the most attention was "Rapid HIV Testing" which touts the 99%-accurate HIV Rapid Test. From a swabbing at the gum line, you can learn in less than 40 minutes if you (or a partner or potential partner) has HIV antibodies. Unhappily, this test for antibodies is not the same as a test for the HIV virus, itself.

The test really only indicates if the person tested contracted HIV six or more months ago. More recent exposure to HIV can be too soon for one's body to develop the horde of antibodies that try to combat the infection.

To my mind, the rapid test is of limited value, but the oatmeal cookies were fully good.

Event goers were invited, at the triage stage, to be tested for the HIV virus itself -- with one of the tested persons, chosen at random, receiving a $50 gift card [from Safeway, I think it was]. I didn't look into it to learn how nor how quickly results were reported.

Food and Music

There was a bodacious quantity of great foot and great music supplied in the area in back of the Winter Shelter. The earliest of eaters received a fat, full roaster chicken breast and generous helpings of potato salad and beans and a third of a cob of corn, plus a delicious brownie. [Food is of heightened importance to the homeless, as you may already know.] Later in the day, some of the portions diminished [half-breasts!] or changed [bring in the spanish rice and nachos!] in apparent response to the bigger-that-anticipated-turnout of event goers.

There were two major complaints: One, that the seating area was very inadequate. Also, that if you left your plate of food briefly, you might find that an event vounteer can have put it in the trash.

Music was supplied by Guitar Mac and the Blues Express who got wholly positive reviews from the crowd. I agree; they were terrific. Too, it was a perfect choice of musical genre and the sound level was just right, in the Goldylocks middle. Not to loud; not to soft.

The Gift Bag

One wholly popular item that got rave approval from event goers was the gift bag that was given out to everyone upon leaving. A ~six-gallon-sized bag, branded "Salvation Army," was filled with a lot of good non-expired boxes and cans of food, a pair of socks, a water bottle and first-aid kit. Yowza Salvation Army.
[more to come]

The Sacramento Homeless Connect [Part 1 of 3]

The Sacramento Homeless Connect, an event held at Cal Expo in the Winter Shelter on May 31, between 10am and 3pm, meant as a valuable opportunity to give homeless and poor people information about services that can help them, was seriously marred by ineptitude in how it was organized.

Attendees to the event were left to spend most of their time waiting on a parking lot to get in. All of this time could have, should have, been used filling people's minds with information they could use. Instead, the homeless and other poor people were left to spend hours biding their time, drinking free bottles of Snapple and "Salvation Army"-branded water.

The waiting time of one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half hours could have been greatly lessened had the organizers tended to their most fundamental responsibilities: Anticipating visitors' experience and seeking to avoid bottlenecks and shortages.

The organizers should have looked at the problems of similar events to avoid others' mistakes. From what I understand very similar events have been held rather recently in Las Vegas, San Francisco and Portland.

Any able planner for an event such as this would have measured the time requirements to assure that attendees have as excellent and valuable experience as is possible. The average time it takes to interview each person wanting entry to the event should have been measured. The flow of visitors to the event should have been anticipated. While I am told there were possibly double the number of people attending than was anticipated, it was known that most would arrive in the late morning when the event started. Planners should have been aware that a serious bottleneck would occur, even with a small crowd.

There are many things the organizers could have done to make the event more successful at achieving it ends:

• They can have pared the length of the intake/triage interview that was used before attendees gained entry.
• They can have used volunteers who were waiting and "twittling their thumbs" [in the words of one volunteer] in the venue to beef up the staff doing the entry tasks.
• Many of the kiosks/stations in the Winter Shelter where the event was held can have been made mobile by going out to the parking lot to do out-reach work or distribute literature.

The event was "hosted by the Ending Chronic Homelessness Intitiative" which is "co-chaired by [Sacramento] Mayor Heather Fargo and Supervisor Roger Dickinson." Tim Brown was the prime onsite organizer.

Food

The Sacramento homeless and poor population that I live in the midst of is inordinantly interested in food. Among the people I know, none is starving -- nor hungry for long -- yet many are keenly interested in what the main course of their next meal might be.

There's a bit of excitement when the rumor spreads at the Union Gospel Mission that the evening meal might feature chicken or barbeque or tri-tip [The tri-tip rumor turned out to be a false one, spread by a prankster on staff]. Likewise, when the free lunches at Loaves & Fishes break from the ordinary that sparks discussion in Friendship Park.

A homeless adult Sacramentan will eat OK, just from the free meals that Loaves & Fishes and Union Gospel Mission* provide every day. There are many other places, as well, that provide food or distribute food to homeless or poor people in greater Sacramento. A broke Sacramento adult or child can find sustenance. It's out there.

One thing lacking in the central-Sacramento homeless diet is adequate servings of vegetables. While there is usually one vegetable with each meal at L&F and UGM, it is usually lettuce with thin shards of carrot, maybe a bit of cabbage, and dressing. Fresh fruit is commonly available, however. From recent meals, I've had bananas, mangos and strawberry-peach compote at UGM and oranges, peaches and plums in L&F's diningroom.

Loaves and Fishes gathers a huge assortment of desserts and pastries that visitors to Friendship Park there enjoy with their coffee in the morning. [It's more than a guess that these are day-old, or expired, baked goods from Safeway or local bakeries.] UGM serves its sheltered men breakfasts of eggs, sausages and toast and/or the really big muffins that I've seen on sale at Raley's. [Poppyseed, corn, chocolate and blueberry comprise the usual selection of muffins.] Also, the desserts with the UGM evening meal are usually excellent. Usually they serve cake or pies from bakeries that didn't sell when they were optimally fresh.

In addition to all the food I've described, many homeless -- including me -- receive food stamps they can use through a special ATM card that the Department of Human Assistance makes available to eligible adults.

Use of these food credits is very restricted -- no tobacco or alcohol can be purchase with them, of course, for example. And with their use comes an exemption from any sales tax.

A person can use food stamps to buy unprepared food, but not restaurant or otherwise-prepared food -- which creates some ironies. One thing you cannot buy at convenience stores is hot coffee, but you can buy a cold $2.79 bottle of Starbucks Frappachino there. You can't buy a one-dollar McDonald's double-cheeseburger, but you can buy a three-dollar packaged ham-and-chedder sandwich at Rite Aid. You can buy a packaged, prepared salad at Safeway or Trader Joe's, but not something similar at Wendy's.

Also, a bit of a curiosity is that homeless people cannot make use of those fake grocery-card club discounts. Without a home, you can't complete the club membership application so you can't get the generous discounts that come with most items.

Being homeless, we often find food given to us is past its expiration date. [This is often safe. Properly refrigerated milk should last five to seven day past it date before becoming blinky.] L&F has given us bottles of Gatoraid nearly a year past the expiration date. [Was the date a misprint and is that why the bottles were not saleable? or does a very old bottle of Gatoraid merely lose some of its oomph yet remain safely drinkable? or should the item not be consumed!?] Similarly, at UGM, we recently got small bags of potato chips two months past their expiration date; they were noticably stale, but still enjoyable.

O, to be homeless. And to dream of pizza, made to order, with mounds of stuff, piled high.

---

* The mission provides a meal to any adults who attend their evening church service. Men who are staying in the mission's shelter also get breakfast the following morning. Loaves & Fishes serves lunch every day of the year except Thanksgiving Day.

Free Will and Grace

John Newton

[The Union Gospel Mission is where I have been attending a church service, eating my evening meal, showering and sleeping most days during my first month of homelessness.]

The daily services at Union Gospel Mission are presented by thirty area churches, most of which are Baptist, that each come once a month. Services usually last an hour each evening, from 7:30 to 8:30, with singing dominent in the first half hour and a preacher's sermon beginning at 8:00pm.

The sermons vary in their core messages, often being at direct odds with sermons of prior days. This is understandable, of course, since each church has its own slant on things, but it is troubling the disparity one hears of what's required to get into heaven.

One pastor, Jimmy Roughton of Capitol Free Will Baptist Church, echoed the sentiment of Blaise Pascual in his April sermon: "Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists." To me, this rationale for belief is terribly fragile and is clearly, wholly self-interested. For me, and for most people -- I would wager -- you believe what you must believe and there is no wiggle room for believing what you perhaps ought to.

In his sermon given at the rescue mission in May, Roughton didn't say "I don't know that there is a God any more than any of you," as he had, but he did emphasize the benefits of believing (i.e., gaining entry into heaven and the horrors of the alternative, hell.) His is a rousing, clear message of getting ready for the eternal future.

Other preachers insist that faith is not enough. At at least three services I've heard the sentiment that "even Satan believes in God and Jesus," thus mere belief is greatly inadequate. For these more-conservative churches, being humble before God and following his dictates is necessary to warrant the eternal reward of a body of light and to be in God's presence to praise his glory forevermore. Basically, to live for God you must surrender your free will and fully follow God's will as you understand it from your reading of the Bible.

Other preachers made a simple appeal: Believe in Jesus and heaven is yours. Or, believe in Jesus and that he is the risen son of God and you will live for eternity in heaven. Here, becoming a good Christian is made rather easy. There is ample evidence that Jesus existed and it is not difficult at all to be convinced that Jesus was a remarkable person and that, at the very least, the New Testiment is mostly factual.

Only a couple of preachers I've heard have emphasized compassion and love. Particularly impressive was James A. Robinson, pastor of Greater Hills Zion Missionary in Sacramento. Greater Hills Zion Missionary is possibly the only black church on the roster of those that preach to the UGM congregation. Since the homeless men at the rescue mission are in majority black, it is disappointing that there aren't more black churches involved with Union Gospel Mission. Another pastor that emphasized compassion in a recent sermon was from Wilton Bible Church which associates itself with Bob Jones University, which has gained some notoriety for racism in the past.

Amazing Grace

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That sav’d a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

There are a half dozen hymns that are favorites of the constantly-shifting Union Gospel Mission congregation. One is "Amazing Grace." More so than any, it is one visiting churches love use to lead us in song. The UGM congregation sings the words loud and with gusto and demand a final chorus (or two) where the words are the repeated phrase "Praise God, praise God, praise God, praise God ..."

"Amazing Grace" is an amazing song with a beautiful uplifting tune and interesting, profound lyrics. It's no wonder it is near-universally loved by Christians and admired by non-Christians. But there are some instances when some of the older white preachers lead us in singing it when I feel uncomfortable. The end of the first line is "that sav'd a wretch like me!" and I come to feel, from some of the sermons, that the homeless congregation is pointedly being designated as the wretches the hymn is naming.

As is well known these days, due to a Bill Moyers documentary and, more recently, an art-house film called Amazing Grace, the lyrics were inspired by hymn-writer John Newton's mystical, transforming experience while captain of a slave ship that travelled between West Africa and America. In the song while being written, it is the mighty John Newton, and not his cargo, that felt the power of grace -- and was in greatest need of grace -- and was the wretch that experienced conversion.

Of course, the hymn, now, is meant for everyone and it is wonderful that Union Gospel Mission has embraced it. But I do wish I felt that those leading us in song felt humbled and themselves as wretched as we who are being led in singing.

The opening words of the song are interesting; I do wonder what Christians make of them: "Amazing grace; how sweet the sound ..." Why sound, and not feeling or experience?

As many readers of this blog know, bells and gongs are commonplace in Buddhism because they are known to trigger satori. It would seem from Newton's careful, clever lyrics that his experience, too, was triggered by a sound -- likely that of the ship's bell or foghorn.

I believe that grace, cosmic consciousness or enlightment/satori are all the same experience, colored by the tradition one practices. I am sure most Christians would reject this, feeling that God-given grace is unique and far more mighty. I think that that is wrong, that religions have much more in common that we suppose.

It is also of interest that the lyrics in the hymnal that Union Gospel Mission uses are not altogether the ones that Newton wrote. You can see Newton's lyrics in the righthand sidebar at Wikipedia. The Mission hymnal uses the first three of Newton's six verses followed by the "extra verse" written by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

What should a homeless man do with his dry cleaning?

Fast forward to the present ...

I have perhaps a dozen posts for this blog that are planned or in the works, but with the many needs I have for the brief one-hour's time I get online at the library, my homeless story is slow unspooling. There's going to need to be a lot of backfill to tell all I want to say. When I get my laptop, again, hopefully, I'll be able to catch up with where I want to be with this blog.

Today, I choose to write about very current events. Last Wednesday, having finally recovered from the dire, drawn-out effects of food poisoning, I took public transportation to the city of Carmichael to pick up a very nice suit, a sports jacket and dress pants I'd left at the dry cleaners a month ago. These were clothes for me to wear to my mother's funeral and burial that, it turned out, I didn't need since my mother's death had been transformed into "a celebration of Carol" by my sociopathic sister, Carol.

Anyway, being a homeless person shlepping three-hangers weighted with nice dry-cleaned clothes is a little weird. Fortunately, the fierce, swirling winds of the prior two days had abated. And now I needed to deal with my problem: What the hell do I do with these clothes that I'd saved from being sent to Goodwill by the cleaners?

"Homeless central" in metropolitan Sacramento is a place named Loaves & Fishes, colloquially and affectionately known as just "Loaves" by the population it serves. It's town square is a small fenced-in trees-shaded area called Friendship Park and outside it are the offices or rooms of perhaps a dozen homeless-services organizations. One of the orgs is Genesis which offers mental-health counselling and referals. About five days ago, I had met briefly with Vince, an extremely nice, compassionate counsellor there. Perhaps he could hold my clothes for a day or two, I thought. Another option was to ask Jerry who runs the day storage in Loaves' Friendship Park to hold my clothes.

Ultimately, I would need somebody I knew to take the clothes for the month or two it might take for me to get re-established with a job and housing. For all this, my "saviour candidates" were Terry, my high school friend, whose second home is in Mt. Autum, maybe forty miles away, and Steve, my online friend with whom I co-blogged Thoughts Chase Thoughts and who lives in north Sacramento.

For the short term, I decided to foist my clothes off on poor Vince. Day storage had started handing out slips threatening to always discard items that weren't picked up before Friendship Park closed early weekday afternoons. While I knew the discard threat was idle, it perhaps did suggest how unsafe from theft items were in the little storage shed overnight, without Bodhisattva Jerry watching over things.

So, leaving my duffobag outside, I walked in to the Genesis office, holding up my dry cleaning, and asked the receptionist if it might be OK for Genesis to hold them for me for a short spell.

Vince came in from the back office. "Let me check," he said and headed back where he had been.

Suddenly, I became very aware of the four or five people seated in the little waiting area I was in. And it dawned on me how inappropriate it was for me to be asking Vince -- or any homelss service people or organization -- for something extra outside of what they directly do. More so than a teacher-student or boss-employee relationship, there are strictures to be maintained, a gulf to be respected between the lives of the server and the served, the ordinant and the subordinant. A gulf between the homeless-services provider and their targetted population should be particularly wide due both to the aptness of many homeless people to take advantage of others and the liberal orientation of the service providers, making them particularly vunerable to being taken advantage of.

[more to come]

Discovery Park

When I returned to Sacramento [by bus] following my utterly failed suicide effort I immediately tried to check into an inexpensive hotel near where the bus disembarked, in a seedy area of downtown. At the check-in counter, I made the disturbing discovery that my cargo pants did not have my wallet in one of the buttoned or velcro-closed compartments or pockets.

My wallet; my cash [which included most of $150 my friend Terry had wired me when I was in San Fran]; my ID -- everything was missing, gone, gone, gone. Outside, I spotted a policeman, reported my stolen wallet, and asked him what he thought I should do. It was a little after 5pm; he suggested that, if I hurried, I could possibly sleep at the Salvation Army. He told me the way there -- though I knew it -- and after a brisk walk, I was hopeful. But the guy at the door there told me all the beds had been claimed many, many hours before.

"What should I do now?" I asked, hopefully. "I have no idea," he said, curtly.

But walking away from the building, a black man resting on a chair offered an idea: "You can go to the mission; you'd be right on time to claim a bed, there." He added, "See that road." He took me to a point where we could look west along North B Street. It was an undeveloped, uneven road. "Walk to the end of it, then veer right and you'll see it." "So, if I walk a mile or two, I'll be there?" I asked. "Right," he said, "You'll see a bunch of people lying on the street in front of it. That's Union Gospel Mission."

So, lugging my big black oversized duffobag -- or whatever it is -- I walked doubtfully, suspiciously along the black-tarred roadway.

I was suspicious since I saw no raggedy men walking my way. At the end of the road, though, there was an auspicious building, large and octagonal, surely a monument to God.

But as I closed in on it, I saw that the auspicious building belonged to the municipal water department and that next to it was a small water treatment plant. But veering to the right, I found my destination -- a hovel of a place where mostly-unkempt men, a few women and a dog or two were in the road. The people were laughing, cavorting, smoking, spitting and carrying on in front of the fenced mostly-dead-grass yard of a plain-white building, badly in need of paint, Union Gospel Mission.

I was told to go to the cage-window that men were already crowded around for the elbow-nudging tiff to win a bed on a cold night. As a "new guy" I should have been a sure-shot, top-priority bed winner, but I blew it due to my greenhorn ignorance and ended up not getting a bed. I did stay for what I could, though: a rousing gospel service and a fine meal.

Afterward, me and a couple other guys -- Brian and Ed -- were outside, left to figure out our own way to make it through the night. Brian suggested we go to Discovery Park, which was nearby. We could gather sticks and make a fire. Brian told us he had a tin of butane with him.

A short walk from the mission, on that new-moon black-as-tar night, there was this complex of different motels -- there for no apparent reason other than being next to an Interstate 5 exit. And beyond that, Discovery Park, which began as a dark wood out of which we crossed an American River tributary over a damned-impressive underused bridge taking us to a meadow, and beyond that, a campground.

There were a lot of small sticks on the ground, but there were also dead branches that gymnastic Ed climbed the trees to break off. Our efforts seemed to be paying off. There was a steel garbage barrel we could use to contain our warming fire. But without a hole in the barrel we had no air induction and our fire didn't catch so we ended up sleeping as we could in the cold air and on a big cement area to avoid being doused by the sprinkler system. Brian and Ed slept rather well in their sleeping bags. I didn't have one of those, and slept intermittently. I saw many of our visitors that night, which included a man who collected trash and others who passed by who didn't bother us, allowing us to sleep, as we could.

The morning came with a brilliant-blue sky and a brisk breeze. I left Brian and Ed, sleeping, and recrossed the bridge knowing not what I could make of the day.