American’s have the “lowest expectation levels of any society in the Western world.”  These were Ralph Nader’s sentiments soon after Obama’s electoral landslide victory.  In three days, in a three mile radius, in three lives I witnessed the veracity of his assessment.

On the eve of day one I walked out of the church office planted between Main & Fannin in Houston, Texas.  The woman I am dating and the sexton flanked me as we ambled toward the car.  A screech pierced the darkness  filling the night air with paranoid obscenities.  Through the   shadows of the streetlights I saw a man slogging down the middle of the road where my car was parked.  

As a Chaplain who has worked in psychiatric settings I recognized the nature of the utterances.  My awareness sharpened like the point of a diamond as my body  instinctively readied itself for fight or flight.  The sexton spoke the man’s name forcefully and walked toward him.  In an instant the tortured soul snapped into a calm reality.  As they conversed we drove away safely, our pulse rates on a steady decent.

Late morning on day three I went to the Chevron at the intersection of Southmore and 288 to buy a Houston Chronicle.  A man with a toboggan and green jacket quizzically studied me.  I took note but averted eye contact.  He approached me as I left the convenience store.  “Does a blond haired woman drive this car sometime?”  “Yes” I replied.  “This is my car, but she has been driving it while I was on a trip.”  “I knew it” exclaimed the man.  “I recognized the red car with the bird droppings!  She is a real nice lady.”    

Presenting a sqeegee from the service station the man offered to make my windows sparkle like new.  He needed seven bucks for the day.  “I have been keeping your car clean while you were gone” he assured me.  In the “God works in mysterious ways” category, I had been thinking 5 minutes earlier, “I need to clean that bird crap off of my windshield.”  My gut told me he was an honorable person.  I agreed to let him do the job.

Jonathan introduced himself as he swabbed all of my windows including the moon roof.  He told me how he and his wife are homeless and have been living under the bridge around the corner.  He confessed that they were mentally ill, but were “getting it together.”  The young man who does the custodial work around the Chevron saw what was going on and angrily demeaned Jonathan.  “Put that squeegee back where you found it BOY.”  My body felt  an ancestral jolt from toe to brow emanating from my white Great, Great Grandfather.  Both Jonathan and the custodian are black. 

The transaction went according to homeless Hoyle. Jonathan needed ten dollars now so he could pay five back to an elderly man he borrowed from down the street.  He asked me to take him to his house.  When we arrived I gave Jonathan a ten spot.  He bounded back to the car jubilant that he had settled his debt with the infirm man.  “God won’t bless me if I take advantage of old people.”  

Jonathan asked me to drop him off at his new digs, an abandoned house.  He reported that the owner was letting him stay there in exchange for working on the place.  After letting me know he needed some size ten and a half shoes we parted as Jonathan gave me the culturally coded benediction, “God bless you.”

It is nighttime now on day three and I am back at the church office.  I bump into “Lamar” the sexton.  I asked him about the incident from a few evenings ago.  He knew the man from helping him at a homeless shelter nearby.  “It was wild how he snapped and became a totally different person when you called out his name” I said.  “Yes”, Lamar answered, “that’s the way he is when he takes his medication, but as soon as he gets on his own he doesn’t take it all the time.  Sometimes he sleeps behind the church, by the bank, or the office next door.”

Lamar then began to tell me how his adult son is locked up in Angola prison for life because he is mentally ill.  “He never hurt anyone or committed a violent crime.  It was  one of those three strikes and your out laws.”  

“Our mental health care is so primitive,” I stated flatly.  “I remember when Reagan turned people out from the mental hospitals onto the streets.  We have never recovered from that.  I wonder what percentage of the homeless and those in prison are mentally ill?  They need treatment not the streets or jail.”  Lamar agreed with resignation.  

He then confided in me that he wanted to become a Minister but the money he borrowed for his son’s care and his own health issues have kept him from it.  I encouraged Lamar,  “At 62 you are still young, don’t give up on your vision for the ministry.”  With a warm gaze we parted.

In the interview I heard with Ralph Nader he recounts a story about Eugene Debs at the end of his career.  Debs was a great labor leader who fought desegregation and the giant industrialists.  A reporter asked, “What’s your greatest regret?”  Debs replied, “My greatest regret is that, under our Constitution, the American people can have almost anything they want, but it just seems like they don’t want much of anything at all.” 

Earlier this day Jonathan the window washer eyeballed me and said with firm optimism, “Chuck, there are worse places to live than under a bridge.  I could be in prison.” 

I agree with all that is within me.  There is one place that is worse than living under a bridge.  The place of terminally low expectations.

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