I grew up in a fairly small town in the bay area. A town that is most well known for things like; an oil refinery (thank you shell), a guy named Joltin' Joe, the birth of the martini (fuck off Frisco, the martini is ours), the only McDonald's in the country that is closed on the weekend, and Hobo's. And some great Hobo's at that.
We had the guy that would ride his bike against on coming traffic swerving back and forth, an Abe Lincoln lookalike, a guy some of us called 007 (some I think called him McGuiver) because he could make anything out of anything (not really, it was mostly piles of trash, but he was convinced), a guy with more bum names than any other bum anywhere (Bread Man, Mr. Martinez, Johnny Woods & Creeper just to name a few) that used to do things like wrap himself in chains and walk back forth on the main drag through town or sit on busy street corners with his shirt off praying with more enthusiasm than most priests have. (Subsequently Creeper, that was the one I always went with, was actually a really nice guy. Yes, I have held a real conversation with him and he is extremely nice and far more normal than you would imagine). And then there was Ula. Ula was maybe the most well known of the Hobo community, probably due to her extreme eccentricities. She would do stuff like offer unsolicited sex advice, rip the hair from her head, pull down her pants in public, fight with sign posts, and so on and so on. Ula was a classic. An Icon of the town. No one knew her actual story. There were rumors galore about her pre-hobo life, but no one actually knows the truth that I know of. And no one ever will. Ula was found dead this past Friday morning in a lot next to a liquor store and and a Harley shop.
In most towns across the country the homeless folks are just a huge nuisance to the white and blue collars. Not in our little town. I honestly think the homeless in Martinez have it better than most others across the nation. We were pretty kind to them. Sure there were the raging hormonal days of high school when we would ridicule them, but there was never any bum bashing, or killing, or anything really all that devastating to their livelihood. That's probably why most of them have been in the town for longer than I have been alive. It's like the Malibu beach club of the bum community. And it's too bad that bums get such a bad rap. Sure they can be annoying as all hell, they stink, they look like shit, and they really serve no purpose other than our own fucked up enjoyment. But they aren't all that bad to live around. At least not in 'Tinez. They never solicit, they don't harass, they don't rob. They may snort the occasional line of crank, but hey, we are (or at least used to be) the crank capitol of the country. Would you expect anything less. We all have our vices.
I don't really have a point to this little story, other than that Ula will be missed. By a lot of the town. I wasn't there yesterday, but apparently all of downtown Martinez was in mourning over her loss. I mean where else will you find a town that mourns the loss of one of the local Bums? Nowhere, thats where. Maybe it's all the refinery fumes we breathe (and as a side note the site that Shell occupies was once being considered by Stanford as the site for their campus. I guess BIG oil trumped education in the bidding war), or maybe we are just a community of really nice caring people. Or Maybe it's the entertainment the bums provide. Who knows. But the town will never be the same without Ula roaming the streets. So Ula, I hope the streets in whatever afterlife you went onto are nice and warm and made out of marshmallows with hot chocolate flowing through the gutters (I don't know, that just sounds nice).
Now it's time for the town to elect a new Bum King or Bum Queen. Personally I'm hoping that Creeper comes out of retirement.
Eradicating Sanity
I'm just trying to get the voices out of my head
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