In Retaliation

I was getting gas at Bear River Casino the other day,  (don’t judge, my parents live in Loleta) when I saw a curious sight.  A young bearded man in an army fatigue jacket was pushing an old toothless woman in a wheelchair down the hill.  They were talking and laughing obviously very pleased with themselves and life in general.  I couldn’t help but smile back at them.  My mind instantly made up their story.  Maybe he was her grandson and he was taking her for a walk, how wonderful that they took so much delight in each other even with their age difference.  How sweet of him to be so considerate of her.  It was a beautiful day for a walk.  Then I thought “don’t be so naive, they had obviously gone to the casino.”  They were obviously poor so maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to spend money on but so what if granny wanted to spend her money on gambling, it was still generous of the young man to take her, and they had obviously had good luck.

About a week later I drove past them on the freeway on my way to Scotia.  They were right before the Main St. Fortuna exit.  My inner monologue was astonished at the distance the young man was willing to push his granny.  I guess they felt they should take advantage of the good weather.  Surely they didn’t make the trip in bad weather, and I had never seen them before.  As before both were smiling, granny was sitting crosslegged in her chair, they must have had good luck again.

Yesterday I was in the Safeway parking lot in Fortuna, when I saw the young man walking across the lot alone.  Hmmm he must have left granny at home.  Then I pulled up to the stop sign and there she was with a cardboard sign that said homeless please help.  oh

This entry was posted on January 30, 2011 at 10:02 am and is filed under Humboldt County with tags homeless. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.