Last weekend as I lay dying, felled by the worst man-cold in the history of sickness and human suffering, my thoughts turned not to mortality and a wasted life. They were of Bubba and Bessy.
B & B are residents of “The Jungle,” an area tucked down in the Sweetwater Valley River. Park on the west side of Plaza Bonita and look toward Interstate 805, which is about three football fields away, and you can see the bamboo and overgrowth that is home to a variety of birds, mammals and reptiles. But you can’t see the makeshift structures that are home to the people who otherwise are called homeless.
Bubba is a puppy clomping around in a near Clydesdale frame and Bessy is black-haired woman with cheekbones that could have been sculpted by Michelangelo. She has lived in The Jungle for years.
They played host and guide to a handfull of surveyors counting the homeless as part of the annual Point-in-Time homeless count lead by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless and organized locally by South Bay Community Services.
While Bessy answered casual questions about her general health and showed the deep scar of a one-time staph infection, Bubba waited for someone to throw a stick into the thick brush so he could retrieve it.
Their home was constructed of discarded wood, door frames, carpeting, security gates — just about anything that would be considered trash by the typically housed. Their home also wasn’t unique, with similar structures hidden in cleared-away pockets of bamboo.
Veteran counter Tim Gonzales said in years past he had counted nearly a dozen free-standing structures in the northeren part of The Jungle; but this time around most of those same homes were gone. There was no telling what might have happened, though it’s likely city crews could have cleared them away.
Gonzales said he’s fascinated by the degree of detail, care and technicality with which some of the homes are built, noting the use of stone pathways, makeshift putting greens, basketball courts and toilets. He pointed out that several structures were on stilts to protect the homes from riverbed flooding. He said there are times he wonders what happened to the people he counted one year but who have seemingly disappeared the next.
That was on Friday morning. Two days later steady rain would fall on the county, including The Jungle, and winds would knock over anything that was not bolted to the Earth’s core.
At home and in bed with an elevated temperature, in the dark, I listened to the wind rattle windows and smash tree branches to the ground. Outside it was wet and cold and windy but inside I was dry and safe and miserable.
But what about Bubba and Bessy? How were they making it through the storm? With or without a fever, how in the world does she survive?
