Homeless Veteran Interviews Revisited: Fred Part 2

Homeless Vets: An Interview with Fred (cont.)

This is the continuation of the interview, published yesterday, with Fred, a resident of the Loyola House in Pembroke.

During the interview with Fred, time and again I found myself thinking, ‘This is the end, this is where he finds Loyola, it has to be now.’ I was constantly wrong.

I suppose the thing about these interviews that has been most surprising to me is that I can still be surprised. Before I sit down with these guys, I already know a little bit about them even if they just filled me in ten minutes before we turn on the tape recorder. I always think I have a basic understanding of the trip from point A to point B when he starts talking, but I’ve been wrong every time. Maybe that’s a symptom of knowing how the story ends before you know how it begins. Whatever it is, I have to keep reminding myself that what I think I know always reflects the truth as I want it to be, never as it really is.

With that in mind, we continue:

So then you…what next?

Let’s see..where did I work? Well, I got custody of my son. My wife my son and myself lived in Niagara Falls. He was in kindergarten/first grade. His mother came back from Florida and it just seemed that he wasn’t happy…when he was born…let me back up…
Before my son was born, his mother didn’t want him. She’s American Indian, Tuscarora. She told me she could never have him because a person of color like myself….her friends and relatives would shun her for having a black child. I begged her to have the child and she said she would. I told her I would take him, I would raise him myself and she agreed to that. I don’t know if that had anything to do with the relationship they had in the very early years of his life but after he was born, he wouldn’t accept a bottle from her. He didn’t want to be fed, he didn’t want to be hugged and she felt really bad about it.
I was going to school, I was going to work and when I came home, that was when he’d get up and unwind, he’d finally relax. I had to be mom and dad at that time.

When was he born?

1985, this was prior to the Marine Corps. I didn’t go into the Marine Corps until I was 23. I wanted to make sure I was finished having fun. I wanted to be sure I was ready to hunker down and do the right thing; it was a career move. Like I said I spent my whole life thinking, ‘I’m going in the military, the Marine Corps.’ I went to the recruiter and told him if you can get me out of here now, yesterday, I’m yours.

So, at this point you’ve got custody of your son and you’re in Niagara Falls. This is in the mid 90′s?

Yeah, ’91-’92. Amiko came, my wife Amiko. My son didn’t seem so happy and he was a really happy child.

Fred’s narrative drops back to 1985-1986 here, he’s not done talking about his son’s early years.

There was something about when my son’s mother discovered he was reacting to her in such a way that he didn’t want a lot of things from her…affection, whatever, she felt really bad. Her words to me were pretty much, ‘It shouldn’t be that way, I carried him for nine months. Why doesn’t he like me, why doesn’t he want a bottle, a diaper change?’
Well, she left me and she took him with her. I hadn’t seen him since he was about five years old.

Back to 1991

By that time, he was with her for about three years and that was pretty much all he knew was her and that bond was evident. He especially didn’t want this other woman [Amiko] in his life. So, being the father that I am, I felt that his…his happy healthy was important, he’s a really spirited kid. She came back from Florida and I opted to allow her to retain custody again. I saw him periodically.

Did she go back to Florida?

No, she stayed in Niagara Falls, but she disappeared and she didn’t let me know where she was at.

After that me and Amiko split up and she went back to Japan. Upon finding out that I couldn’t move there…that really damaged my spirit, [knowing] I couldn’t be with her again. I really loved her. She was a great inspiration and a wonderful woman. After she left I kinda…went into a slump. I tried to move on. I dibbled and dabbled in a few different things, drugs, alcohol. That’s just a downhill spiral. I think I kind of blamed a lot of things that happened to me on her not being there, on my dad not being there.
Me and my dad were best friends. He died just before she arrived so she never got a chance to meet him. Her arriving, it was an avenue for me to open back up again because I was already closing up in the absence of my father.

When she left I had no one, it felt like I had no one. Such is life.

When she left, like I said I went on a downward spiral. My headaches got worse, I wasn’t working. I was just surviving. I wasn’t even living, I was just surviving. I had child support payments. I wasn’t able to pay and survive at the same time. (sighs)
I’d get a job and shortly after starting work, because my headaches were so intense at the time, I’d lose the job. I’d be down for a while but when I felt myself coming back to normal and the headaches would subside, I’d seek out another job. I had never had a problem finding a job, never in my life. I could finda job at the drop of a dime. So I’d get another job, then the headaches and I’d lose it…find another job…the headaches…then I’d lose it. It just kept going on and on and on and on. I left town.

At one point I thought if I left town I would pick myself up. I’d get away from the drugs, get away from the alcohol, things like that. I moved to South Carolina…Charleston. I found out the expenses down there were substantially more than they were up here and I was going down there with a meager retirement pension. I tried to get a room for a month and I’d figure out how I was gonna eat later. As long as I had a roof I figured I’d do well. If I had a roof, I had a place to work from.

I got robbed as soon as I got down there.

I ended up in a mission, actually a men’s shelter. A couple days later I ended up in a place called the Good Samaritan Mission. I ended up working for the director. I did cooking, interior/exterior remodeling, laid floors, remodeled his porches, trailers…he had several homes that he housed people in. I was pretty much his maintenance guy.

It was a christian based mission and I was hungry for something. Spirituality was my answer. I became one of his parishioners. We attended many functions, television, radio…We did Thanksgivings and things like that in huge parking lots for the community with big trailers. It was decent, I met some really wonderful people.

At this point, Fred gets very quiet and it’s nearly impossible to hear clearly what he said into the tape recorder. He told a story about his artwork, designing a business card for a Reverend Avery, attending different fundraisers and an eventual falling out with the director of the mission. He chose not to go into detail on that final subject because there were other people involved.

I opted to go back to Myrtle Beach, the same hotel. I had met the manager and a couple people that worked there when I was there before and told ‘em I’d be back. I used my retirement to get a room and found a job. I worked at an A&P (smiles), I hadn’t seen one since I was a child, but they have A&P’s down south still. So I worked at A&P and I worked for a temp agency. I worked for a builder. I worked at Spyglass Golf Course. I tried to become employed at the hotel but, for some reason, they wouldn’t allow me.
In January, the rates went up from $350 a month to seven hundred and some change…$720? The next month it went up to $1300.

What was the room like?

Microwave, bed, sofa. Some rooms had kitchenettes, but mine didn’t.

So pretty much a studio apartment?

Yeah, but without the kitchen. It was right in the heart of mid-Myrtle, not south or north. 26th and Ocean Boulevard. Let’s see, I worked for a builder then. After the rent went up so high, I couldn’t maintain and the headaches had started again. I couldn’t maintain employment and the room. The owners wouldn’t give breaks, they were real sticklers.
So, then it was the same thing headache, headache, headache…pick up a job, lose it because of the headaches. It’s been my nemesis, so to speak, for a very long time.

So you left South Carolina and came back to Niagara Falls?

Yeah

What year was that?

Oh, God. That’s the thing with these headaches, you know. After having a headache for so long, time doesn’t really mean a whole lot because all the time there’s a headache. I’ve done a lot of things and I’ve tried to put it in chronological order. I know i could if I tried, but because of the headaches…it throws me off.

I try to persevere and I may fall down a lot of times. It’s been adversity that put me in a lot of places, but a lot of places I’ve been, I’ve fallen in crap and come out smellin’ like roses.. it was because of adversity that this all has happened, even being at Loyola. Here i am again. (laughs) This is the rose-smell that you get when you fall in the crap. I’m really blessed. I’ve learned a lot…I’ve learned a whole lot.

That’s the end of this portion of the interview. The third and final installment will come tomorrow. The last piece will certainly be the longest. Fred’s story continues for another fifteen difficult years or so before things start to go right for him, but when it goes right, it goes right all the way.