Nowhere to go

Multitude of problems make life difficult as the homeless struggle to keep it together

By MICHAEL R. SHEA
mshea@modbee.com

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TURLOCK -- Mick Matthews has a lyrical Australian accent, and when he talks -- which he does a lot these days -- his thick walrus mustache flaps back and forth in the breeze. He's a short man with a stout hawk nose and rectangular, steel-framed glasses. Sometimes his head is shaved; sometimes it's an inch or two of messy black brush. He's 54 years old, and when he talks, it's usually about homelessness.

Homelessness, Mick likes to say, is all he's thought about since Dec. 15, 2005, when he moved from a friend's couch to a shelter, then to a dirty old mattress under the Golden State Boulevard overpass.

Mick has become the unofficial spokesman for Turlock's homeless community.

Struck down by a stroke in April 2005 and without insurance, the 30-year truck driver spent his $200,000 savings on medical bill after medical bill. Lying half-paralyzed in a hospital bed, he lost his big rig when he missed a $3,500 truck payment. His apartment went next, then his spot on the friend's couch.

He moved into the city's cold-weather emergency shelter — a much-needed roof while navigating the bureaucratic labyrinth of Social Security. But he lost that, too, when the shelter closed in April, and he moved to the mattress under the Golden State overpass.

But on a Sunday morning, Mick isn't thinking about homelessness or the apartment he may get if approved for disability.

Mick is thinking about not falling off his bicycle.

Earlier in the morning, he got in a fight with his girlfriend and sought the advice of half a bottle of Early Times bourbon. Wobbly, he makes it from his new campsite in a field off West Avenue, down High Street, cutting through downtown to East Avenue and into a friend's apartment at a low-income senior complex.

"I need to apologize, sir," he says at the door. "I'm a little inebriated this morning."

"You are? Again?" says Mike Parker, letting him in the door.

"Absolutely plunkered!"

Mike Parker is a 65-year-old former engineer who teaches at Turlock Adult School. Six feet 2 inches tall and 320 pounds, he was a right tackle on Turlock High School's 1957 league championship football team and later a state shot put champ. Though never homeless himself, Parker picked up the cause after a summer of living and working in Justiceville-Homeless USA — a now-defunct dome city for the homeless in downtown Los Angeles.

"I've dealt with these emergencies before," Parker says through a sideways grin, filling a mug with hot coffee and Kahlúa. "Me, personally, I tend to fear inebriation," he says, pouring himself the same thing. "I have a phobia. When I get inebriated, bad stuff happens to me, if you know what I mean."

Parker's roommate, "Blue Bike" Mike Roark, who spent four years homeless, returns from the store with 24-ounce cans of beer. He cracks one and Sammy, Parker's small parrot, squawks.

Mick, Mike Parker and Blue Bike Mike are an unlikely trinity of letter writers. Letters to the editor and photocopies of mass-mailings to City Council members and railroad companies are pasted to the wall near Parker's desk. Most weekends, the three meet to discuss new ideas to empower or shelter the city's homeless population. On the front burner is a plan to establish a KOA-style campground at which homeless people legally could pitch a tent or lay out a bedroll.

"Look here," Mick says, "homelessness isn't always because of employment problems or drug abuse or alcoholism. Look at me, now, I sound like a hypocrite, but there are other factors. Like me, I may seem here all the time, but physically, because of the stroke, in here," — he points at his head — "I'm not here all the time. I'm left-handed and I still can't hold anything for any length of time with my left hand."