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Camp Street Bums

Camp Street Bums

    We were known as the Camp Street bums of New Orleans. But we were married in the eyes of God. No one could take away the bonds that held us together. When the day came to an end and we’d filled our alms bags we poured our coins into the one bag we called our bank. Never did we bother to count how much each of us had gathered. What was mine was hers and visa versa.
     But our age was catching up with us. We both had reached our golden seventies and late ones at that. So our pleading wasn’t as energetic as it was in our youth. That is the drawback of being panhandlers. The upside was that people pitied us more as wrinkled old fogies. Yet, who wants to be pitied? Charity should come from a heart of generosity not a gift to the pathetic. Times like these made me wish we’d done the nine to five gig and laid aside a nest egg. But that wasn’t in the cards for us. We were rich in love. That was our treasure chest which we drew from when times got rough. Even hoboes like us needed to give back. Godliness meant more than taking. And today was as good as any other to dip into our pot of gold and return the favors God had bestowed on us.
     So in the spirit of giving, we took a couple of hoboes just like us out to dinner as a Chinese buffet. My wife, Gloria, said to them, “Don’t you just love the steamed vegetables they serve here? Please dig into the California sushi. The avocado filling is heavenly. And you must tank up on the stir-fried string beans.” My wife was a vegan at heart, though our road life made such a diet hard when offered food by strangers. Still, we put our best foot forward and succeeded more often than not in living off of vegetable protein.  Finally and without regret, I paid the bill for the four of us.
     When we emerged into the sun our guest diners smiled and the man handed me a key. He said, “This is to a safety deposit box in the Garden District Bank. Open it and your life on the streets will come to an end. We are the God and Goddess of the ragged folks. No rich person shared with us as you did. We have become disheartened by the mortals of this planet. But you two restored our faith. You probably think we’re just lunatics of the street but do open the box and find your due rewards within.”
      We enter the bank in our raggedy clothes with the customer service man looking at us with a strange squint. But he leads us to the box and we open it to find a US government savings bond worth five million dollars. In an envelope next to the bond is a letter directing us to a real estate agent who can connect us to a home for sale on St. Charles Avenue worth two million dollars. But we buy a home for a quarter of a million dollars and use the rest to build a shelter for the homeless.
      We still don’t buy into our benefactors as supernatural beings, deities, or immortal. They may have been eccentric rich folks but their generosity is what matters. But the proof of their veracity comes when we near the end of this phase of our existence. It had long been our wish to die together at the same time.  Our dream is realized but even more so because we find ourselves transformed into live oak trees in a swamp in the Atchafalaya with our boughs intertwined as a symbol of our immortal love.
Written by goldenmyst
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