Christmas Rakes for the Homeless

(Readers: I have rewritten this Christmas tale from last year to reflect my heightened interest in writing about the homeless.)

A wealthy nuclear family lived in a large home in the fashionable and historic neighborhood of Sellwood in Portland. It was their first year in their dream house. They’d moved in during the winter so they had missed the onslaught of leaves that fell in the fall.

The woman worked in health care billing. The man worked in high tech. There was a boy, age ten, a girl, age eleven. They were spoiled brats, but not in the classic sense. They were part of the new generation of spoiled brats who didn’t display traditional bratty behavior. Their quietly obnoxious behavior manifested itself in a total refusal to do anything to help around the house or yard. They had no chores, no responsibilities. They were sluggards, snot-nosed sloths. They never ventured outside or goofed around in the park or bicycled past the homeless encampment two blocks away. Indeed, the bicycles hung on the wall in the garage and hadn’t been ridden in years. Did they even remember how to ride?

At one point, years ago, the parents had instructed the kids to take out the trash and dust the furniture, but they did the work poorly and then not at all, and the parents finally gave up. The kids were so indifferent to anything except their digital gadgetry that they forgot to feed their hamsters and the hamsters starved to death. The kids didn’t cry.

The house sat on a double lot. There was a fancy outdoor kitchen, fire pit and home theater. In the yard grew towering maples, oaks and a cherry tree that hosted a half dozen squirrels. In the spring, a million beautiful leaves clung to the trees. In the fall, they dropped on the lawn. Boy, did they drop. The parents couldn’t believe the accumulation. They wondered what to do about it.

Rake the leaves themselves? Or make the kids? Forget it. The kids had never raked leaves in their lives and the parents didn’t own any rakes.

The parents called a half dozen landscape outfits. Sorry, all booked.

No one wanted to rake leaves in Portland anymore. So the leaves spread on the yard like a blanket, then a mattress. The parents watched with mild distress. The kids didn’t notice a damn thing.

Thanksgiving arrived and Grandfather came to dinner. He was an interesting man, and his son was definitely not a chip off the old block. Grandfather lived in an old farmhouse on 40 acres outside of Estacada, roughly 20 miles southeast of Portland. In other words, rural Oregon.

He’d been a high school social studies teacher and football coach at the local junior high for 30 years. He wasn’t all that dynamic a teacher or a successful coach, but he was a kind and decent man and he cared for his students, particularly when Estacada’s timber economy bottomed out and then disappeared forever.

After retiring, he remained in the area and expected to live many more happy years with his wife. Then she came down with cancer, died quickly, and he was alone on the property.

Grandfather then had choices. Drown in grief and hit the sauce. Turn on Fox News and become deranged. Play with firearms. Or continue to engage with the world with positive movement as he had as a husband, parent, teacher, coach and citizen of Estacada. He did, after all, have a son, a daughter in-law and grandchildren, a family to live for and support in some material and emotional fashion. Thus, he chose engagement and didn’t let his mind or body or property go to seed.

Now about his only child. He was a middling athlete and went on to earn a degree in computer science at Oregon State University. He landed a job in Portland writing software his father didn’t really grasp, a job that did absolutely nothing to enrich the world beyond enriching corporations. He was a nice man, kind of feckless, who married a blasé woman he’d met via an algorithm. They brought the aforementioned brats into existence with about as much passion as it took to complete an online form. They bought the dream home in Sellwood and flew to corporate resorts for vacations.

The brats paid a visit to the farmhouse every now and then, but the older they got, the less they went. Grandfather had tried interesting the grand kids in work around the farmhouse, but they were utterly indifferent and fell down a lot. The son hadn’t been like that growing up. He performed all manner of chores around the property, from splitting wood to mowing fields. He liked it, but surely didn’t pass this trait on to his children. They’d never done a lick of manual labor in their lives.

In recent years, the holiday tradition developed that Grandfather visited the family for Thanksgiving and Christmas. He used to host the family at the farmhouse with a real tree and a turkey cooked in the oven, but the kids bitched privately to their parents that Grandfather didn’t have any Wi-Fi and they didn’t want to go there anymore, so now it was games on tablets around the table and a pre-cooked turkey with all the pre-cooked trimmings purchased from a swank market. Oh joy!

Another tradition had developed for the family. Grandfather used to pick out thoughtful gifts for the grand kids, like tool boxes, rain jackets and bicycles, but they were all a bust and the parents suggested Grandfather nix the presents and dispense cold hard cash in a nice card. He agreed and the amount gradually rose over the years until this Christmas it stood at $300 a brat.

Thanksgiving. Grandfather showed up early as he always did and drank a dark beer while watching some NFL team trounce the Lions on television. The grand kids came down to greet him when he showed up, but then quickly raced back up to their rooms to separately watch movies.

The parents toiled in the kitchen. Grandfather stood up from the couch and walked over to the big window that overlooked the yard. He couldn’t believe how high the leaves had piled up. They were practically shin high! It was a lazy homeowner’s disgrace! The grass was going to die!

Grandfather strolled into the kitchen and casually mentioned how good everything looked outside. The son said he needed to get the leaves hauled away but he couldn’t find a service. Grandfather almost suggested the kids rake the leaves, but he held his tongue.

He excused himself and said he was going to take a walk before the feast. He donned his coat, opened the door, and started walking down the sidewalk. He passed the garage and stopped. He turned around, moved forward, opened a gate, walked into the yard, and onto layer cake of leaves. He found a door to the garage and entered. Automatic lights popped on overhead. He surveyed the interior of the garage and could not believe his eyes—not a single yard tool. Not even a broom!

A quiet fury, then disillusion, crept into Grandfather. He left the garage and began pacing the sidewalk. He needed to clear his head and think. There was no way he was giving those brats more cash for Christmas! You had to be a good boy or girl for Santa to deliver the bounty. That was the rule.

Then Grandfather had a Grinch moment like when Grinch heard Whoville singing after he’d ransacked their Christmas. His heart grew and grew. He felt great empathy for his grand kids. They needed help and mentoring. They needed a good country belt lickin’ as well, but that was from another era.

A super great Christmas notion walloped Grandfather! It bowled him over. But it all depended on his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren doing absolutely nothing about the leaves from Thanksgiving until Christmas. Grandfather laughed. It was in the bag!

He returned to the house, ate his meal, and drank a couple more beers while watching the Cowboys game by himself on the couch. The Cowboys, his favorite team, lost on a last second field goal, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that Grandfather would brave Black Friday madness in person tomorrow and buy real gifts for his grand kids. The days of gratuitous cash were over.

It was hardly Black Friday madness for Grandfather. He drove seven minutes to the Estacada hardware store, about the last business on Main Street that wasn’t boarded up, walked inside, and said hello to the store’s owner, a man he’d known his entire adult life. He ambled down an aisle, turned right, then left, and there they were! Rakes! Rakes! Rakes! He selected five old school models with wooden handles and metal tines. No plastic for my kin! The brats must hear the soothing sound of metal trilling through grass!

A rake for each member of the family so they could rake together like American families used to do every fall. They came in red, green and black. Hell. It was Christmas so he chose three red and two green. He was paying cash at the counter when he saw the section of dangling work gloves, including some real leather beauties. He thought about throwing them in for the kids, but then changed his mind. Screw it! Let my grand kids get blisters!

The owner of the hardware store inquired: five rakes? You’re only one old man. Grandfather erupted in laughter and shook like a bowl full of jelly. He told the owner to throw in a wheelbarrow, too. No goddamn leaf blowers to blow the leaves to the street for the city to pick up. Leaf blowers were the handiwork of Satan. Leaves would would be raked to the curb or hauled out with the wheelbarrow.

His Black Friday effort took all of ten minutes and kept most of the money in Estacada. Now all he had to do was wait for Christmas and pray it didn’t rain. And pray he did.

Grandfather checked the forecast religiously in the days preceding Christmas. All was looking good. Cold and dry. No rain whatsoever. He laughed. God was on his side!

On Christmas morning, Grandfather loaded his truck with the rakes and wheelbarrow, stuffed his pocket with cash like he always did for emergencies, and drove to Portland. He was in a merry, merry mood, and turned on the oldies radio station and grooved to the cornball holiday hits as he passed fields and forests. The Clackamas River was running with its usual frosty grandeur and Grandfather noticed a couple of fishermen in boats and on the banks casting for salmon. When Oregon men and women stopped fishing on Christmas morning, either sober, stoned, or drunk, then Oregon was dead.

Grandfather was half an hour early so he parked a block away from the Sellwood house and decided to take a walk down to the park to admire the creek and ducks.

On the way there, he walked into a homeless encampment, right across the street from an apartment complex and the park. He was shocked and saddened by what he saw. In Portland? In Oregon? On Christmas morning? These were my fellow citizens. He’d seen a few zonked homeless people wandering around downtown Estacada but no encampments (they were out in the woods). This was something beyond his comprehension. Had something passed him by? Had something passed his beloved state by?

Grandfather counted seven battered RV or fifth wheels, three sagging vehicles, four tents, one tarp and pallet shanty, and an igloo dog house that was serving as a domicile. A dog house!

He noted the inexplicable accumulations of objects. He noticed bicycles and bicycle parts by the dozens. Trash was piled up here and there or strewn around.

Many of the residences displayed Christmas decorations. That walloped Grandfather. It broke his heart, but also bolstered his heart, because decorations meant someone still cared and had energy and spirit. He saw hope in that.

Two older men sat in dining room chairs outside one of the RVs, playing on their phones. The RVs’ name was The Diplomat. A small black dog rested between the men. A small fire in a barbecue crackled. The men sipped malt liquor from cans.

They hailed Grandfather and said hello, Merry Christmas!

If you’ve ever been wished Merry Christmas by a homeless man or woman, it is a strange and wonderful feeling indeed, and it felt strange and wonderful to Grandfather so he wished them right back.

Grandfather stopped in front of the fire. He warmed his hands. He asked how they were doing. They told him, not too bad. It’s Christmas!

They introduced themselves as Larry and Frank, they were brothers. The dog’s name was Milton, after the poet. Larry and Frank had grown up in a house not too far from the encampment. They had a lot of nice Christmases in that house.

And here they were 40-something years later, homeless in their childhood neighborhood.

Grandfather pondered. It made no sense to him. What had happened to these men? He wanted to know, but he didn’t ask. He should have. We must know these things in America.

Larry and Frank offered Grandfather a snort of malt liquor. He declined but thanked them

Some geese flew overhead. They honked. There might have even been a sliver of a Christmas carol in the honking.

Grandfather got an idea, a semi absurd, semi possibly great notion. He pitched the idea to Larry and Frank.

They were in. It was arranged. It was going down in a couple of hours.

No malt liquor on the job, said Grandfather.

No problem, said the brothers.

Grandfather walked for a few more minutes and then knocked on his son’s door. It was high noon. His son and daughter-in-law greeted him and they all wished each other Merry Christmas in perfunctory manner. The brats were still in their pajamas, lounging on the couch, playing with their shiny new gadgets unwrapped earlier that morning. They sort of looked up at Grandfather and said hello and Merry Christmas. All they really cared about was how many smackers were inside the cards they never bothered to read.

The usual routine was to unwrap gifts first and then nibble the stringy ham and soupy scalloped potatoes from Costco. But not this year. Grandfather insisted they eat before he gave his special gift to his darling grandchildren. The brats perked up hearing this: special? More dough?

So the family ate and the adults talked while the kids played a game on their phones that entailed murdering and dismembering thuggish elves and putting a pistol to the head of Santa’s scantily-clad mistress. It was all in good fun, though.

The meal concluded. The brats were losing their minds in anticipation of the money. At last they gathered around the fake tree and Grandfather pulled out the cards from his back pocket. He handed them to the brats and they ripped the cards apart.

NO GREEN! They stared up at Grandfather and their lips trembled. They stared up at their parents. The parents were mystified. Grandfather told them to read the cards. They read the cards and didn’t bother holding back their disappointment. The gifts were in the garage. Go out and get them. What the hell? No cash! The old codger probably bought us a tent or sleeping bag! Forget that! We don’t camp!

Out to the garage the brats sulked and skulked. Grandfather and parents followed. The son had a feeling his father was up to some Christmas mischief like those incidents he pulled when the son was growing up. These pranks always proved memorable.

Grandfather directed the brats to an area where the rakes leaned up against a wall. The wheelbarrow was right beside them. The grandchildren were confused. They’d never seen a rake before and didn’t know what was happening. The son knew what was happening. He right then and there had a casual epiphany that revealed how he and his wife had been terrible parents in the formative years of their children’s lives. He said nothing.

The grand kids remained frozen. Grandfather grabbed the rakes and held them up. These are for raking leaves. He handed the rakes to the grand kids. They held them like they were sticks of dynamite with the fuses lit. They didn’t know what to do, so Grandfather asked for the boy’s rake. He demonstrated proper hand position and expert raking motion, then handed it back to the boy. The grandchildren took up their rakes. Grandfather said they should all go out to the yard. It was time for a job. The son rolled the wheelbarrow out and his wife followed him in silence.

They all went out of the garage and stood in a circle on the mattress of leaves. In fact, a few strays were falling at that very moment, the last ones of the season. Grandfather asked for the girl’s rake. This is how you rake leaves. He demonstrated and raked some leaves into a pile. Once we rake them up into piles, we load them into the wheelbarrow and dump them in the street. The city comes along and picks them up.

The grandchildren looked at him in disbelief. They were ready to bawl. Grandfather told them the rakes and wheelbarrow were their Christmas presents (same for the husband and wife), useful tools for a job that he would pay each grand child $500 to perform, if their performance met his high standards of leaf raking and disposal. He figured the yard would need roughly three hours of raking. The weather was perfect and the offer was only good for this day. Right now. Take it or leave it.

Grandfather asked if they wanted the job. No raking, no money. Simple as that.

They hesitated. They consulted. They argued. Their parents left them alone because they didn’t know what to say.

As this went on, Grandfather pulled out his phone and texted to Larry: it’s on. Come around to the yard.

The grand kids said no. They didn’t feel like raking on Christmas. Their parents said nothing.

Larry, Frank and Milton materialized.

The parents looked puzzled.

Grandfather introduced them as Larry, Frank and Milton. He said they were homeless men, brothers, who lived in the encampment nearby. This was their dog. They had just met and Grandfather had hired them to rake leaves in case the grand kids didn’t want to. A leaf-free lawn was going to be his present to the family and he’d prefer to spend the cash on his relatives, but if they didn’t want it, so be it. This was his backup plan. The damn leaves were getting raked up no matter what.

The wife started to say something, but the son shot her a look and she didn’t say a word. The old man was on roll so let him keep rolling. He was alive and engaged with the world and they were not. The son knew that now.

Nothing from the grand kids. Grandfather told Larry and Frank to pick out a rake and get to work. Larry chose red, Frank chose green. They staked out positions on the yard, and started raking with a strategy in mind. They knew how to rake. They’d raked ten million leaves in their Sellwood childhood.

Brother and sister verged on tears. They conferred. Now they wanted the job! Please! Grandfather told them to get work clothes and sneakers on and get back here in five minutes or no job. They didn’t have any work clothes but they didn’t know that. They sprinted away screaming like Puritans at a witch burning.

The son was smiling, nodding. He didn’t say a word to his father. He did tell his wife he had to make a quick trip to the big box retailer to pick up something he forgot. This being capitalist America, the store would naturally be open on Christmas Day and paying their employees an extra 15 cents an hour.

Five minutes later, the grandchildren were geared up and ready to do battle. Grandfather told them to report to Larry and Frank and receive instructions. He handed them rakes and off they trudged.

Grandfather knew how he would coax these Freddy freeloaders into extra hard work. He grabbed the remaining rake and began dancing with it like it was Ginger Rodgers to his Fred Astaire. Then he held the rake like a tommy gun and blasted the coppers like James Cagney did in White Heat. You’ll never take me alive! yelled Grandfather in his best gangster voice. The kids were dumbstruck by his strange voice. Larry and Frank laughed.

The grand kids quickly got into it. Larry and Frank encouraged them. Milton even pitched in by nosing leaves into small piles.

Grandfather raked as well, off in a far corner of the yard, and ordered his thoughts during the labor. Raking can do that.

Work progressed. The son pulled up in his sedan. He carried two rakes out to the yard and leaned them against a picnic table. His wife gave him a smile. They went inside to change their clothes. The grand kids kept raking. They got a rhythm going. That happens when you rake leaves.

At one point, Grandfather instructed the grand kids to try out a James Cagney-gangster insult on him. He ripped off one, C’mon you filthy geezer, get to work and then it was their turn. They gave it a try and cracked up before finishing. They tried again and pulled it off. It was such glorious fun! Then they riffed on their own. Hey you old fart wizard, fork over the loot. Hey you senile coot in diapers, cough up the cash. Grandfather yukked it up with every new improvisation. Larry and Frank joined in the madness.

The parents showed up in work clothes and they went to work. They raked as a family. They raked with two homeless men and a dog. The piles grew. They implemented Larry and Frank’s unique system of raking and piling of leaves. Every American family used to have a unique system when American families raked leaves together in the fall football afternoons. They don’t anymore.

Two hours elapsed. They had created two enormous piles the size of haystacks. The grand kids stood in front of the piles and glowed with admiration. Then on pure instinct, the boy and girl sprinted toward a pile and dove in headlong and screaming. They tunneled through, stood up, and dove in again. Milton plowed in, barking, frenzied. The dad joined them. Mom was next.

Grandfather watched it all smiling. A few minutes later he called the grand kids over. They were soaked with sweat and panting. While the parents tidied up the piles, Grandfather peeled off five Ben Franklins for each kid. They rubbed and kissed the dollars with delight like Tiny Tim might have done with a toy, had he ever received one.

He next paid Larry and Frank 500 clams each. Milton got a $50.

Grandfather said he was starving. How about some leftovers outside? The mom thought it a grand idea.

Larry and Frank shook hands with Grandfather, waved to everyone, and started walking away with Milton.

The kids wouldn’t stand for it. They asked their father if Larry and Frank could stay for leftovers. Especially Milton!

Dad said yes, of course, and went inside with his wife to whip the meal together.

Larry, Frank, Grandfather and his grand kids sat at a picnic table.

Grandfather asked the brothers if they would share their story of how they became homeless.

Once the meal was set out on the table, they did.