Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reports that 653,000 Americans were homeless in 2023. That’s a 12% increase from 2022 and a 48% increase from 2015. Without going into the whys and wherefores of homelessness (for that, see my article on amazon.com, “Obstacles on the Homeless Road”), the point is that we have a lot of homeless people, their numbers are increasing, and barring pogroms and reeducation camps — which, frankly would come as no real surprise to me in our near future — their continued existence and social relevance will have to be acknowledged. Official action will only follow private action — take lynching, for example.
I bring it up because I myself am homeless, and recently experienced acts of discrimination and attempted intimidation that I can’t let go unaddressed.
After a few miserable hours of attempting to sleep in the Walmart parking lot at night, I usually head north to the Pioneer Park Sports Complex on Commerce Drive. It has shaded (if extraordinarily uncomfortable) concrete picnic tables where I can read, write or use my camp stove, plenty of trash cans, and clean bathrooms. I have several friends who work at the park, and others who live nearby who allow me to use their shower when needed. The local Fry’s has cheap fried chicken around lunchtime. The park is a convenient place to spend time.
The restrooms by the pickleball courts are a blessing to someone with IBS like myself, but just as significantly, they boast a water-bottle fill station and a shaded wooden bench outside. Till recently I frequented the spot, and why wouldn’t I? It’s a public area, and everybody has to be somewhere. In addition to pickleballers and myself, these facilities are used by trail hikers, horseback riders, dog walkers, bicyclists and ROTC from the local college, periodically congregating in the parking area. It’s a public facility in a public park.
On Sunday, May 26 at 7:30pm I was accosted by a member of the pickleball riffraff as I sat on the aforementioned bench, bothering no one. Here I’ll refer to him as Dopey. Why not?
“Do you live here or something?” he said, in passing.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, neither interested nor obligated to explain myself to a rude total stranger, “or something.”
“Well you can’t do that.”
“I don’t live here. I live in that,” I said, pointing at my car. “I just happen to be here.”
“You’re here too much,” Dopey said.
“You only see me here when you’re here to see me. And how is that your business, anyway?”
“I see you sitting there a lot,” he said.
“It’s a bench,” I said. “That’s what it’s for.”
“And I’ve seen you washing up in the sink in the bathroom.”
“It’s a sink,” I said. “That’s what it’s for.”
“You’re loitering,” he said.
“In a public park? I’m not sure that’s even possible.”
“These bathrooms aren’t open to the public,” he said.
“They most certainly are,” I replied.
“I’m going to take a picture of your license plate and report you,” he said.
“You do that,” I said. “Report me to whom, for what? Knock yourself out, idiot.”
So Dopey took his picture and one of my smiling face and upraised finger. I allowed this, since anyone can legally photograph anything in public, and I took a few myself. A merry time was had by all and he drove off. But at about that time I became aware of a low lynch-mob grumble coming from somewhere. Down by the courts a small inner circle of pickleball hooligans had been watching and gossiping among themselves. I could make out only a few words, but the implications were defamatory, extreme, and based on absolutely nothing.
The Prescott Pickleball Association, according to its website, partnered with the City of Prescott to build the public courts at Pioneer Park. This may account for the mistaken impression of some players (whether association members or not, I can’t say) that the PPA runs the joint.
If it had ended there, I wouldn’t be writing this. While my nature is to fight fire with a napalm air strike — the result of being bullied as a child — I decided to let this one go. Walking away from a stupid conflict saves time, effort and aggravation. I was unquestionably in the right, and my life is hard enough without carrying the dumb baggage of others. I stopped frequenting the pickleball court area. If I needed to go there I would, but otherwise I use other parts of the park. There’s no point in arguing with persons possessed of a mental acuity below a certain level. It’s like trying to talk sense to a squawking raven.
My place on the moral high ground was comfy enough till Thursday, June 20 at 10:30am. I was committing a heinous atrocity on that occasion — sleeping in the shade, in the back of my car, in the parking area of Kuebler baseball field, also located at the Sports Complex but not even visible from the pickleball courts. While technically prohibited by Prescott’s stupid ordinance, park staff know folks do it and local cops don’t seem to care. If you can’t even doze peacefully off in an open city park for a while, something is deeply wrong with this place.
There came a thunderous clamor, clearly of someone banging on the roof of my car, to which I replied without looking, with obscenity. When the banging repeated, I growled, “What?”
“You need to leave,” came a voice. I rolled over to see an unfamiliar, bespectacled Native American face peering through my window. Let’s call him Dinky (why not?). I first thought he was a park employee and my vehicle was in the way or something. But as I climbed from my car I saw he wasn’t dressed right to be working there, and no City vehicle or equipment was nearby.
I was pretty befuddled from sleep deprivation and being abruptly awakened, so I asked, “What’s your problem?”
“You need to get out of here,” Dinky said.
“And why is that?”
“This is a public park,” he said.
“Uh, yeah, and what am I?”
“You’re loitering,” he said.
“I’m part of the public,” I explained.
“No.”
Dinky was large and loud and kept repeating himself, ordering me to leave and saying I was loitering. Boring conversation, and I lost track of it right about then, as I came around to the passenger side of the vehicle where he was standing, and our little encounter took on a new aspect. My folding chair, my bar soap in its bright green travel box and a pop-up umbrella were on the ground beside the car. This guy had been going through my car while I slept.
The umbrella had been in the passenger door pocket. The soap had been in a small backpack that serves as my toilet kit. The folding chair was normally hooked over the headrest extending toward the dash, covering a milk crate full of assorted items in the passenger seat.
“What’s this doing here?” I asked.
“I dunno.”
“You were in my car.”
He probably denied it, but I was done listening. If anything else was said, I don’t honestly remember it. I began picking up my belongings. Dinky retreated to his car, and it’s a good thing he did, as confusion was rapidly becoming rage. I secured my things and jumped in, but by then my intruder was gone. I burned up a quarter of a tank of gas looking for him.
Yes, I filled out a police report, for all the good that’ll do, because, though it took me a while, I’ve figured out what it was all about. Nothing was stolen, that wasn’t the goal. The Dinkster was looking for papers with my name on them, my ID. First he looked in the door pocket (umbrella). Then he checked the backpack (bar soap in container). Then he moved the chair because it covered the glove compartment. But he never checked there, for two reasons. One, even with the chair moved, a small ice chest on the floor blocked it, and two, my wallet was in the dash console and would have been pretty visible once the chair was out of the way. I don’t know whether he saw it or not, but that seems to be where the ransacking ended. I’m not sure at what point he realized I was in the vehicle, and I don’t know why he woke me up, except to intimidate me into leaving and to punish me for “loitering” — and where else had I heard that idiotic accusation recently? Either Dinky is a pickleballer and possibly part of the muttering mob (I don’t recall seeing him before), or he was doing a favor for Dopey (who maybe gave him my plate number).
I’ve related these events and verbal exchanges as well as memory allows. I was vaguely accused of some nebulous wrongdoing, though innocent of all but being homeless. I don’t honestly know that either of my accusers play pickleball. Dopey and Dinky harassed me and illegally entered my vehicle. They are in the wrong and apparently (at least one of them) capable of criminal behavior. In my paranoid moments I wonder what else they’re still likely to do. Physical assault? A false police report?
I wonder what they thought they saw as I sat there silently on the bench in the shade. It’s hard to say. I’d never spoken to any of them. They don’t know a thing about me. Why? Because they never bothered to ask. I could be a dangerous psychopath or as benign as Fred Rogers, and the difference might be crucial when deciding you want a total stranger for an enemy. Do your research, choose wisely. And be sure to pick an enemy who still has something to lose.
Prescott’s shortsighted ordinance 2023-1844 serves another function beyond persecution of the homeless; it encourages the general public to join in the fun. Can we be sure that the June 2023 beating of an elderly homeless man sleeping near Granite Creek by a teenaged thug was unrelated to the anti-homeless sentiment fostered by our City Council? I’m not convinced. At least I didn’t get my skull fractured like the gentleman at Granite Creek.
The homeless, unfortunately for us all, are here to stay. This is the new paradigm. The numbers will increase, building a new minority. This will have to be accepted and integrated into everyone’s thinking, because we are part of “the public.” The old cliches are invalid. The homeless aren’t “up to” anything. Many of us work and pay taxes. Some vote. We are targets of a revised Sundown-Town mentality, but we’re not going anywhere. We have no place to go. If you brand us criminals, you’ll have crime. If you make our lives impossible, we’ll rebel. Deal with it. We are.
