His Name Was Joe

For days, I have mulled over how I would write about Joe Lewis. “Uncle Joe” is what he was called on the street. He was a man that's hard to describe in words. He had to be experienced to fully understand.

He wasn't what people would consider a “great" man. He wasn't what I would consider a horrible man. He was somewhere in the middle of those two things. Maybe he was both of those things, like most of us.

He had a twang in his voice that I will never forget. It makes me laugh every time I think of his exaggerations of his own southern accent.

He flirted with every woman he saw. Dare I say, he was inappropriate at times, and on more than one occasion, I recall telling him to “shut his mouth.” Nothing like some friendly banter, right? It was at those times he usually had "one too many" or 6 too many. This guy loved to drink. Alcoholic? Most assuredly. He truly loved drinking.

One outreach day I had two new outreach workers with me, students that were interning with one of our agencies. We stopped at a gas station just off Hwy 49 so they could go to the restroom and grab a smoke.

As soon as we pulled in, I saw Joe. That particular day, I was trying to avoid him. We always ended up talking too long and well, we had things to get done. I was focused. I had a list. But alas, the interaction was inevitable.

He approached my new recruits and asked for change. He didn't notice me sitting in my City Jeep. He asked for a ridiculously small amount of change. I want to say it was about 36 cents. I popped up out of the driver’s seat and exclaimed, "Joe, what do you need 36 cents for? Why are you harassing my people?"

He smiled and walked over to the Jeep, realizing it was me. "Ah, you know Mrs. Kim, I just need 36 cents." I quipped back, "Yeah. But for what?" I knew he was going to buy a large can of the nastiest beer imaginable. His habits weren’t hard to follow.

After asking over and over again, simply to be as annoying as possible, he finally said, “I’m going to get me a beer."

I said, “Why wouldn't you tell me that? You've literally sat in front of me drinking on more than one occasion."

Shyly he said, “Well, I know, but I just didn't want you to know that I was buying beer." Weird the times shame kicks in.

On another occasion, I was out looking for one of our guys that we were working with to get in a housing program. I see Joe walking across the large parking lot near this truck stop. He had a large walking stick in one hand and a large backpack on his shoulder. That was pretty common. He sees my car and begins waving that stick in the air. As I pull up, I notice another guy is with him, Britt. Britt is the only white man I know that can grow a true afro. It’s quite impressive, to say the least.

As I roll down my window, I ask how they’re doing and inquired about the guy I needed to see. We talked a while and before I know it, Joe is joking about me giving him the backpack I had on the back seat. He always asked for stuff whether he really wanted it or not. He was always trying to get under my skin. I rolled my eyes at him a lot, but he was going to try to press every button he could just to get a reaction. I always played along because I knew he never really wanted anything.

I explained that backpack contained my first aid kit and some other emergency items I took in the woods with me. I also explained how the first aid kit was given to our team by the Boy Scouts. He exclaimed, “You work with the Boy Scouts?”

We talked about the time we partnered with them on an outreach project and the next thing I knew he was handing me dollar bills to “donate to the Boy Scouts”. Britt pulled out a dollar too. “Please give them this,“ he said. I tried to refuse and they wouldn’t accept that. “Please, Mrs. Kim. Give that to the Boy Scouts. It’s not much, but it’s something.”

Good and bad. People are complicated.

I’ve known Joe for the last 4 years. He was one of the first homeless guys I met when I started leading my street outreach team. He was the guy that always said, “Ya’ll know I don’t need no help.”

During that time, I can’t tell you the number of bone-headed things he did. I probably don’t know half of them and I can’t begin to guess. But he always made us laugh. He always told the most entertaining, yet outlandish stories. You knew none of it was true and yet, we allowed him to keep going.

On more than one occasion, I watched him help other people and my own team when we were looking for people we were trying to help. It didn’t make sense, the two sides of him that were so different, yet, made him a complete person.

My husband reminds me constantly that most humans, maybe all, are not all good or all bad. They are some mixture of the two.

On the street, it is inevitable that people will do many bad things. Survival demands that sometimes. I’m not excusing that behavior, but stating it as fact. Joe was a great example of being a complicated character.

We only got what he was willing to show us. Sometimes he was the nicest person and other times, I wanted to punch him straight in the jaw, if I’m being honest.

I have so many stories about him. He was a staple in the homeless community or maybe I should say, my community.

I don’t remember a lot of outreach days I didn’t see him. It’s strange that I will never see him again. It’s even stranger that he was gone 6 weeks before I even knew.

I’m sad but I know without a doubt, he lived and died the way he wanted. It was a choice and he was perfectly fine with that choice. Most people will say that there are many homeless people that “want to be homeless”. In this case, I would agree with them.

Joe loved the freedom of being homeless. He had no intention of getting a job, doing the 9-5. He would have never conformed to that type of life. He would have never given up drinking, and he was completely at home in the woods, camping.

He had the best, most creative camps I have ever seen. They were always clean and always extravagant.

I’ll never know his real story, where he was born, when he was born, what happened to his family, things like that. He would never share those things. But I can say, I was happy to have met this guy, the good, the bad, and the ugly. He is definitely someone I will never forget.

I will probably tell “Joe” stories for as long as I can. I did that long before I ever knew he was gone from this earth.

Rest well, my friend. Or maybe I should say, “Don’t give ‘em too much hell.”