6 APR 09: Two Times, Two Lies

The forecast for this week includes a possible freeze. Yet there are plenty of signs of spring in Columbus. Azaleas and tulips are blooming. Pollen dust is covering cars. And in my little world, the beggars are coming out of hibernation....

BLOGGER BEGGARS #1-2 (of 2009): "Can you help me?" the man said from the sidewalk Friday afternoon. He stood at a popular "beggar's corner," near the door of the Money Back station at Fourth Street and Veterans Parkway. If people standing there have their way, you won't keep the "money back" for long.

"Can I get gas first?" I said as I walked to the car. I'd only walked inside the station because the gas pump showed something I'd never seen before: an "err 09" message. Was this a sign to me -- that stopping here was my biggest error of 2009?

The man on the sidewalk agreed to wait - but then walked over to my car as I started pumping. "Can you spare me some money?"

"How much?" After all, he might be a Synovus banker in disguise.

"About two dollars."

"What do you want it for?" I don't simply hand out money to strangers. The pastor where I attend church warned recently you could be "feeding a habit." And at stores such as Money Back, the Keno drawings come every four minutes.

"Get me something to eat," the beggar said in response to my question.

"I've got that right here," I said - and opened my trunk. During my fall vacation last year, a speaker offered an excellent idea for handling these cases. Have food in the car, ready to hand out to them. My "beggar bags" contain a box of juice and a small can of Vienna sausages. As long as the beggar isn't biased against Austrians....

I simply hand the beggar the free paper bag of food, and everything is settled - right? Wrong. "I still need more than two dollars," he said. I should have asked if he'd asked the Obama administration for a bailout.

The beggar then explained he needed more than two dollars "for board." This confirmed he wasn't with Synovus, because the board members need a lot more than that to avoid future layoffs.

"So you really don't need this," I said - taking the bag of food away from the beggar and putting it back in the trunk. His misleading request should have been a deal-breaker right there. I'll stop short of calling it the Bill Heard effect.

The man insisted he needed money to pay his board - so I asked where his landlord lives. "Benning Hills," the beggar said.

"C'mon, I'll take you there." Perhaps, I thought, I could work out some kind of deal with the landlord - naively forgetting we're in a recession.

Once inside the car, the beggar said his landlord lives "up Fourth Avenue." Wait a minute - that's not Benning Hills. Somehow the man misspoke. For a second time. Where did this man take political science classes?

"I really need more than two dollars," the beggar said several times during the short drive. Trouble was, he'd caught me at the end of laundry day. The dryers at my location still only ask for a quarter at a time.

"You've helped me before," the man said as we drove up Third Avenue. After giving it some thought, he was right. This was Wilbur, the man who had me buy a bottle of soda for him in 2007 [1 May 07] - so as Earth Day approaches, we have beggar recycling.

(After further review, we may also have helped Wilbur in the blog issue of 23 Apr 08. Our neighbors chased him away from the front porch then - which proves for some people, familiarity breeds contempt.)

"So what have you done to improve your lot?" I asked Wilbur a few times in various ways.

"Things have been tough, man," was the closest thing he gave to a serious reply. So tough, he's been unable to move to a new neighborhood to meet fresh customers.

Wilbur directed me to a house at 727 Veterans Parkway, which has an unpaved and muddy pseudo-driveway. He lives there with a man named O'Neal, who apparently owns the place. Since he was there on a Friday afternoon during basketball season, his first name obviously was not Shaquille.

"You can come in," Wilbur said after stepping inside the house. I declined, waiting outside the fenced yard for O'Neal to come out. Who knows what might be going on inside -- and I certainly didn't want cocaine dust on my newly-cleaned clothes.

O'Neal came out after a moment, and I explained what had happened so far -- including Wilbur's two lies. O'Neal somehow wasn't shocked by the lying. But when I asked how many dollars Wilbur needed for board, the shock was on me: "More like 20." This explains why Wilbur isn't working at a tax preparation office.

"He's about to give it to you," Wilbur told O'Neal. This beggar can't even open a psychic reading office, because that guess was wrong.

"No, I don't have 20 dollars on me - not unless he accepts credit cards." O'Neal muttered something to the effect that he didn't. Now there's the way to get people off those problems with overextended credit lines.

Two more people walked out of O'Neal's house during the course of the conversation - an African-American man and a Caucasian woman. Had I stumbled upon a "flophouse" here? As opposed to a "success-house" where people stay, like the Doubletree Hotel?

So Wilbur didn't need something to eat, he didn't live in Benning Hills -- and now his debt was ten times larger than his original request. And to think only half-a-block away, the historic Spencer House is long overdue for a paint job. Someone could hire Wilbur to do that work and stop his begging - well, at least for a week or two.

Wilbur begged at that point for any money I could give him. So I did some thinking out loud: "Do I reward you for lying to me, or say no and teach you a lesson?" You can guess Wilbur's response - straight out of that book of things you learned in kindergarten.

"This is about telling the truth," I said firmly to Wilbur. "So many beggars start with a lie, to get to what they really want." Hmmm - come to think of it, how many encounters at singles bars also work this way?

"You need to learn to tell the truth from the get-go," I continued. Yes, I used the word "get-go" - showing Southern culture really is rubbing off on me.

Refusing to give him cash, I cut short Wilbur's pleadings and returned to his original request. "It's food or nothing."

"I'll take the food," he said after a moment. I opened the trunk again, and handed him a bag.

"Now can I have a couple of dollars?" Wilbur missed his calling - and should be working as a lobbyist in Washington.

I explained the offer to Wilbur again: food or nothing, with no mention of money. It's as if he thought two dollars was my definition of "nothing."

With that, I climbed into the car to drive home -- but Wilbur had other ideas. After walking away a moment, he returned to my driver's door. "Can I have a loan of a couple of dollars?" Now he was starting to sound like a New York banking executive.

I climbed out of the car to address this proposal. "Do you expect me to believe that? Like I'm going to see you again?!"

"Yes, you will. You'll see me," Wilbur said with certainty. I didn't know if that was a statement of faith, a promise -- or perhaps a threat.

I told Wilbur no, and climbed back inside the car. But a moment after I fired up the engine, Wilbur walked around the back of the car and knocked on the passenger's window. If only a Columbus Lions cheerleader had this much interest in me....

"Can you give me a ride back down to the store?" Wilbur asked. Oh no -- and let him lobby me for four more blocks? Maybe I should have driven a couple of blocks in the other direction, and let him ask for money outside NAACP headquarters.

"No," I said. "It's only three blocks. It's good exercise." And on top of that, Wilbur might put in a little physical labor to get what he wants.

At this point, I honestly feared Wilbur would borrow from Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 -- standing behind my car and refusing to let me leave the driveway until he received some money. But he didn't right away, and I quickly backed out to Veterans Parkway. Even beggars sometimes run out of ideas.

Believe it or not, this encounter with a beggar didn't surprise me in the least. That's because Friday was also car-cleaning day in our Serious Spring Cleaning -- and two years on that day, we crossed paths with three beggars [1 Apr 07]. If the number is down to one, maybe the local economy is recovering after all.

Oh yes - Wilbur is actually the second beggar we've counted so far this year. The first one was a co-worker, who needed to "borrow" 25 cents weeks ago for something from a vending machine. She hasn't paid me back, despite my seeing her several days a week. Maybe I should ask for her car title as collateral....

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