At the pawn shop Crock-Pot, realities of poverty

The news reports the poor are falling. The distance between a poor man and a wealthy man looks as if it cannot be crossed. Might Abe Lincoln rise up in today's world?

The report of the pawn shop is stark. A Crock-Pot offers free food. I sat watching customers come and go.

A young man was a bag of bones and he rattled, his stringy hair was thick from not being washed. The beard was long and wiry, his watery eyes were dull but he moved quickly after he opened the door. He headed to the table with the crock pot. Again it was filled with noodles and meat.

“Hey man,” a regular at the pawn said, “You all right?”

No sound emitted from the bone-thin young man. He opened the crock and inspected, then turned around as if he was going to leave. Maybe the day’s hot meal wasn’t good enough.

“You should eat some,” the regular said and the skeletal youth said, “Yeah, OK, I can eat.”

“You’re not getting fat, you know that.”

White frosted cupcakes at the center of a holiday bounty set on the counter. Long rolls, buns, garlic bread, sesame seed buns and hamburger buns filled the boxes at the floor. The young man ate his bowl of noodles and an old woman, bent with scoliosis, came into the room and lifted two packages of rolls.

It’s hard to pass through the lanes of the poor, no heat in the house, breath showing in clouds that no one but the poor understand.

When the young man was gone the others began to discuss his life and it was the discussion that becomes ritual, that things aren’t fair and someone should do something.

A learned helplessness and the true faith. The kingdom will come, the pain of living is OK because the kingdom is coming. If the argument was taken to the impoverished they’d temper their destitute living and true hope. Dirt and sin coalesce. Born as a sinner the riddle says. The riddle of a society that turns away from them.

“I wish he’d take care of himself,” one said, “He’s got a problem with alcohol.”

“He used to be with Phyllis, you know.”

“He’s too young.”

“People don’t want to be well. They like being crazy,” one said and another nodded assent.

“Jesus asked the people, ‘What do you want from me?’…they don’t want to change, that’s what I think …”

“Maybe it’s the love of possessions,” a last voice sung into the topic of change, the riddle of ownership and autonomy.

“My wife says that being crazy, that’s like having a pet. So there’s a lot of people with pets.”

“ Everybody’s free. That’s why Jesus died.”

No one spoke about the class system or the divide between poverty and wealth.

Freedom’s riddle, the tension between choice and control was left to the silence. The orderly shuffling of people to the crock pot resumed, the pawn shop gave away food. The silence added to the indifferent sky, gray and forlorn.

The food line changed only in its manners and age.

Tim Trenkle has been an instructor in the college system in Iowa, most recently at Upper Iowa University. He lives in Dubuque.