No More Bums in America: Noted in Passing on the Streets @ AMERICAN DIGEST

September 17, 2014

No More Bums in America: Noted in Passing on the Streets

No longer a problem in the way-new America.

We are a "Can-Do! Yes, we can." society. One of the really amazing upticks in American society, as I noticed in a brief walk around various neighborhoods in sodden Seattle, is that we have almost completely cleaned up the streets of our cities.

How well I remember those tours through the various skid roads** of the cities I have lived in -- Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and San Francisco --in days of yore. Gone now. All gone. And their wretched refuse along with them.

Take a walk yourself and you will see that it is true.

Nowhere in today's brighter and more-caring American cities will you see those terrible social wrecks on the streets. Yes, no longer will you find "Bums," "Junkies," "Drunks," "Bull-Goose Raving Lunatics," or "The Hard Core Unemployed" on our sidewalks. They are all gone, a fading memory.

Indeed all that are left, strangely rising up from the background noise of the streets, are the blameless and harmless "Homeless."

They are the last social class to be saved by our loving and caring society and their continuing expansion in our cities is a mystery which yearns for a caring social solution.

My own is simple and solves two lingering social problems at once: "Feed the homeless to the hungry."

Problem solved and it is a two-fer. Paging Dr. Swift!

**The first skid row was Skid Road (Yesler Way) in Seattle, where logs were skidded into the water on a corduroy road for delivery to Henry Yesler's lumber mills.

Posted by Vanderleun at September 17, 2014 1:42 PM

I remember "skid rows" from my youth in the Bronx. Believe it or not, ordinary citizens, not official police, were instrumental in making sure that the squalor and dissipation of those places didn't leak out to infect the surrounding society. (See http://www.eternityroad.info/index.php/weblog/single/the_manly_virtues/. )

It sometimes seems as if the entire nation has undergone an orchidectomy.

Posted by: Francis W. Porretto at July 18, 2009 4:22 AM

I don't see what the problem is. If there are homeless people let's simply give them homes.
Many of our liberal socialist brothers and sisters, especially those in Hollywood can buy some tract homes in suburbs and let the homeless become homed.
Detroit is another good place to house homeless folks. If we can bus all the little brown people all over the country we certainly can transport homeless people to Detroit.
Another plan would involve our fed government opening up some BLM and federal park land for homesteading.
If they allow Bundy to graze cattle on BLM land they sure can let homeless folks homestead some.
Another plan would allow homeless people to embark on sea cruises on some of the Navy's mothballed fleets.
Just think, a floating apartment complex of previously homeless men and women, free spirits on the Sea of Life.
I bet there are some under-developed countries in the world that would welcome good old Yankee ingenuity carried by soon to be un-homelessed people.

See, I woulda told them; they just didn't ask.

Posted by: chasmatic at September 17, 2014 10:36 PM

Comments:

HOME
"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

Bull-Goose Raving Lunatics.

Awesome. Hope you don't mind if I help myself to that one, Gerard. Obama says we should share our wealth so I'm sure you won't mind. I'll cite you if I'm sober enough to remember to.

Posted by: Velociman at July 17, 2009 4:30 PM

I do believe this is another Kennedy legacy.

As I have said for many years, Joe Kennedy's kids could not have done more harm to this country if they had been Joe Stalin's brats.

Posted by: John the River at September 17, 2014 9:18 PM

Hmm. 100 proof, huh? As a kid and into my young adulthood, the norm I recall is 86 proof. As my youth began to drop its petals, the stuff dropped to 80 proof. It must be much harder to be a drunkard now.

Posted by: OldFert at September 18, 2014 6:56 AM

Recognized this phenomena 20 yrs ago, the bums were all displaced by the "homeless", which is not to say they had no place to call home, just no long term habitation near as I could tell.

Posted by: itor at September 18, 2014 7:34 PM

"Homeless" is just a way of classifying what used to be hoboes, drunks, drug addicts, losers, crazies, etc. as a political group to be used when needed by dimocrats to garner votes and money.
There will always be unambitious lazy people and that will not change.

Posted by: Bookdoc at September 18, 2014 8:17 PM