The Hawk...A Haunting TRUTH of MANY of the Homeless in Dallas, TX

by Dan Getz, International Blogger

www.Dance4One.blogspot.com

 

This morning around 7:30 a.m. as I boarded the DART 703 outside of Parkland Memorial Hospital, a veteran of war in a wheelchair, I later learned was “Mark” immediately caught my eye.  Without hesitation, I got up from my seat across from him and asked him which war he had fought in to protect the freedoms I and all Americans have because of men and woman like him.  He replied that he had served our country in Vietnam between the years of 1968 and 1969 and after shaking his hand and thanking him for all he had done to protect and serve our country, he told me he had a very nice letter to the Editor of the Dallas Morning News from a buddy of his…that had been written about the Salvation Army and which he wanted to give me, but the Dallas Morning News had already rejected it and refused to publish it.  He went on to tell me that he hoped I might publish the copy he pulled out of a neat and orderly folder and handed to me.  I told him I would…Today.

 

“They call him the Hawk and when he sweeps in along the cold, dirty streets, he takes the old and sick, the homeless; the hopeless; the crazy ones from drink and drugs or past because they count the men in the line a laugh, although the powerful over the powerless in the way of nature.  The Hawk is hungry and the wind from his wide wings takes the weak on Harry Hines.

 

Near Butler an old man pushes his wheelchair, stopping to rest in the ruts where a sidewalk was supposed to be..Safer than  to backtrack and try to cross the street where the crosswalks are target areas and another will be struck down.  It happened to him already…that old man in the cold hit on the green light off the Red Line and he went for help, leaving his wheelchair in the street to struggle up the hill for help.  He was beaten of course already from the wreck but he would be beaten more by the police who thought ‘just another bum’ and they took him to Green Oaks where he was beaten again by his room-head cell mate but from behind and kicked – another broken tooth, but what of it?  There is nothing to eat anyway.  Finally at the VA they cleaned up the old veteran but he would not receive another purple heart.  There were lots of those already and more he could not thank in countries where he never was doing things that never happened with men and women who were never there.

 

Down the dirt walk with the cranes circling overhead as if to protect him from the Hawk for a bit longer…On the concrete once more he sat back down in the wheelchair ‘home’ he made from parts …some from here…some from there…to make due instead of the nice fast one he had lost…lost along with clothes, cigarettes, pocket change…bus pass…ID.

 

He stopped again to smoke a last snipe [for the Reader, a ‘snipe’ is the tobacco taken from several un-smoked portions of multiple cigarette butts and re-rolled, usually in whatever paper that can be found, into a ‘new’ cigarette, or snipe] under the Red Shield that pray have room to protect him from the Hawk tonight.

 

 

 

When you see that ‘bell ringer’ smiling at his kettle, remember the Red Shield of the Salvation Army and the life they saved tonight…the lives and souls that they save every night from the cold winter wind the old men call the Hawk.

 

For others there will be no room at the inn and they will live or die as the lot is cast out on the street this Christmas.  It is a good day to die.”

 

Posted by: Dan Getz, aka "DANgerous" at Dance4One, www.dance4one.blogspot.com, YouTube 12131966dan, Facebook (Dan Getz, Dance4One & Christian T-Shirts Plus by Dance4One & Shared Vision), Twitter @Dance4One, LinkedIn (Dan Getz) and www.CafePress.com/ChristianTShirtsPlusbyDance4One/