Buffalo Red
I hope I'm not completely lame by creating a whole post around my friends post – hopefully he’ll feel honored that he inspired me....oh, and I'm working on making my posts shorter...with no success....
Dallas' experience with Radius took me back to part of my life that I've felt disconnected to until recently ...
In my early 20's, suffering from post-teenage angst, avoiding my parent, a psycho x-boyfriend and everything mainstream America…like Texas, I decided to up and move to San Diego on one (very measly) paycheck.
I moved in with a childhood friend, the most hippyfied, tattooed, free thinking, acid dropping, tree house living, “do whatever everyone else will think is stupid” person I've ever known. Together we decided to write and hand distribute an underground zine in our spare time …you know, so we could save the world and be cool.
Anyway, the ONLY valuable thing that I remember from the whole experience is that it was my job to go out and interview a different homeless person for each issue.
See, San Diego is a known for its heavy homeless population – so much so that they now have special legal proceedings called Homeless Court
Walking and biking for transportation is big in San Diego, and it's a small enough town that you run into the same people frequently. People reading our zine were familiar with the homeless folks we were writing about….to us, they were local celebs.
There was the lady whose house was stolen and turned into a crack house run by the government, the guy who was very irritated that people didn’t realize he was Jesus, the guy who wore womens clothing over his man clothes and liked to urinate in the book drop at the library and my all time favorite San Diego homeless citizen… The Guy With No Nose.
His real name was “Buffalo Red” and he was this sweet fellow who wore a band aid where his nose was supposed to be...he sort of resembled Santa Claus.
You know everyone who ever encountered him had to wonder what happened to his nose…so I decided to ask.
Turns out it was damaged so severely from chemicals he inhaled while fighting in the Vietnam War that it had to be removed shortly after his return. Six years on the VA waiting list, and Red received a prosthetic nose.
Armed with his new nose and taken in by his daughter, Red got a job sacking groceries at a Golden Hills supermarket.
Life was going along nicely for years until one day his mean and nasty son-in-law, in a drunken rage, snuck into the bathroom when Red was showering, stole his nose and false teeth tossing them in the receptacle just in time for the trash collectors to haul them away…
Though the band aid Red used to cover his nose worked well to keep debris from his airway, it didn’t do much to help him keep his job at the grocery store. It seems nasty, narcissistic; self righteous customers find it offensive when polite, elderly, “handicapable” war veterans put their groceries in bags!!!
Kicked out by the wicked son-in-law and unemployed, Red found his home behind a bus stop in downtown San Diego two years prior to our interview.
The funny thing is, with all of his hard luck stories and everything he’d been through, with the conditions in which he lived and the countless reasons he had to be bitter and angry at the world and everyone in it… I found him to be completely content with the free booze his bartender friend snuck him from time to time, the daily meal provided by the Mission Center and the daily sponge bath he indulged in after crowds died down in the restroom at Balboa Park
As our interview wrapped up, I asked Red if he thought he might ever get another nose from the VA…he replied with the enthusiasm of a kid waiting for some gadget he ordered through the mail…“Oh yeah…I’m on the list, it’ll probably only be another 4 years or so…” and when I asked him if there was anything I could get for him, he thought about it for way too long and replied “I could use some fresh band aids”.
“I had the blues because I had no shoes until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet”. ~Denis Waitely
Dallas' experience with Radius took me back to part of my life that I've felt disconnected to until recently ...
In my early 20's, suffering from post-teenage angst, avoiding my parent, a psycho x-boyfriend and everything mainstream America…like Texas, I decided to up and move to San Diego on one (very measly) paycheck.
I moved in with a childhood friend, the most hippyfied, tattooed, free thinking, acid dropping, tree house living, “do whatever everyone else will think is stupid” person I've ever known. Together we decided to write and hand distribute an underground zine in our spare time …you know, so we could save the world and be cool.
Anyway, the ONLY valuable thing that I remember from the whole experience is that it was my job to go out and interview a different homeless person for each issue.
See, San Diego is a known for its heavy homeless population – so much so that they now have special legal proceedings called Homeless Court
Walking and biking for transportation is big in San Diego, and it's a small enough town that you run into the same people frequently. People reading our zine were familiar with the homeless folks we were writing about….to us, they were local celebs.
There was the lady whose house was stolen and turned into a crack house run by the government, the guy who was very irritated that people didn’t realize he was Jesus, the guy who wore womens clothing over his man clothes and liked to urinate in the book drop at the library and my all time favorite San Diego homeless citizen… The Guy With No Nose.
His real name was “Buffalo Red” and he was this sweet fellow who wore a band aid where his nose was supposed to be...he sort of resembled Santa Claus.
You know everyone who ever encountered him had to wonder what happened to his nose…so I decided to ask.
Turns out it was damaged so severely from chemicals he inhaled while fighting in the Vietnam War that it had to be removed shortly after his return. Six years on the VA waiting list, and Red received a prosthetic nose.
Armed with his new nose and taken in by his daughter, Red got a job sacking groceries at a Golden Hills supermarket.
Life was going along nicely for years until one day his mean and nasty son-in-law, in a drunken rage, snuck into the bathroom when Red was showering, stole his nose and false teeth tossing them in the receptacle just in time for the trash collectors to haul them away…
Though the band aid Red used to cover his nose worked well to keep debris from his airway, it didn’t do much to help him keep his job at the grocery store. It seems nasty, narcissistic; self righteous customers find it offensive when polite, elderly, “handicapable” war veterans put their groceries in bags!!!
Kicked out by the wicked son-in-law and unemployed, Red found his home behind a bus stop in downtown San Diego two years prior to our interview.
The funny thing is, with all of his hard luck stories and everything he’d been through, with the conditions in which he lived and the countless reasons he had to be bitter and angry at the world and everyone in it… I found him to be completely content with the free booze his bartender friend snuck him from time to time, the daily meal provided by the Mission Center and the daily sponge bath he indulged in after crowds died down in the restroom at Balboa Park
As our interview wrapped up, I asked Red if he thought he might ever get another nose from the VA…he replied with the enthusiasm of a kid waiting for some gadget he ordered through the mail…“Oh yeah…I’m on the list, it’ll probably only be another 4 years or so…” and when I asked him if there was anything I could get for him, he thought about it for way too long and replied “I could use some fresh band aids”.
“I had the blues because I had no shoes until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet”. ~Denis Waitely
posted by The Adventures of Jump Ahead Jane & Captain Surly at 9:30 AM
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