We started our outreach in 2021 on the last Saturday of every month.  We’ve always started at the Cadillac Motel at about 10:30 in the morning. As usual, when we arrived, people were already congregating in anticipation. We have previously set up at the Barrett-Fisher parking lot adjacent to the Cadillac’s property.  However, on this specific Saturday morning, the parking lot was barricaded as it was being resurfaced. Because of that, we had to recalibrate and set up across the street on the corner of Frayser and Second Street.  Which worked out better since it forced everyone to stand in a line parallel to the street.  It made things work much smoother and felt more organized than before.  We’ll do that in the future instead of being across the street at Barrett-Fisher.

We were highly blessed; thanks to the generosity of a few people, we had a perfect mixture of food and hygiene items, which included over 60 boxes of Fruity Pebbles Cereal and, believe it or not, about 20 boxes of Snoop Cereal. Interesting fact. Snoop Cereal is the creation of a couple of celebrity rappers entangled in a lawsuit regarding its lack of distribution.  Rappers Snoop Dogg and Master P are suing Post Foods and Walmart, accusing them of intentionally leaving the musicians’ cereal off store shelves and hiding it in stockrooms to sabotage it.  That might be true since we were given (from an undisclosed source) an unopened endcap display that you would’ve commonly seen on the cereal aisle.  And I was told there were several more where this one came from.  You can’t make stuff like that up.  Although most people just saw an opportunity for a cereal box, I can’t help but think how ironic it is that we would be handing out celebrities’ cereal to those in need in Owensboro, Kentucky.

We had lots of canned food with pull tabs, juice bottles, toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, soap, shampoo, and many food bags.  Each bag contains one protein, such as a pouch of tuna or a can of Vienna Sausages, and then one package of peanut butter crackers, oatmeal, Ramen noodles, cereal bar, container of peanut butter, and some treat, such as a Little Debbie Snack. Due to the heat, we also had lots of cold bottled water.  And some shoes and socks.  I am trying to remember when we had enough socks to go around.  Socks are one of those things we don’t think about.  I open a drawer every morning and take a pair of socks out without even thinking about it.

After the crowd started to thin out at the Cadillac Motel, we packed our things back up and headed to Tent City, off (*retracted). When we arrived in the past, the residents would be waiting for us up by the railroad crossing. But this has yet to be the case the last couple of times. I’ve gone against the grain and entered Tent City to announce our presence.  Ms. Patty, a friend of ours who started the outreach efforts, once warned me not to walk into a camp without someone who lived there or, like herself, someone who was known in the camp or had experienced homelessness. I feel blessed that over the past few months of visiting, I’ve become recognized as someone who is there to help and has been welcomed.  I have still exercised some caution.  Or maybe respect is a better choice of words to use. You wouldn’t walk into someone’s home unannounced.  For example, I’ll stand at the threshold of the camp and call their names and let them come to me.

As I’ve mentioned, we see the same people month after month at Tent City, and then there will typically be one to four that we didn’t know the month before and probably will not be there when we return.  Among the new residents on this trip was a slender, tall man with a grocery cart.  He walked before me on the railroad tracks, dragging a reluctant shopping cart behind him in the gravel.  He wore just shorts and some shoes, exposing the incomprehensible number of bites covering his body.  He looked like he had been a contestant in Naked and Afraid.  Of course, on a reality show, you can tap out.  I don’t see anyone down here getting rescued.  It made me remember a guy walking down the same tracks back in the winter wearing shoes split out at the soles, exposing his barefoot skin to the cold.  Which is worse, having your flesh eaten by bugs or having frostbite?  There was a young man and woman I had not seen before.  They were in their twenties, if I had to guess.  He was so hungry that he ate the Ramen Noodles raw right out of the package as soon as it was handed to him.  Lastly, a lady claimed not to be living in Tent City but was staying there to focus on finishing her book.  I offered her some provisioning, but she declined, stating that she wasn’t the one in need.  But later, as everyone started to carry their provisioning back to camp, I overheard her asking one of the residents if they would also bring her something.  Perhaps she didn’t want to be the one doing the taking.  I’ve seen this happen before, and I “think” I get it.  To my demise, I’m slow to accept help.

We had some tee shirts left over from a fundraiser we participated in a few years ago to help our pastor’s brother and sister-in-law adopt children.  This picture shows a long-time resident of Tent City holding up one of those shirts to her chest.  She said, “I’ve always wanted to be adopted.”  The irony here is completely off the charts, or it is for me anyway.  Like it or not, we as a society, or let’s be more specific, a congregation of believers, inadvertently place a dollar value on people. The children of God.  I think it’s easier to say that infants have no choice in the matter, and they have their whole lives in front of them, so they’re more deserving.  Or, in this case, worth more.  And this adult made choices that got her where she is now, so she’s made her bed, and now she’ll have to sleep in it.  I get it.  Therefore, one might conclude, as evidenced by these observable actions, that one is thought to be more deserving of love than the other.  What I mean by that is we see the church bend over backward to raise several thousand dollars to put children into a specific loving home (which is beautiful) or replace their stained glass windows and build satellite campuses.  But not so much effort toward the segment of society that nobody wants to deal with. And believe me, more often than not, it’s easy for me to look in the other direction.

From there, the day went as planned. We visited our next stop at the Colonel House Motel. On each visit, I noticed that more doors to the motel rooms were barricaded with metal brackets so they could not be entered.  I don’t know how much longer that stop is going to last.  It’s been there for years, so we’ll see.  We were welcomed by the residents and passed out several food bags.  I think this is where the last of the Snoop cereal went.

Lastly, we stop at Dixiana Court. The last time we were here, we may have allowed things to get a little out of hand and become a stampede. I think we were just exhausted and got caught off guard.  This time, we were better prepared, and things went much smoother.

We had a tote of shoes left over, which is odd since shoes and socks quickly disappear and typically don’t make it this far.  Two little girls were delighted to be trying on probably every pair twice before deciding on what they wanted.  The simplest things mean so much to those without.  Those shoes would’ve turned a profit of five bucks at Goodwill or more at the higher-end “non-profit” thrift stores designed to produce a healthy bottom line for salaries.  In this case, someone dropped them off at our store, and they went directly to these children, but there wasn’t a cent exchanged.  That’s progress.

*Tent City’s location has been removed.  The Safer Kentucky Act, which went into effect on July 15, 2024, makes sleeping or camping in public areas illegal, including on sidewalks, roadsides, under bridges, or in parks, parking lots, garages, or doorways. The law creates a new offense called “unlawful camping” that can result in arrest and fines.  Assisting those individuals is considered to be aiding and abetting, which is a legal doctrine that refers to the act of helping or encouraging someone to commit a crime. The person who aids and abets is generally held to the same degree of criminal liability as the person who commits the crime.  We ask that you please not attempt to locate or visit Tent City.