Question: is a street musician a panhandler, or does the term “panhandler” only apply to beggars who accost you for money for breakfast or lunch or dinner, whatever the time of day happens to be?
Last week, I noted that in the Starbucks where I get my coffee in the morning, there was a small book of leaflets on the counter advising people not to give money to panhandlers. The association on the letterhead of the leaflet is a group organized to revitalize the Capitol Hill district. I glanced at it briefly, and it advised people to politely say “no” to panhandlers because giving them money only exacerbates the problem.
While I agree in theory with not giving money to beggars, it does not seem to me to be enough to simply encourage citizens to keep their money in their pocket. I rarely see anyone give money to beggars, but the problem does not go away. I also wonder if people may confuse street musicians, to whom I do give money occasionally, with ordinary panhandlers. There is a fellow who sometimes plays Mozart on the violin at the bottom of the escalators in Union Station. He plays quite well, too, though he dresses pretty shabbily. I always toss at least a dollar into his violin case, when I see him there.
Then again, there is another fellow who sometimes stands outside Union Station near Columbus Fountain. He blows unrecognizable tunes on a child’s plastic flute while he dances a jig. I am often tempted to give him money for his effort, but I don’t know whether I ought to or not.
This morning on my walk to Starbucks, I saw a beggar digging in a trash can. He came up with something that looked like Chinese noodles which he greedily stuffed into his foul gob. I am embarrassed to say, my stomach lurched, and if I had eaten breakfast it probably would have come up right there on the street. It was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in my life.
The past three days, I have seen the same beggar lady here on the Hill. She must be new, because I have never noticed her before. I have not a clue how these people get around, or what their day is like. She is a real old gammer, a veritable crone from a fairy tale. She wears an American flag kerchief around her head, an old lady’s pink sweater, and a pale green dress. She carries several plastic shopping bags which look like they contain more clothes, though in the past three days she has worn the same outfit. She carries a walking stick which she has decorated rather like a May pole. Around it, she has tied many ribbons of plastic tape, some of it yellow like crime scene tape, some of it pink and orange, like the tape wrapped around construction sites.
When I saw her first on Tuesday, after work, she was digging with her stick around the trunks of the small trees growing up out of the sidewalk. She was muttering to herself as she worked intently, scarping away all leaves and debris from around the tree. When she would finish clearing from around a tree, she would step off the sidewalk and scrape in the leaves in the gutter, to what purpose I could not tell; then she would step back on the sidewalk and move to the next tree, talking to herself all the while, sometimes laughing uproariously.
Yesterday morning, I was surprised to see her get on my morning bus at First and D streets. She did not pay or show a transfer, as best I could tell. She sat down across the aisle from me. There was only myself and one other man on the bus that early in the morning. There was not a single streak of daylight showing in the East.
Immediately, she began having a conversation with herself, but as she talked, she was looking at the other man on the bus. He looked at her intently at first, as if he thought she was really talking to him, then kind of looked away with a flicker of confusion on his face. The bus driver was apparently watching this in his mirror, for he spoke up and said to the man, “What’s your girl back there saying?” The man answered, “I don’t know but she sure has a lot to say, don’t she?”
Indeed she was yammering away. I heard her say in her cracked crone’s voice, “You men are just awful!” and “Pull up your panties.” The other man got up and moved to the very front of the bus. I stayed put; I wanted to hear what she was saying, but even sitting so close it was difficult to hear. She was muttering to herself, mostly. Aside from those two complete sentences, I could only catch random phrases. She was still riding the bus when I got off.
This morning, she got on again, at the same stop. This time there were more people on the bus, and she sat farther away, but she still carried on a complete conversation with herself. She got off the bus with me … and stepped right into the street without so much as a thought for cars. I thought sure she was going to be hit. “Wait!” I said, but she crossed as unconcerned as if she were in the park, teetering along on her faithful walking stick. Luckily, the approaching car saw her, and the driver was not the ordinary D.C. driver who speeds up when he sees a pedestrian in the street.
It was after this, as I walked down the street to Starbucks, that I saw the man stuffing noodles from the garbage into his maw.
City life is surreal sometimes. Yesterday, there was apparently a drag queen footrace at Dupont circle. In the small towns and rural areas of Virginia and Maryland, the most extraordinary thing one might see is a fellow standing at an intersection holding a sign that says “Down on luck. Will work for food.” Not long ago, I saw a woman standing at the exit from the Wal-Mart shopping center holding such a sign. She stood there one day and then was gone. They don’t bide long in the hinterlands. The cities are more hospitable places for them, I guess.
