DOWNWARD BOUND - with Hippie Jim

Mon, Jun 14, 2010, 11:34 am  //  Kamalla Rose Kaur

Bums don't quit when they hit bottom...

Bums don't quit when they hit bottom, they punch right through and keep going. Quitting is for addicts.

With the ongoing harvest, processing, and export of the middle class you may find yourself canned, fired, baked, fried, or just burnt out. You imagine you'll just become a bum, but it's not that easy. You need training to live like me. Takes skill, study, and aptitude to be a bum. Bumming has its traditions and techniques because there are ways to do things... well, sometimes there aren't. We used to be hobos and tramps. Can't be a hobo no more because you can't hop a train to India or China where the jobs are. Can't be a tramp these days without silicone and botox. So I'm going to teach a poverty survival class called DOWNWARD BOUND, because the poor and destitute are the fastest growing market in the USA! We don't buy anything, but we can make up for it in volume. DOWNWARD BOUND charges no money, but you have to want to be a bum. Like any other job, you won't get hired if you're not enthusiastic.

Around Puget Sound, we've had bums for as long as we've had people who disapprove of them. To hear the missionaries talk, the fur traders were bums. Dirty Dan was a bum. We have old bums from the days of freighthopping, middle-aged bums from the Vietnam and Gulf wars, young bums from Jerry's death, little kids in bum schools, and we've got fitness freaks losing bums all over the place. We got 'em moving here in droves, running from the weather in Florida and Texas, running from predators in California, bummed out by Enron and Arnold. These folks ain't raised up to be poor, they got no experience and no life skills except paying for things. It's hard work not working, for those used to not working in corporations.

Like how bums got no water cooler. No cubicles. No daily commute. No boss. With no boss, who's going to tell you what to do? Glenn Beck? Earth First!? People tell the homeless what to do, they always say, “Get a job!” What do you say to someone who sees a “will work for food” sign and says “get a job”? Like the bum's hoping to be rescued by aliens with that sign? Or score hot babes? That only works on the Internet. Seriously, when's the last time YOU saw a sign saying, Bums Wanted?

Without a cubicle, where are you going to sleep? Where are you going to get dates off Craigslist, post videos of co-workers breaking the law, or get your WoW fix? Where are you going to get Post-It notes? How are you going to keep your online resume up to date, not to mention Facebook? And no water cooler – people have hung around water coolers since there were village wells. Where do bums get to hang? Where do they find drinking water?

There IS free coffee for bums, but it's not worth what you pay for it.

You gotta be creative to be poor. Times change and you adapt. I used to live at the airport under a plane, but those days flew. I lived on a boat once. I lived under a boat once. Under was better. I had a high rise apartment inside the old Oeser chimney. What a view! Then one night some amateur scientist decides to shoot fireworks up that chimney. I got down the ladder alive and we both fled the scene before the uniforms got there. After that I slept in the planter box at the Bank of America. That worked great for me because I get up early, and they sleep in.

Actually this town is a peaceful resting place. If you can snooze while sitting upright, holding a book, you can sleep anywhere in Bellingham.

Food here in the Pacific Northwest is no problem either, especially for meat-eating bums like me. With a carrot in one hand and a big stick in the other, bagging Bambi is easy. I used to use a snare to catch deer but I caught hippies that way. Do you know how hard it is to clean one of them?

Beside venison, there's lots of other local food. Have you noticed more black squirrels around town? That's because the gray ones taste better. And I eat lots of birds. I made me a bird zapper on a cell tower in the woods. Works good on hotdogs too, but it's hard to find hotdogs off-leash. So how do bums roast game without a stove? Forget about fires, you can't get wood, you can't burn, and you can't smoke. Again you got to move with the times. When I lived under that jet plane, when they fired her up I'd heave a venison roast, or food bank turkey, through the engine. It came out cooked, sliced, and smoked. I got a patent for spiral sliced sandwich meat too. Or you can take a long bamboo pole, stick something on the end and poke it into a substation. Pow! Takes the fur and feathers right off.

Now my favorite way to cook salmon is to lay it in the back window of a 1968 Plymouth Barracuda. That was the best salmon-cooking car ever. You just lay that fish under the sloping back window on a sunny day, set a can of pepper spray next to it and when the can explodes, the fish is done – AND seasoned! Used to use Mace, but people like hot pepper nowadays.

Bathing is no problem for bums in these parts. I get showered-on most everyday. On rare hot days the lawn sprinklers come on at 4 a.m. Or if you want a real long hot soak, I recommend the executive bathroon at the Port of Bellingham. It is some sort of temple with this huge, I mean 8 feet across, fancy imitation marble sink. It looks like a giant bird bath, or communal baptismal font, with a big brass shower head above squirting warm water. I figure Port commisioners use that sink to wash their hands after signing dirty deals. Once when they weren't there, I plugged the drain, stripped naked and climbed in. Heavenly, but don't use their soap.

Back when you were middle class you needed to know who's who. Now you need to know what's what.

With Hippie Jim's poverty survival course, DOWNWARD BOUND, you will also learn:

1. Who works for you and who doesn't. (Hint: people wearing uniforms don't work for you anymore. Not even if the uniform says “Burger King” on the pocket.)

2. The banks don't work for you any more either, so you can learn to keep your money on your body somewhere no one will go, even for money. (Hint: after a month, your sock is sufficient).

3. How to tell companies that want to kill you from those that just don't want you around? (Hint: the first group have “General,” “Corporation,” or “Limited” in their name, and the second have someone's first name”)

4. Food Bank, good; Blood Bank, bad; Sperm Bank, good; Data Bank, bad. More about banks...

5. Mullen, good; nettles, bad: toiletries from nature. Do Bums Shit in the Woods? Sanitation without sewers. Health without medicine. Dreads without head lice.

With so many of us in economic freefall, we're going to need expert advice in poverty survival. Call Hippie Jim, or stay tuned for more details.