I spent most of last week craving Mexican food. Coming from a small town with a significant Hispanic population, I wasn’t in the mood for the fast food version, either. I wanted to sit down and really enjoy a meal.
So, I set out walking from my house in downtown Eugene on that beautiful Friday afternoon last week, on the prowl for a sit-down Mexican establishment, and just a couple of blocks away, I found El Jarro Azul. Set inside a strip mall off Blair Boulevard, the restaurant is in a pretty quiet location, tucked between two other businesses and lacking flashy signage.@@http://www.eljarroazul.com/@@
Along the sidewalk stood a man who was carrying what looked to be every worldly possession he owned on his back. He looked to be pretty clean, and his belongings looked to be in good shape.
“Hey, brother, can you spare any food?” he asked.
Initially, my reaction was going to be like any other time when someone asks me for money: I was just going to lie, say I was broke and move on. But then I realized something. He wasn’t asking me for booze. He wasn’t asking for cigarettes. He wasn’t even asking for money outright. I had some extra spending money in my pocket, so I figured that I’d sit down with him over lunch and get to hear his story instead. I kind of hate eating alone, too, so I wasn’t about to turn down the company.
Terry, as it turns out, was in his mid-50s and moved to the Pacific Northwest from Texas. True to his Texan identity, he had a clean, brown baseball cap with the Dallas Cowboys star on it,@@not all texans are cowboy fans and not all cowboy fans are texans@@ and when he wore it, it framed his angular cheekbones, which were coated with a little bit of stubble. (He also had a pretty rockin’ mustache, but I’m a little biased because I can’t grow facial hair to save my life.)@@true@@ He originally traveled to Seattle to try and get a job on a crabbing boat, but when he was rebuffed time after time, he packed up and moved to Eugene to be with his girlfriend.
As an out-of-work carpenter, he had been doing odd jobs on the side to make ends meet, as his paint-spattered, church-issued sweatshirt showed. But he wasn’t moving around erratically, and he was completely lucid, so I came to believe him when he said his problems were purely financial — not from drug or alcohol abuse. Instead, he actually commented negatively about the drug use in Eugene’s homeless community.
He’s trying to work long enough to get enough cash to buy a Greyhound ticket back to the Lone Star State, where his family still resides. For now, however, he’s stuck in the Northwest until he can round up $300 to buy his fare.
For lunch, we each ordered a plate of tacos, and between our two vociferous appetites, I couldn’t tell you which one of us had polished off our plate better.
After I paid, we stepped back outside. Terry thanked me, shook my hand and wished me luck before picking up his blue backpack, which was topped with a red-and-black-checkered sleeping bag, and walked back onto the streets of Eugene with a full stomach and a smile on his face.
I couldn’t even tell you what the food tasted like, because I enjoyed helping out someone who was more in need than I was. I can only hope that should I end up in that situation, someone else would take the time to sit down with me, feed me and take an interest in my story.