Graham at Gateway

The door gets away from me as I get out of my car. Fortunately, I've misjudged the distance to the pole next to my parking spot, and the hinges catch without a damaging thud. My posture is somewhat hunched as I cower from the spiteful breath of April; it must be laughing at us. Forty-three degrees with dark, heavy clouds, today is the third consecutive day of stiff wind from every direction. From the East on Thursday, from the North yesterday, and from the West today. Following a sunny week in the 70s, no less.

“You been out here long?”

“A while.”

With hunched shoulders himself, Graham stands on the Gateway Plaza corner of Riverside Drive and Highway 1 West in Iowa City with a cardboard sign declaring hunger and poverty. He looks at me through large glasses which, combined with the hood of his heavy jacket, his Green Bay Packers stocking cap, and his short beard, leave little of his face exposed to the wind.

He stands on a noticeably worn patch of grass next to the highway, but takes a few steps back from the traffic after telling me I could talk to him and take his picture. I realize the grass is worn from his own feet, and he is a regular installation of the corner. It occurs to me that I have passed him several times before.

“Are you a journalist?”

I say no, and briefly reference this blog, but I guess in the purest sense of the word, I am. Just don't ask me to be objective.

He asks what I want to know about him, and I laugh, because I'm not sure. I hadn't thought out that much of our conversation in advance. I ask him where he's from, and to generally tell me about himself, hoping for some spontaneously offered tale of living big and being done wrong. He says he's from Iowa City.

“Originally?”

“I'm from southern Iowa.” He tells me the name of a city 80 miles to the South. I ask him how he ended up in Iowa City.

“I just happened to move here about 15 years ago. I do this to supplement my income.” Graham also receives disability income for rheumatoid arthritis, but he seems to make more money standing next to the highway with his sign. “I make about $10 an hour. Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less.”

I ask him if he has been there through the winter.

“Yep. Standing right there.” He sniffles and rubs his nose with a Kleenex from his pocket, part of which the wind takes from his hand.

“How long are you usually here?”

“I'm usually here in the afternoon. About 12 to 5.”

“How many days a week?”

“About seven.” That works out to about $350 per week, which he confirms. I ask what he did before, wondering what left him in his present circumstance.

“Factories. I worked for factories. I went through Manpower.” Manpower is an international staffing agency. They started in Milwaukee, where their headquarters remain, but a little more than half a century into operation, most of their business now is overseas. “Then I worked as a mechanic.” He tells me the name of a Honda dealership that was bought out in the 90's after a federal lawsuit.

He shifts awkwardly waiting for me to ask something else. “Alright.” He offers to tell me about himself. “I'm married; I got three kids but they're old enough they can take care of themselves. We still live next to them.” I wait for more but that's all he offers.

I ask if he sees anyone else up this way; he points up the street. “People live up there, in an abandoned building. The police let them stay back there.” I wonder if he's one of the people who stay there, but I don't ask directly. I just ask if it's warm enough.

A cold “No.” He sighs. “It's not warm. It's terrible cold.”

Due to the media coverage of the economy that I am used to, I anticipate animosity towards the government and frustration over the recession. But when I ask Graham about the recession, it's like I ask him something in Russian.

“Recession? I don't pay any attention to that.”

He asks me to take his picture, apparently anxious to get back to standing next to the intersection. I agree to, and return to my car. As I drive past, I wave, but he isn't looking. His eyes are on the road behind me.