Jody and the Homeless Man

Written exactly one year before Jody died:​
Christmas Day, 2006.  Sunny and cool.  I took a walk with my dog.  We walked around our big block of Supermarkets up at the corner of 185th and R.B. Road--it's weird to see those stores from the back because nobody ever goes there, I mean why the hell should they?  They shouldn't.  Except us (of course), and The Homeless Man.
     The Homeless Man lives in the woods somewhere around here, I never found out exactly where--Mary & I took a pile of blankets to him the year when everything in the neighborhood froze solid but The Homeless Man was nowhere to be found, so we went back home where it was messy, piles of papers books and so on all over the place but at least warm and comfy
     Anyway, I was telling you: today when I hiked around the alley side, guess who was there?  The Homeless Man.  We said hello and all that crap and then he threw back the lid of a dumpster that was standing behind QFC--you know how big a dumpster is, pretty goddam big--and he said,
     "Look."
     Those were his exact words and I looked.  The dumpster was jam-packed to the brim with last weeks' pork chops, lamb chops, steak, hamburger and every kind of pre-packed veggies, all laid out in those styrofoam thingies with the Glad Wrap or whatever it is, nicely sealed over them and everything looking almost fresh with the price stickers still on them.  So anyway we chatted a while about how The Homeless Man could take some of the stuff home and cook up a nice stew for himself, except he had no place to cook anything and so forth and so on and then the dog and I walked on because we had to hurry up and do all the shit people have to do to stay alive in this culture and, well, I guess that's about it.
       Except for one thing--couple of weeks ago an anthropologist from London phoned me; very nice fellow, lovely Brit accent, wanted to know about Henry Miller and George Leite--you remember George, I spoke of him in my last article.  See, there was this piece called "The New Cult of Sex and Anarchy" in Harper's magazine a good while ago and this fellow wanted to know about it because he was writing a book.  So I thought, "Well, you know: George's poem about The Mastodon, that poem kind of says it all."  So here is that poem for your delectation, OK?  To the tune of Tannenbaum:
        O Mastodon, O Mastodon,
        O broken glass
        Comes from your ass.
        O Mastodon, O Mastodon,
        O broken glass comes from your ass.
        O Mastodon.
        O broken glass;
        O broken glass
        O Mastodon,
        O Mastodon, O Mastodon,
        O broken glass
        Comes from your ass.            
              I hereby swear and affirm that these events are true.  (Signed) Jody Scott  12/25/06  (rest in peace, dear buddy George).    Daughter Lani died 2006, wife Nancy & son Daliel still thriving in California, bless ‘em.
​-Jody Scott

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