“The poor you will always have with you….”

—Matthew 26:11
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They exist out there. In their own subculture. In another dimension, almost under-ground, in conditions most of us cannot fathom. Men, women, young adults, children. They work paycheck to paycheck, doing the service jobs. Attendants. Gas station clerks. Servers. Some don’t work at all, but sit around collecting welfare.

They are the poor.

Now, being poor is no sin. It’s not a virtue either. I’ve been there myself. More than a few times. Years ago, when I wandered the earth. Many times not knowing where I’d be next week, not having a hundred bucks to my name, or even ten. Hitting bottom meant I didn’t have the money for a pack of cigarettes. That happened once or twice. And that was back when cigarettes didn’t cost an arm and a leg like they do now.

To me, being poor was so miserable that I worked hard not to be. The experience of poverty is a great motivator.

The poor are all around us. We deal with them every day. I have no problem with that. But some few of the poor have had a strange tendency to end up renting my upstairs apartment. And that has caused some minor tribulations in my life.

It’s a nice apartment. Nothing special, but nice. Two bedrooms. Full bath. Living room and equipped kitchen. Private drive and porch.

When Ellen and I bought the house back in May, 2000, “John Doe” was comfortably en-sconced upstairs. So he came with the house. A single man, fiftyish, who made a decent salary driving for an Amish work crew, John was all by himself in the world. Raised an orphan, he had no relatives anywhere except an estranged son from a previous marriage. Or so he claimed.

He was a kindly fellow, a bit rough and uncouth, on the slow simple side. Put a few beers in him and he’d get loud. But he was kind hearted. He lived upstairs with a large declawed cat and sat by his open window on summer evenings and smoked and didn’t make much noise or bother anyone. He usually paid the rent on time or almost on time.

I felt bad for him and tried to include him when we had cookouts and even on holidays. We invited him down for Thanksgiving dinner every year. I took him along to my brother Steve’s place for Christmas meals.

Then John made an unwise decision. He loved golf and decided to take a full time job at the local golf course as a groundskeeper. All well and good, except that it didn’t pay much. Minimum wage, or a few cents more. Almost immediately money got tighter. He fell behind again and again on his rent. I cajoled and scolded and threatened and sweet-talked. To no avail. And so it went for about a year, with him hanging on by a thread, usually behind on the rent and heating bills.

And then his truck collapsed. Expired. Kaput. And that was it.

With no transportation, he could not work. He took the bus for awhile, but he had to be at the golf course at 4 AM, and the bus didn’t leave early enough. I dug out an old bicycle from the garage and gave that to him. Off he went, at 3 AM, the seven miles or so along the highway, to get to his job by four. The old bicycle soon looked increas-ingly wobbly and dilapidated. Eventually it collapsed as well.

By then John was way behind on the rent and fuel costs. He kept assuring me he would pay. Some fine day. Then he began making noises to move, closer to his job. I did not resist. So one day a friend stopped by with a pickup while I was at work and moved him out. Trouble was, he didn’t take all his stuff. And left the apartment in shambles. Absolutely trashed.

By the time we got it cleaned, we had spent over $600.00. John had left cigarette butts everywhere and his cat had not been the cleanest animal. Up in the attic, I found boxes and boxes of trash, and many little tins full of cigarette butts. Interestingly, one box held hundreds and hundreds of old lottery tickets he’d bought in hopes of hitting it big. Instead of using the money to pay the rent. Irritated me.

He did leave a lot of good tools and hunting gear, so I recouped a few hundred bucks selling those to friends. But nowhere near the $1100.00 he owed.

After cleaning the mess John had left, I rented the apartment to a brother and sister from northern PA, who had come to the area in search of work. They stayed for over a year, and mostly kept up with the rent. When they left, the apartment was clean. I placed the “Apartment for Rent” sign out by the road again.

Many people stopped by to look at the apartment. Most from the lower strata of society. I had each one fill out an application, including details on income and so forth.

And then one day she walked in and announced she was going to rent the apartment. She loved it. She had to have it.

I’ll call her “Jane Roe.” A single mom with a teenage daughter. And a cat. And a job. She very much wanted the apartment and seemed to make enough to manage. Her references checked out pretty well. So I decided to rent to her.

Jane came up with the first month’s rent and the security deposit, which was an ad-ditional month’s rent. Unlike my previous renters, Jane took pride in the apartment and hung curtains in the windows and added other homey touches. I thought this one might work out. And it did for awhile.

I soon discovered that Jane had an interesting relationship with the truth. And that’s being kind. The woman lied for no reason, lied when the simple truth would have served her better. I have never known anyone who would lie so freely, even when there was no reason to. It soon got to where every word she said went into one ear and out the other. Everything she said, I just automatically figured was a lie.

But she managed to keep up with the rent. And that’s all that really mattered. All that was any of my business. I often had to remind her it was due. Sometimes it took her until mid-month to get it all to me. But she kept at it and pretty much kept current. And so it went for more than two years. Jane had now rented from me for longer than any other tenant.

Things began to unravel last summer. She made a series of unfortunate job changes. Never lasted long at anything. Always the story of how the money would be here next week. Always behind, always just hanging on.

Somewhere along the line, her fifteen year old daughter established an online relation-ship with some creep from New York. The next thing I knew, an old sedan kept show-ing up in my drive when Jane was at work. I paid little attention; it was none of my business. Until one day the driver took a detour through my yard with the old sedan and left deep tracks in the grass. I was furious.

When I next saw Jane, I berated her. I showed her the tracks in the yard and told her the car with New York license plates had done it. She’d better tell her friends not to do that again. She stared at me and claimed she didn’t know what I was talking about. I just passed off her protests as another lie.

Turned out she didn’t know. And the guy from New York, a thirty year old creep, was upstairs with the daughter when no one was around. Jane notified the cops. They inter-viewed her daughter. A warrant was issued for his arrest.

The daughter became pregnant. It kind of freaked me out that this stuff was going on right above my head, sometimes when I was at home, even. They decided to keep the baby. The cops nabbed the thirty year old creep. He’s now sitting in the Lancaster County jail.

The baby arrived in March. Cute little boy. I went upstairs and admired him. But I felt sorry for him. He has absolutely no chance at all of amounting to anything in life.

And about exactly then, Jane’s decrepit old station wagon breathed its last.

With no car, she couldn’t get to her job. With no job, there was no income. With no income, there was no rent money for the landlord.

By late April, she had made no move to pay the rent, but kept weaving whatever tales her fantastic imagination could contrive to convince me the money would be here by the next weekend. The weekend always came and went, and no money. With the baby arriving and all, I held off for awhile. She and her daughter both went on welfare.

In late April, I’d had enough. I’m not a bank, I told her. If I don’t pay my mortgage, my house gets repossessed. I then told her that if some of the money wasn’t forth-coming by the next weekend, I would be forced to file eviction procedures. The next Saturday morning, she bundled up her daughter and they both disappeared for a full week, staying with family in a nearby town. No explanations, no communication with me, nothing. They just disappeared.

The following Monday, I filed an eviction notice at the local District Justice office. With all the appeal periods, notice and so forth, eviction takes about a month. I figured to have her out by late May. In the meantime, we quit talking to each other. They existed upstairs, and I lived below. Seething each time the furnace kicked on, burning up expensive fuel to heat their apartment. Seething at the fact that they were living above me in my house, making no attempt to pay the rent due. And that it was taking so long to get them out.

The hearing date arrived. I went, but Jane never showed. The Judge granted me possession of my own apartment. Now a ten day appeal period had to pass. I sat downstairs and continued seething while they clumped about above my head.

After the ten-day appeal period, they would be trespassing. I concocted all kinds of schemes to shut off the water and the satellite TV, both included in the rent. Just wait, wait until that day, then righteous revenge would be mine.

The ten days passed. It was a Friday evening. I got home from the gym. Now I could shut off the water. But something held me back. I decided, what the heck, just talk to her and see what’s going on. So I knocked on her door. She came down and opened it a crack.

And suddenly my anger dissipated. Didn’t disappear, but dissipated. I saw a scared woman, out of options, out of stories, out of lies, out of choices. Yes, she was a liar. A deadbeat. A fraud. A freeloader. But she was scared. I would have been too.

I smiled at her. “I just wanted to see what your intentions are,” I said, not unkindly. “When will you be out?”

She opened the door and stepped out. “By the first of June,” she answered.

“You are trespassing now,” I said. “I could shut off the water. But I won’t, if you leave and clean the place up. And leave the stuff that’s mine.”

“I will,” she said. “My daughter and the baby have already moved in with my family. So they aren’t here.”

That was a positive development. I was relieved. When it boiled right down to it, I didn’t want to shut off the water supply to a baby anyway.

“You know,” I said conversationally, “you will never find an apartment this nice for such reasonable rent with such an easy-going landlord. What went wrong?”

“I know that,” she said. “You’ve always been good to us. When my car broke down, everything just went to h—.”

“I understand,” I said, “but that doesn’t make it right. You can’t go around ripping people off like you’re doing to me. It won’t work long term. It’s wrong. At some point, things will balance out. At some point, God will see to that.”

“I know,” she replied, “and I want to pay you the money I owe. Once I get a job.”

That statement didn’t even go in one ear and out the other. It just disappeared, whoosh, straightway into the ether. She owed me almost $2000.00. It might as well have been $2 million. I would never see a cent.

“And I will clean the place when I leave,” she promised.

Fat chance, I thought.

She moved out this week. Strange thing, she almost kept her promise. As near as she was able to, I suppose. Her stuff is moved out, except for a few odds and ends of junk. The apartment, while not sparkling, was vacuumed. Decently clean. The stuff that was mine is sitting in a neat little pile.

And so she’s gone. To pester and terrorize some other poor landlord, and regale him with ever-escalating tales of woe and grief. I hope he’s got a good airtight lease, like I had. I almost wish her well, and I’m relieved that she’s gone. And more than a little irritated. But overall, not really that angry. It is what it is. No sense popping a blood vessel about it.

People, and especially the poor, do what they have to do to survive. Like she did. Things got a bit out of hand, and before she knew it, she was under the waves. And couldn’t resurface.

She could have made better choices. She could have walked to jobs within half a mile of my house at about ten different businesses. But she didn’t. Chose not to.

Some people can’t be helped.

Now she’s gone. I’m wiser but poorer. That’s life.
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Next week: My first reflections on Elmo Stoll.