Partly by accident, partly by design, a few days ago, I went penniless with my wife on a flight to Seattle for a six-day visit with our son Stan. I vowed to handle all my business on plastic. I didn’t even take a checkbook, given that fewer and fewer places even accept checks anymore. One person bounces a $10 check at a local restaurant and everybody else suffers.

     A benefit to carrying no cash on a long trip was not having to fish out a few dollars each time a street person hustled me. Normally, I give the needy person a couple of bucks and throw in a couple more “for your friend over there.”
     This time was different. At once it opened my eyes to the number of homeless in a big city, and it acquainted me with the attitudes of some of them.
     Stan, tired of a 40-minute commute to work, moved into a downtown condo last spring. Though he doesn’t know the homeless people by name, he’s sure it’s been the same group for months, maybe even years.
     “Seattle is probably the best city for the homeless,” Stan said. “It never gets too cold here, and though it rains, all they have to do is find a freezer carton to sleep in.”
     On the block where our son lives are two long covered hallways leading to a book store and music store. We needed to walk around several sleeping figures to get to the apartment.
     On first sighting us, one of them asked for spare change, which I absolutely didn’t have. He thanked me anyway, uttered a “God bless you,” and went back to sleep.
     We discovered that invariably we got blessed. Apparently it’s an attempt not to appear as a nuisance, which may lead to an arrest.
     The police seem to look the other way. Once, when the police got involved, it was because a store owner sprayed them with a garden hose. They in turn did some spraying of their own, and the cops came.
     After a walk downtown, we were startled to see a man raising his head and greeting us, while getting comfortable in a Dumpster. The bags deposited there that day apparently provided him enough padding.
     This man appeared different from the “typical” street person; he had all his teeth; he spoke correct Spanish and English, and he seemed well-nourished, quite unlike his drug-filled brethren.
     “Louie” never asked for money. The next day, just before crews arrived to empty the Dumpsters, he got out and sat by the curb. A few minutes later he exited Bauhaus, a downtown Seattle coffee house, with a steaming latte grande.
     Later he told us that most street people shun the shelters because there they must surrender any drugs or alcohol they might be carrying.
     I asked Louie why some of the homeless don’t just hide their bottle or their stash and pick it up again after leaving the shelter.
     “The trouble is that everybody else would be looking for your bottle, if you hid it,” he said.
     Then he pulled a quite empty liquor bottle from his coat, carefully wrapped it in a newspaper, and quietly hid it behind a shrub. It was then he pointed out a dozen pairs of eyes following his moves. Where had these people come from? When Louie returned later, the bottle was gone.
     Except for its tepid climes, Seattle is probably no different from any other major city, with its innumerable places to crash. Near downtown, there’s a foot-wide length of concrete, a remnant of a former walkway, that spans some 50 feet above the I-5 freeway. Wallenda himself would not attempt walking across it, as a brisk breeze could send the walker to his Maker.
     It was just recently blocked off, Louie told us. At the end of the walk was a little shelter underneath the overpass, which was covered on three sides and provided a cave-like opening for someone, until the authorities put an end to it.
     Throughout the area we noticed a number of places which conceivably provided shelter before alterations were made. Wrought iron fences have been topped with prison-type razor wire.
     A neighborhood church, with about a dozen exterior recessed casement areas, just perfect to sleeping one person, discourages drop-ins by using barbed wire to make the areas inaccessible.
     During peak hours, many of Seattle’s buses offer free rides within the city. That was done to cut down on gas consumption and auto congestion. But even that idea, welcomed by many, is being re-thought, as the passengers are concerned that “some people,” namely street people, ride the bus all day.
     On our final day, during a walk downtown, we passed a bearded man, 20 years younger than his appearance, replete with a Starbucks cup. His tennis shoes lacked bottoms, and, well, he reeked of body odor, pot and booze.
     Near a construction zone, a turning truck pulling a long crane stopped, blocking traffic and running over two curbs. We pedestrians maintained a safe distance, but not the coffee-carrying street person. I’m sure several people closer to him saw the potential danger — he’d easily be decapitated — in standing in the path of a crane. Yet nobody seemed overly concerned until my wife Bonnie, shouted “Look out!” He barely reacted, but someone who had heard Bonnie’s shout grabbed the man and pulled him to safety.
     Seeing addicted people in such large numbers made us wonder how much of this lifestyle is by choice. What calamity beset someone whose sum total of earthly possessions now is his tattered clothes, perhaps a bottle of liquor, a few cigarettes and a container of Starbucks coffee?
     My knee-jerk reaction, like that of a lot of people, is to throw money at the problem: buy him some shoes, warmer clothes, a nutritious meal. Big shots who provide free turkey meals on Thanksgiving forget the homeless will be hungry again on Friday.
     But closer observation convinced us that wouldn’t have helped for long, not even for one person. The streets can be cruel and impersonal, but we need to keep reminding ourselves that these too are choices people make, and in Louie’s case, he said he made his decision 27 years ago.