Taking the Road Less Traveled

By ED CULLEN

Taking the road less traveled

When it’s still fully day, so that I can see into dark corners beneath the Perkins Road overpass, I get off my bicycle to walk beneath the concrete arch and its speeding cars.

It’s a short walk over eroded embankment and busted concrete. About the midway point, there are railroad tracks that require one to lift and carry his bicycle.

Crossing the tracks one morning on my way to work, I met the fire tender, a man of indeterminate age drinking beer from a tall can. He greeted me at his morning fire with a cheery wave.

Since the newspaper moved to a part of town not so safe for bicycle riding, I don’t see the fire tender much any more. But some Saturday mornings, he keeps his fireside vigil. I don’t know where he goes on Sunday, church maybe, but he isn’t under the overpass. And he doesn’t live in the tent pitched nearby.

On a chilly spring morning, it would be nice to linger by the fire, to ask how many trains have passed, if it’s hard to find wood for his fire and where he spends his nights.

I run an eye over his wood supply, apparently scrounged from a nearby landscaping business. Ruined pallets are one of the fire tender’s ready sources of wood.

The fire tender and I have spoken a few words over the years. Mostly greetings. And stating the obvious.

"Nice bike."

"Nice fire."

I keep moving not from fear or revulsion but because the man at his morning fire seems to want to keep his own company, a small fire at his feet, a cold beer to his lips.

Afternoons, I make the same passage beneath the overpass to find the morning fire burned to ash. The tender is gone. Where does he live, I wonder. Does he have a wife who worries about him? Children? Grandchildren?

At late afternoon, the fire tender gone from beside the railroad tracks, the underside of the overpass is less friendly. I move a little more quickly as I eye the empty dome tent and a pile of filthy blankets where other residents of the sheltering overpass spend the night.

Beneath the overpass is a spreading eyesore of litter dropped not by the homeless campers but people of means passing overhead in automobiles.

There is a carpet of plastic beads on the ground, beer cans and paper – spillage from the St. Patrick’s parade that climbs the overpass each spring.

With a little work, the underside of the overpass could be fitted with a concrete walkway. If people could be educated not to litter in this town, the underpass might be an alternative to pedestrians and cyclists not wanting to use the narrow walkways on the overpass.

But this is 2006, not 1936, and there might be a serial killer waiting for the unwary beneath the overpass instead of fire tenders and tent dwellers.

If there was someone threatening beneath the overpass, I think the fire tender would warn me. Or the men who sleep in the tent or wrapped in the blankets might challenge the serial killer’s presence. It’s good to have people living under overpasses to watch out for the rest of us.

I don’t feel sorry for the people who live under the overpass. The men have become familiar to me. We may not speak, but we acknowledge one another.

They have never asked for a handout. I have never asked them why they spend their mornings or nights under an overpass.

"Nice bicycle," the fire tender said to me one day.

"Nice fire," I replied.

We left it at that.