The Sweeper
He was a neighborhood fixture back in the days before "keep Portland weird" was a bumper sticker motto.
Ragged clothes, pushing a shopping cart filled with garbage bags, he looked homeless--but wasn't. He was right at home, being and doing just what he wanted.
He seemed mute, but only because he didn't feel much like talking. Everwhere he went, he swept up. In his wake was cleanliness. Once, I saw a motorcyclist take a fall in the rain, and The Sweeper (the only name we had for him) was the first to jump in to help the biker get his Harley up again.
The cigarette butts he'd sweep off the sidewalk, he'd smoke those down to the filter. I offered him a pack of Marlboros once, and he shuffled by wordlessly. The guy who ran a coffee cart near the Art Museum earned his trust, and said he enjoyed his conversation. He called him "The Professor", and said he'd retired from teaching at the Colorado College of Mines. He warned me not to take his picture, or pay him too much interest--he was a bone fide "recluse", had a pension, and was happy just to be ignored and left to sweeping the streets he lived on.
The newspaper staff in the 80s--we all saw him a lot. My kids' St. James Day Care played at "Peace Park", where he'd often sit on a park bench and watch--they knew him, too. I got on his wrong side after a late night encounter where I noticed he had a huge .45 automatic pistol in his cart, and mentioned it to a cop friend. It turned out to be a pellet gun. Later, I tried to apologize to him, and he tossed his coffee on me. Yeh, good intentions aside, I'd earned a spot on his shit list.
Eventually Portland got too aware of him, his cloak of invisiblility frayed, and he left. I tried to keep tabs on him, and learned he'd relocated to Seattle, and then eventually I read an obituary. He'd remained inscrutable to the end. I thought about him the other day, when I saw a video about a high school kid who had found his place with his schoolmates, simply by holding doors open for everyone. He became "The Doorman", and was elected Prom King. It got me thinking about "right livelihood", the ease and value of picking out the little things that help and are appreciated. It made me think of "The Sweeper" and his broom. thedigitalnest.com/the-doorman-josh-yandt-how-he-overcame...
It resonated with me, and called to mind a passage I'd just read from Clyde Rice's "Night Freight" a conversation with an old man hobo (former Wyoming sheriff) who was hiding from his family, and enjoying life riding the rails: "They want me to quit living as I want to and live as they do. But I don't and by God I won't...Success seems to make men petulant about the founding things. Yeah, and I've found that there's more fire and eagerness in the eyes of transients and petty thieves and even killers than there is in the eyes of the successful middle class. I've come to it that when men cease to be savage and impulsive they soon convert even their integrity to suet."
So--it struck me, thinking on The Sweeper, and what he taught everyday. And how maybe that other name, "The Professor", suited him better. I tried to find some record of him on the internet, but without any luck, until I found a little-viewed locally written folksong eulogy to the man--it's worth a listen: Mr Sweeper Man (original)
The Sweeper
He was a neighborhood fixture back in the days before "keep Portland weird" was a bumper sticker motto.
Ragged clothes, pushing a shopping cart filled with garbage bags, he looked homeless--but wasn't. He was right at home, being and doing just what he wanted.
He seemed mute, but only because he didn't feel much like talking. Everwhere he went, he swept up. In his wake was cleanliness. Once, I saw a motorcyclist take a fall in the rain, and The Sweeper (the only name we had for him) was the first to jump in to help the biker get his Harley up again.
The cigarette butts he'd sweep off the sidewalk, he'd smoke those down to the filter. I offered him a pack of Marlboros once, and he shuffled by wordlessly. The guy who ran a coffee cart near the Art Museum earned his trust, and said he enjoyed his conversation. He called him "The Professor", and said he'd retired from teaching at the Colorado College of Mines. He warned me not to take his picture, or pay him too much interest--he was a bone fide "recluse", had a pension, and was happy just to be ignored and left to sweeping the streets he lived on.
The newspaper staff in the 80s--we all saw him a lot. My kids' St. James Day Care played at "Peace Park", where he'd often sit on a park bench and watch--they knew him, too. I got on his wrong side after a late night encounter where I noticed he had a huge .45 automatic pistol in his cart, and mentioned it to a cop friend. It turned out to be a pellet gun. Later, I tried to apologize to him, and he tossed his coffee on me. Yeh, good intentions aside, I'd earned a spot on his shit list.
Eventually Portland got too aware of him, his cloak of invisiblility frayed, and he left. I tried to keep tabs on him, and learned he'd relocated to Seattle, and then eventually I read an obituary. He'd remained inscrutable to the end. I thought about him the other day, when I saw a video about a high school kid who had found his place with his schoolmates, simply by holding doors open for everyone. He became "The Doorman", and was elected Prom King. It got me thinking about "right livelihood", the ease and value of picking out the little things that help and are appreciated. It made me think of "The Sweeper" and his broom. thedigitalnest.com/the-doorman-josh-yandt-how-he-overcame...
It resonated with me, and called to mind a passage I'd just read from Clyde Rice's "Night Freight" a conversation with an old man hobo (former Wyoming sheriff) who was hiding from his family, and enjoying life riding the rails: "They want me to quit living as I want to and live as they do. But I don't and by God I won't...Success seems to make men petulant about the founding things. Yeah, and I've found that there's more fire and eagerness in the eyes of transients and petty thieves and even killers than there is in the eyes of the successful middle class. I've come to it that when men cease to be savage and impulsive they soon convert even their integrity to suet."
So--it struck me, thinking on The Sweeper, and what he taught everyday. And how maybe that other name, "The Professor", suited him better. I tried to find some record of him on the internet, but without any luck, until I found a little-viewed locally written folksong eulogy to the man--it's worth a listen: Mr Sweeper Man (original)