When I first saw him he was standing in the middle of the road talking to the air. Cars and trucks were stopped behind him honking their horns. No one even rolled down a window to ask him if he was okay. By the time I made it to him, he was on the sidewalk talking to himself.
I placed a hand on his shoulder only to feel his hard bones under his coat hiding his frail and undernourished body. His eyes were ice blue and his hair silver. He started to tell me about different movies he had seen and then changed the subject to talk about the ground coming up towards him.
“How old are you,” I asked with curiosity. “I am 70-years old,” he said in a whisper. “Do you have somewhere to stay tonight,” I asked with curiosity. He smiled and responded, “Don’t worry, I have a credit card to pay for somewhere to stay.”
I left him with a pair of new gloves and a green scarf. As I watched him walk away, I noticed he could barely walk. He looked at me and said that he has a bad knee. He then said, “See my hat [pulling it out of his pocket], a judge gave it to me. The judge was wearing it when he saw me and took it off his head and put it on my head.”
“It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” - Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-1978)