"If you can't carry it inside your backpack
then you don't need it."
This sounds very good...very intelligent and disciplined. No hoarders, pack-rats, junk collectors
nor pawnshop/swap-meet junkies allowed!! Its advice that smacks of efficiency, simplicity and implies that you' ve got cash wealth (ie. Whatever things/stuff one may need that didn't fit
inside the backpack can be easily purchased/replaced with a new one at the next destination.)
Well, I hate that stupid adviCe and I always have from the first moment some hobo tried to
offer it to me. Its the sort of self-limiting handicap that only a bottom-dwelling lifestyle loser would adhere to. I never learned that the American Dream meant going to school /become trained in some field of work, save your hard earned money so that one day you'll be able go buy a lovely spacious backpack where you and your wife can start family.
Perhaps that's being a little too harsh, but the only people I ever met who follow that backpack rule are the ones who constantly ask to borrow (and sometimes steal) my hobo crap!
One of the biggest advantages I've come to appreciate most about living hobo style in Mira Mesa is that I have an ever expanding universe of peripheral storage spaces nearby. One is large enough to hold all of my hobo crap together (but its the furthest away) while the other several are very small and each one can barely hold half a small shopping cart load of stuff. What i like most about them all is that I pay no rent/storage fee for using them and I can get to my stuff 24/7.
While climbing out of the dumpster behind CVS drugstore tonight, I ran into
my little buddy Miguel! His Ingles es no muy bueno, but its far mo betta than my
Spanish and yet we still understand one another and we like to chop it up once in a while. ; )
By having several small storage containers spread out all across town, I feel sorta like a fatcat corporate banker capitalist pig (remember how the infamous OCCUPY movement coined the term
for the super wealthy folks: "the one percenters" whom live with excess supplies of overpriced high end stuff and own dozens of vacation homes near every major airport and enjoy the luxury of having their personal crap at fingertips whenever they travel). Well, that's how I roll as well.
I'm not bragging here, but, for example,whenever I get bored with these
Eastside MM hobos, I just drag/push my shopping cart 2 miles across town to Camino Ruiz Blvd. where I have several caches of canned food and clean/dry clothes safely stored. Whenever I want to
escape from MM for awhile I can slide over to Miramar where I have a large patio-porch-split level dwelling with ambiance and privacy and yes, more of my stuff stored nearby.
I know that to some, I may sound as if I'm content with all of my little piles and bags full of hobo crap strewn all over town but the truth is that I'm as frustrated as hell because I need more crap...lots of it. What I really need is a full time job with an income in the 70k to 90k range but I'll get into that another time.
For as long as I've been homeless,over 4 yrs, I've always recognized the treasures that can be found
in dumpsters. But like in so many other ways, the way I dumpster dive is vastly different from how most other hobos do it. Rarely do we search for the same kinds of crap unless its something really good like canned soup, bottles of wine or like that big laundry bag we found last year that was filled with unwashed panties that was owned/worn by Jessica Simpson!
(Okay I lied...they actually belonged to Ashley.)
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