Portland

          

      When I first moved to Oregon, I lived in Portland. It was a good time for many—the tech industry was booming and food lovers were flocking to town—but I struggled to make ends meet and find affordable housing, several times leaving my cats with a friend and sleeping in my van in the city so that I could get to work on time (5AM some days…). The local papers wrote many articles about the decline in SROs as the old weekly hotels were torn down and replaced by high rise, expensive, apartments for hipsters. Street Roots was starting up; I interviewed for the cook’s job at Sisters of the Road Café; the number of people living on the streets was growing. But the city did not feel unsafe to me.

                One night, I was waiting for the bus on the downtown transit mall. Because I had no money, I had started carrying a loaf of bread from my job at Great Harvest in my backpack.  If someone asked me for money, I gave them the loaf. It had been a long day—I worked for nine hours baking bread then came downtown to teach an adult education GED class in the basement of the Pioneer Place Mall. My timing was off—I just missed the bus.  It was winter but not too cold and not raining.

                A man sidled up to me, holding a sign “Spare Change?  Anything helps.”

                “No,” I said, “but I have a loaf of bread.” I held out the round, whole wheat loaf. He smiled.

                “We thank you,” his next sign read.  As I nodded, he reached into his collar and brought out a white pet rat. We smiled at one another and he slipped off into the night.

                I was in Portland last week for a conference. My room had a beautiful tree right outside the balcony; crows woke me up the first morning, gossiping with one another about local food services. I walked the downtown streets for several hours—it is not a Hellscape. It is not a War Zone. It looks a great deal like it did that night, thirty years ago, when I handed over a loaf of bread to a homeless man and his companion.