BERKELEY STORIES    

 Some of you probably have lots more Berkeley stories than I, who have
lived on the West Coast a total of only about ten years. I'd enjoy
hearing any. Or, for that matter, anything from your own life that
these little tales remind you of.

     In my post, I might have mentioned passing on my walk the street off
Shattuck where in the mid '80s I saw a tall, thin naked man
strolling—the only place, besides Poona, India, where I've ever seen a naked
male walking nonchalantly down the street.

     I also passed near a certain parking lot down the street from the
Berkeley Library. There, also in the '80s, I once mistakenly asked a
bearded homeless man—for change of $5, thinking he was the parking lot
attendant. His sad expression showed he thought I was making fun of him.
When I apologized for my error and made it clear I wasn't mocking him,
we had a conversation.

He was an M.I.T. graduate, it turned out, who spent his nights sleeping
in shop doorways.

Knowing from my own life that with God all is possible, I began telling
him in a cheery tone, "A couple of years and you could have a wife, a
house in the suburbs, a car..."

"That's what I'm afraid of!" he cut me off in reply.

I saw him one more time, a couple weeks later, walking down College
Avenue, holding an army blanket around his body. At first, though he
looked familiar, I couldn't quite place him. We'd almost passed each
other when his identity suddenly dawned on me. In my rush to acknowledge
him, the greeting that innocently popped out of my mouth was, "You're
the man who sleeps in doorways!" 

"Oh, no!" I thought as his face took on the same pained expression he'd
had when I'd asked him for change.

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