Everybody has one: What's your story?

Ormond Beach Observer
Opinion

I was chatting with a homeless man the other day about how he’d change the world.

Waiting outside of a local Subway to meet an interviewee, I wasn’t going anywhere, and he could sense it. He stuck out his hand, so I shook it. For some reason, he — let’s call him Joe — liked the cut of my jib.

We became pals.

“Now, I’m not gonna ask you for money,” he told me, pulling a crumpled wad of bills from his pocket and showing them off. He wasn’t in this for the payoff, he explained. He was a people person. “I care,” he said. “I’m interested.”

And besides, we had bigger things to talk about — about $17 trillion bigger.

“I mean, what’s the national deficit up to now?” he scoffed, leaning in close then rocking back. Shaking his head. “Put me in a room with Obama 15 minutes.” Then he wiped his hands, as if to say, “Done. Problem solved.” I don’t know Joe well, but I can picture him giving Obama a persuasive and historic talking-to.

“Now, I’m not saying he’s doing a bad job,” he added, “but we used to be No. 1, you know? We used to be the best.”

It was around this time I started really thinking about Joe. Usually, when we cross paths with homeless people, we give them a dollar or we don’t give them a dollar, but we always keep going, keep moving.

But then here’s Joe, a guy with nothing to his name but a few bucks jammed inside his denim shorts, and he’s worried about the national debt.

I wondered if the recession was where his problems got started. Maybe he had a job and a wife and a fortune. Maybe he used to keep moving, too, when homeless guys stopped him on the street to say hello.

Maybe he was just lonely.

Whatever he was, I kept thinking about him, even after the interview. But what’s funny about this city is that, for me, surprises like these seem to happen often.

Just this week, I got into an email conversation with local writer and history buff Skip Lowery, who used to work on the beach, under Andy Romano, and with Ted Cassidy, the guy who went on to play Lurch on “The Addams Family.” He also told me that apparently Ellinor Village was once home to the Mrs. America Pageant.

Lowery is currently working on a historical autobiography, called “Ormond Boy.”

And then there’s Diane Michael, who runs the newsletter company, The Callan Group. She’s an Army veteran who started a date-auctioning company in San Diego after returning from being deployed overseas. Her dad, Richard Michael, was the city’s first economic development director, before he got surgery to replace all six arteries in his heart. I met her Tuesday.

After leaving Peach Valley Cafe, where she had tea and I had coffee, I headed back over the bridge, where a guy sat on the side of the road. He wasn’t homeless or lost. He wasn’t selling anything. He was holding a giant cardboard sign that said, “SMILE.” Just because.

I figured that, exactly like Joe, a thousand things must have happened in just the right order to bring him to that bridge with that sign. Why did he care? Why was he there?

Everybody has a story.

BY MIKE CAVALIERE | ASSOCIATE EDITOR