Our Friend, an almost totally blind veteran, was “disappeared”, but not from hearts and souls

That picture above of Our Friend was taken by myself at 9:50 AM, Wednesday, 13 March, 2024. He was was down a steep ditch off a major highway, hidden by a guardrail, with the speed limit being 65 mph / 104 kph.

THE PREVIOUS STATUS QUO

The picture below (from Google-maps) is Our Friend in the lower-right of the picture, with his backpack in the Gazebo (which is near the Post Office in Andrews). This has been a familiar, friendly scene in Andrews for years and years and years. He’s simply enjoying the fresh air, soaking up the sun, during the day, as any citizen might do.

Some people might call that being a bum. Some might say that he needs to have a chat up close and personal with some baseball bats, you know, to get more acquainted with that Appalachian justice which exclaims “Howdy!” but then adds “Now, GET!” They think that when he’s out of sight, he’ll be out of mind. Good riddance, they say. He’s unproductive, they say. Some people might say that he just needs to hear some carefully worded threats good people, those the Italians call gente per bene. And then he’ll just leave on his own, the genteel way to “disappear” someone.

You’ll notice that the grounds and the Gazebo are immaculate. That’s because Our Friend would clean everything. No bird droppings. No cat droppings. No trash. Everything in tip-top shape. This isn’t Seattle or San Francisco. This is Andrews, but only because up to this point we’ve had Our Friend to help us out. Our Friend, omnipresent during the day, kept the park crime-free. The thugs and buffoons didn’t like him overhearing their drug sales.

Our Friend had gone missing on the evening of March 1, 2024, a Friday night, on Main Street of Andrews, NC, heading out of town. So, that’s almost two weeks before I found him. By “missing” I mean that he physically just disappeared.

But I also mean that we missed him. Almost everyone loves Our Friend. He is elderly, one of those veterans who couldn’t quite re-integrate back into society in society’s point of view. As far as I know, Our Friend is not a criminal of any kind. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t take drugs. He’s the friendliest – if wariest – and most innocuous guy ever. Very quiet. Very soft spoken. He’s by far the most polite guy I know. Our Friend knows suffering. He’s been betrayed, a lot. He’s very wise.

• On the one hand, there are street thugs who beat him up, shake him down, steal from him, threaten him, attempt to gouge his eyes so almost successfully that now, though he walks around with his eyes in his head, he’s basically blind. That’s why he’s wary. He’s trying to see who you are, if you mean him harm.
• On the other hand, he can size up insincere do-gooders right quick, and is deft, brilliant I would say, in putting them off. I’ve witnessed this. What a great spirit.

If Our Friend were to be assessed for ADA, I think he would be able to receive 100% disability. But, note well, Our Friend doesn’t want government housing. He won’t even take a free meal at the soup kitchen here in town, ever. No food bank for him. As to the accusation of “unproductive”…

• …you can say that about babies in the womb, so they are murdered; you can say that about toddlers, so, in many countries, it’s legal to murder them; you can say that about the elderly, so it’s pretty much legal everywhere, at least by benign neglect, to murder them, with people mostly getting “stop-the-breathing-doses” of morphine; you can speak of being unproductive in regard to the handicapped, so people try to hurt them all the more, and I myself am still stunned by the kinds of things people would say to me when I was for a couple of years in a wheelchair, they wanting to disappear me because people in wheelchairs shouldn’t be seen in polite society; you can accuse someone of being unproductive for reasons of race, color, creed, social status, whatever you like… but I find it rather despicable to flip “Thank you for your service!” to “You’re unproductive.”
• Moreover, our Friend prays for his enemies. That’s the most productive thing anyone can ever do in this life, ever.

Our Friend’s enemies seem to be consumed by thoughts of him. They allegedly claim that he is “camping out” at night, an allegedly unappreciated activity. But Our Friend has never, as far as I know, ever camped out around here. Well, I take that back, allegedly Our Friend is camping out in the hearts and minds and souls of his enemies, all rent free. :-)

Perhaps we should get to know Our Friend a little better…

(1) Going to Walmart with Our Friend a number of times to get him new shoes and cargo trousers that you see in the picture up top, he himself brought up a favorite subject of his, namely, discovering, without a calculator and without paper and pen (he’s blind), incredibly labyrinthine mathematical equations. All done in his mind. The guy is a phenomenon of brilliance.

(2) Cool! Let’s continue: When I first met Our Friend, he would often sit on a bench directly in front of the American Flag that was set up right next to a railroad crossing on the north end of town. While I was speaking with him, a lady stopped, at a distance, to interrogate him:

• We’re you ever in the military?
• Yes.
• What kind of benefits are you getting?
• I don’t like to discuss my private affairs with strangers.
• But I want to help you.
• Please, respect my peace.

Years and years later, just some weeks ago, a young man walked up to Our Friend and tried to hand him $20 bucks. Our Friend politely refused. Get that? The young man explained that he was heading off for military duty the next day. Our Friend responded, “I’m a veteran.” Just an acknowledgement. He didn’t take the money. You can’t get more genuine than that. You can’t make that up.

But, that got me thinking… which branch of the military? He’s extremely disciplined, scheduled, able to purposely put himself into survival mode in the worst of conditions as if such readiness were part of his job, part of what he did in the military.

(3) Our Friend has a strict code of morality – the Ten Commandments – which expressly, frequently enter into every aspect of conversation. He speaks of doing God’s will, always, at each moment… right now.

(4) Cool! Let’s continue:

בֹקֶר טוֹב I would say I would say to Our Friend, perhaps entirely politically incorrectly to some of the populace in these days of world strife.

בֹקֶר טוֹב he would respond, מַה שְּׁלוֹמְךָ, happy but struggling to speak a familiar but long unused language.

מְצוּיָן and, of course, תוֹדָה.

About his disappearing: Our Friend walked away under his own power. He received many all-to-eager offers to give him a ride out of town, out of sight, out of mind. He refused. Our Friend likes to walk. He did so. The question is, why? We had set him up with a nice little cottage where he stayed at night. We had him in there before the severe cold spells near zero a couple of months back.

Our Friend very suddenly being no longer with us, we went looking for him. As I say, it took me almost two weeks to find him way out of state on a lonely stretch of mountainous highway, following some sparce leads of out-of-state friendly law enforcement and trying to listen to my guardian angel while reciting the Emergency Chaplet of the Immaculate Conception.

In the picture below, the red circle on the top is where Our Friend was, way down a very steep ditch behind a guard rail. He thought he was hidden, but that’s no match for my guardian angel. The red circle on the bottom of the picture is where I was able to pull over, perhaps 150 yards ahead.

All I had seen from some 50 yards before the guardrail was just some random bits of tattered fabric, looking ever so much like garbage, randomly poking above the grass line. But my Guardian Angel smacked me upside the head, indicating that it was Our Friend. I pulled over and hiked it back the 150 yards or so. And… it was him. Of course. Thanks, Guardian Angel.

I sat down, and he very calmly told me the entire alleged account about how he was allegedly disappeared, what was allegedly said, allegedly who said what, any alleged threats, the alleged whole lot of it. Horrifying. I can swear to it. It’s still hearsay, but… just… wow…

It’s quietly alleged that Our Friend has been allegedly committing allegedly imprisonable offenses, you know, so that he can be locked up with other street people and, you know what they’re like, and what they can do to you, it was allegedly said to him. If a judge during a court proceeding were to say such things, he could receive disciplinary action, suspension, removal from the bench, or even have criminal charges laid against him depending on the severity of the offense and the jurisdiction. I gotta wonder how that applies analogously to others in this fallen human society.

Let’s investigate the alleged crimes of Our Friend:

• Our Friend is allegedly homeless, but we don’t know that. There have been plenty of people who do such things so as to write fascinating memoirs of human interest. For all we know, Our Friend could be a zillionaire. Our Friend is incredibly smart. At any rate, those who are homeless are allegedly not allowed in the city limits of Andrews, N.C. That would make it really difficult to go from homeless to having a roof over your head if you did, in fact, want government housing inside city limits.
  • I’m told by the town offices that there are no ordinances or policies about this that can be printed out at this precise moment for reading at my leisure since there is an active case before the Supreme Court concerning precisely this point.
• Anyway, Our Friend is allegedly camping out, and camping out is allegedly not allowed in the city limits of Andrews, N.C.
  • As far as I can remember, for all the years I’ve known Our Friend, he’s never even once camped out. Perhaps someone can correct me on that, but I’m quite certain that if it ever happened, it hasn’t happened for years. Again, there are no ordinances or polices that can be printed out…
• Our Friend is allegedly feeding the birds, you know, like people right around the world might toss a crumb or two to our eager feathered friends. I never even once saw this myself. I never saw any pigeons. Maybe it happened. I don’t know. I can’t remember seeing bird droppings. I can’t see how this is a problem. Allegedly, tossing a scrap to a bird is an alleged imprisonable offense. Maybe a crumb for the birds is considered criminal-level littering and disorderly conduct and crosses lines of DHHS standards of best health practices. Perhaps the birds needed to be masked what with avion flu being a threat once every other lifetime…
  • Of course, all of this is alleged, whether in regard to alleged ordinances, polices, local, state or federal laws. I don’t know. I’m not an attorney. But now I’m wondering if I gotta take down my bird feeder, or stop my neighbor who fills up the feeder in front of my picture window.
• Our Friend is allegedly feeding the cats, I suppose, just my opinion, because the cats have not betrayed him, beat him up, shook him down, tried to gauge out his eyes, or wanted him disappeared or dead. Allegedly, feeding the cats is an alleged imprisonable offense.
  • While I have seen Our Friend feeding cats, I gotta say that it’s done with utmost decorum and cleanliness. This isn’t tossing rubbish scraps everywhere. No, no. This is more like fine dining. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that Our Friend ties a linin bib on the cats as they quietly munch down, but almost. I gotta wonder if service dogs can get a treat for a job well done, or if a SWAT team will descend on any offending ADA party with a service-dog.

Now, add to all this the alleged threat of having Our Friend not only arrested and transported to his incarceration, but also allegedly telling him that he will forthwith be put in with other alleged street people. Our Friend was allegedly told that those alleged street people could allegedly do him harm. All this for feeding the birds and the cats.

With everything else going on in town, all the drugs and arsons and what-not, this seems to me to be about the most grotesque alleged abuse of office I’ve come across in a long time. Our Friend is elderly, suffering, and a veteran.

Let’s rewrite that video dialogue:

• Undecipherable I.D., expired. Thirty-eight bucks. And a tooth brush. But no home address. In other words, homeless. Aggravated homelessness for someone who doesn’t drink and isn’t on drugs is a first degree offense against those in this town… Mister… No-Family. First name Our Friend. No middle name. You’re lookin’ at ten to twenty years once those good-ol-boys you’ve outwitted recover their sense of entitlement in their safe spaces. Process him. Get him to county.

It’s because Our Friend prays for his enemies that he’s the guy they didn’t count on.

Oh, and for anyone interested: Our Friend has absolutely zero intention of returning to Andrews, NC. He will “Never go back.”

God bless you and keep you, Our Friend.

Pray for us who are your friends and are still here.

! עם ישראל חי !