Category: cherry street

Tom O’Brien Knew Paul O’Toole

 


I met OB on Cherry Street paying his respects to Paul. He gave Paul a few bucks every once in a while; Spoke about life with him. “A blessing and gift you gave me,” he said when he looked at my image. “I needed to feel a real emotion about this. Too often we walk by people with a false smile on our faces. I’m not feeling so alone, anymore.”

I wonder who will be next in line?

 

Paul’s Place

 

He’d sit on Cherry St, just up the street from Rite Aid. Before the Gear Exchange moved to Church St, the yellow jackets would chase him from under the enclosed area in front of the door.

Sometimes he put his crate near the wall near the grate so he could stash his beer (avoiding a ticket for an open container) and his litter (so he wouldn’t be burdened during travel).

Told not to block the sidewalk, he’d sit close to the street, putting his box or his butt in a place where cars backing into a parking space wouldn’t hit him. He’d also chase the sun.

He usually travelled with his friend, Eric.

He went to the park occasionally. He didn’t like the drug scene, the phony friendships, or the antics. Eric learned from him, helped him and was with him close to the end. Eric is now alone on the street.

Paul Like Tigers

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So, he likes Tigers, the Detroit ones and the Bengals. A little too drunk to distinguish the two, but he acknowledged that having a reflector, held by Eric, shining on him, required me to pay him $3000 for the shot. He never read Moon Tiger, though.

“Mrs. Duckman, ….” Eric calls me, especially when he lectures me.

Quite an accomplishment for a photographer to have my street models hold a light shaper, eh!

Now, I just have to learn how to teach them how to use the equipment.

Paul Ages

Great thanks to Paul’s sister, Mary, who keeps part of her eye on her brother through this blog, for sending me this image. He did ask for you upon his return, asking that I tell  you where he was at. His surprise that I had informed you that he was incarcerated at St Albans, lacked understanding of our relationships: yours and mine; his and mine; and the power of blogs.

Photographers, especially documentary/portraitists look at their work in search of increased understanding of individual people, as well as the human race, in general. That is quite a span in which to find a focus. Every portrait forces me to look at the person, an exercise which can start with the easiest question, like where was this shot made or when and why. But, at some level, I just look at the portraits, knowing they have recorded a life living.

So, he spent 31 days in jail. What a waste. “Nothing much to do there,” he said. Missed the Labor Day Weekend in Burlington. People on the street said it was for a failure to appear; others said his public presence and sanitary practices posed a problem. He had built up a series of unspectacular violations of the public order and couldn’t or didn’t show up in court to answer them. He went in, because there are only  a few ways the system can respond to uncooperative citizens who disrupt the peace in the main urban glen in Chittenden County.

Still complaining, he returned to the spot where he hangs, starting the same cycle of present life again, and continuing to age. Yeh, they pick on you. Yeh, you have been underserved. Now what? It be getting cold, again. “Hey, yunno, there aren’t a lot of people walking down this street. Getting more difficult to make a living out here.”