The Face of Homeless..........Moving In............

Part 1

It was only as I was actually leaving the park that I called Dave to let him know what I done. Per my usual when I've done something without consulting him first, I told Dave to prepare himself for my latest stunt.

After thirty plus years of marriage Dave is used to the surprises I can come up with sometimes. When I told him I'd invited a homeless family to camp in our back yard and that I needed him to mow the lawn so it would be ready for a tent all the man said was "OK." There were no weird inflections, no unspoken disapproval, just an agreement to mow the lawn.

When I did get into the house after unloading my horse, Dave had questions but they were the obvious ones. Who are these people, without any incriminating tone. Where did they come from? How come they're homeless? And of course, what time are they coming.

It was actually about 7:30 when J and her family arrived but she'd called me somewhere around 3:30 to let me know that would be the case. The time her son needed to be at work turned out later than she'd remembered so she was checking in to be sure the later time was still OK with me.

When they knocked on our front door, Dave answered it as I fled out the back door. I wanted to get them settled in without the added distraction of Delilah and Sugar and my hasty retreat made that possible. Dave ended up putting them in their crates so he could join me to welcome our guests.

I went around the back of the house around to the front door to find them still standing on the front porch. The man I'd only seen from a distance at the park turned out to be the same tall thin man I'd met those weeks ago.

I must admit that took me back just a bit. I had the impression that they were no longer married. I guess I just assumed that meant they were not a couple either. Still it bothered me just a bit that I hadn't realized it was him at the park.

I brushed that concern aside and set to showing them around. There was some debate about the best place to put the tent and talk about planting some trees for me.

There are not many trees on my farm because we had one fall down on our house in a wind storm soon after we'd first moved in so we'd taken out everything that was within distance of hitting a building and everything that was diseased. The end result was not much shade to place a tent.

I hadn't really thought about shade when I'd invited them. Now as the realization hit, I wondered what we could do to make sure they got relief from the sun. The tent was set up between two small oaks in the back yard but I spent most of the night worrying about creating more shade for them.

We have an extra refrigerator on our back deck that we use for overflow. I told our guests they were free to use that fridge and its freezer. Also our barbecue is on the deck and it has a burner off to one side. I made sure they knew they were welcome to use that as well. Up until now they'd only been buying what food they could consume at the time since they had no cold storage and no real ay to cook.

Dave showed the man (I'll call him T) where there was access to electricity. There was a source near where their van was parked and we ran a line to their tent. Then we left them to figure out the particulars since our trying to help only seemed to slow things down. ( Somehow that so reminded me of Dave and I trying to work together.)

I showed them where the bathroom was and, of course, we introduced them to Delilah and Sugar. Both dogs thought having people guests was great fun but they weren't too sure what to think of more dogs. My only concern was they'd mob them as they tried to enter or, for that matter, escape so I made sure Dave understood that both dogs needed to be crated overnight.

I should know better than just talking to Dave about that kind of request. What I should have done was get him to sign some kind of contract in blood. His precious Delilah was exempt from the crate for most of the night. Thankfully she didn't bite anyone or knock anyone down although I'm pretty sure she tried to lick all three of them to death.

To be continued...................


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