Volunteer shows how one of the other half lives
Ihave been working at a soup kitchen in Asbury Park for about two years. We try to get to know the people whom we serve, good people mostly, really poor people for sure. It's difficult. They tend to keep to themselves, not willing to share with us their poverty or its effects on their lives, not wishing to burden us with more than their hunger. Yet there is one man I did get to know. Maybe it was his Yankees cap - I'm a Yankees fan - maybe it was some other need of his or mine. I remember he asked me if he could speak to the pastor. I couldn't help hearing some of what he said, relating his health problems, loss of part of one foot. No wonder he walked with a crutch. His age I could not guess. He's like most of the soup kitchen people, appearing much older than their years, tired and worn out, aged by a harsh life and beaten up by poverty.

I learned his name is W once when I had some free time in the kitchen and sat down with him to have a glass of water and some conversation. He told me he wanted to come back to God and needed advice on where to go to church where he would be welcomed.

"It's tough when you look like me. People don't want to sit in the same seat with you, 'cause I'm poor and look fat and dirty." How glad I was that I spoke with W. I realized that when you help the poor, you really help yourself even more.

We shared the breeze of a window fan one hot and sticky September morning. He needed help, bad. "Do you know where I can get another bed? The mattress and boxspring of the landlord is infested with bedbugs. They're vicious and eating me alive." W pulled up his sleeve to show me his bites and welts. "I can't sleep, they're so bad at night. The landlord's a son-of-a- - -gun. I have to pay $600 a month for my room, and after that, I'm left with only $195 for the rest of the month."

I told W I would see what I could do. I spoke with the pastor. I spoke with myself as I drove home from Asbury Park that day: "$195 divided by 30 days. Wow! $6.50 a day! He comes to the soup kitchen just to get by!"

I couldn't get it out of my mind. Over and over I recited it - what my mother said when she tucked me into bed as a boy: "Night, night, sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite." Those bedbugs were fun critters. Real bugs and the reality of poverty bit me hard that day.

ItoldWIwouldhavesomet hing for him the next Monday. I really had no idea what I was in for. Where do you get used bedding, clean and respectable? I went shopping in the thrift shops in Asbury. No luck. That was my first-ever look at the castoff-anddonated stuff for sale. It taught me how tough the poor had it and how blessed I was.

Next Monday, W told me he had thrown out the vermin-infested bedding and fumigated the place. He had slept on the floor two nights, yet he was so happy he was getting a new bed. He thanked me there and thanked God in the chapel. W gave me his address; he would wait for me to help me with the bed. I panicked. I had no bed for W! I phoned my wife for help. Taking her advice, I went to the nearest "mattress professional" store. "Count your blessings, not your money," she had said. So W would get a brand-new, twin-sized mattress, firm, all wrapped up in plastic with the store's label.

Back to W's house, I heaved the mattress on my shoulder. W did not want me to take it any farther. He did not want me to come up to his room. I did anyway. It was something I had never before experienced. I scanned the place. It was as clean as it could be for a room thoroughly worn out from occupancy and age. This $600 room had a shade on just one dirty window. The bureau looked worse than what you see at the curb in most towns. The old brown little refrigerator leaned to the right despite a stack of magazines stuffed under its feet. Yet it was clean. On top, W had his own microwave, as neat as it could be, considering there was no sink in the room.

W had a fan, broken, on low, blowing on the floor, and an old TV with "rabbit-ears" antenna in the corner. There was no table, no chair. He sat on the bed to watch TV, to eat, or to read one of the old magazines he had arranged on the bureau. All his clothes - extra and extra-extra large size, for W's a big man - were stored in boxes and plastic bags with some on hangers in a corner closet without a door. There was a single light in the ceiling.

As I turned to leave, I noticed something else the room had. It was a happy man with a big warm smile and a firm handshake of appreciation. "Don't thank me. We both need to thank God for what we have. See you Wednesday, W."

John King is a resident of Eatontown