I am headed out for vacation today but wanted to clean out my notebooks and drop a few random thoughts:
Joe is the guy’s name. He must think I am a terrible, indifferent schmuck. Truth is, barely a day goes by that I don’t think of him and his mom.
This goes back more than a month ago, when Joe first called. In his message, he told of being laid off from a job he’d held for years at a laundry, the kind in which he was paid under the table, so unemployment benefits were out of the question. All those years, all of his hard work, he lamented, and he gets thrown out on his ear.
But that is not why he was calling, Joe said. It was about his 63-year-old mother, Louise, who long ago was left blinded and infirm by what he called physical abuse.
He is her only means of support, he said, and with him being out of work and unable to find any, well, they need help, he said. He left me his telephone number.
I get a lot of these calls. Yet I don’t think I have heard a more morose, more desperate person on the other end than Joe.
He called two more times before I got the first message. So I called Joe. His phone was out of service. Likely cut off, I figure.
He called and left another message the other day. Joe was begging worse than before.
“Mom and I,” he pleaded, “need help with food and the rent.”
He told of a sister who was looking into getting his mother a trailer near where she lives in Georgia, of how he hadn’t enough even to get Louise there.
“Me, I’m single. I don’t need much. I’m just worried about my mom,” Joe said. “It breaks my heart that I can’t help her anymore. I don’t have anything.”
I called the new number he gave and left a message. I haven’t heard back from Joe. I honestly wouldn’t know what to tell him if I did.
I hope Louise made it to Georgia.
No, I do not Twitter. Way too many people in recent weeks have called and e-mailed asking if I do. I don’t really understand Twitter. Besides, I think this is quite enough of an intrusion in both of our lives.
Nor do I get LinkedIn, although somehow I have found myself now a member. I am offering my sincere apologies to the many folks who have asked to be in my LinkedIn network. Yes, I accepted all of you, but I do not know what to do with you now, or what you expect me to do.
I received a call from Kelley Brooks the other day.
You may remember the story of how her York Street home sprung a 6-gallons-a-minute water-line leak while she was away for two months last summer, a leak that sent nearly a million gallons into the ground.
The resulting, nearly $8,000 Denver Water bill later was dropped to about $2,700 after she had the leak fixed.
Her first shut-off notice arrived Christmas Eve. Deciding it wouldn’t be much of a Christmas without water, she ran down and paid the utility the $1,650 it demanded.
The second shut-off notice arrived about 10 days ago. Returning home for a shower after spending the night with her mother who had undergone surgery, she turned on the shower knob. No water.
“The point is, they can’t turn it off when I’m not home and it is leaking all day, 6 gallons a minute, but for $580 it is ‘not a drop more?’ ” she said.
She paid the $580 that day. She has about $400 more to go.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
