By Golly, There Are Homeless in Cape!

I was weeding Sunday evening to take advantage of the unexpected summer rains from this weekend when I noticed a strange woman coming down the block. We don't have a lot of pedestrians on my street and the ones we do have are regulars, often with their dogs.

But this one was different. She had no dog and she was going door to door. That was odd behavior for any day, much less a Sunday evening.

She soon introduced herself.

She said she was Homeless. I don't know if that was her first or last name. She didn't say. She did ask for a dollar so she could get a hotel room for the night. She said she planned to go to the homeless shelter in Jackson on Monday.

I curtly told her "No" and went back to weeding.

It might seem a little un-Christian of me not to help someone who appeared in need, but I told her no for a couple reasons.

First of all, I read an article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch just last week in which the Reverend Larry Rice of New Life Evangelistic Center recommended NOT giving the homeless money. Instead he suggests you give them a bottle of water and a granola bar. That's no joke.

In case you've been living in a cave or perhaps a box for the last few months, the good Reverend is the catalyst behind the current local homeless awareness campaign and the old Federal Building brouhaha. He appears to fancy himself as some kind of a homeless whisperer and desperately wants to bring his talents to Cape Girardeau and the surrounding area.

So with his advice fresh on my mind and since I had neither trail mix of any form nor a bottle of Aquafina on my person, I decided a simple "no" was the best response to the woman.

The second reason I told her no is because panhandling is against the law in our town. I would do the same thing if a stranger came up to me and asked if I would like to take a car that was idling vacant by the curb. It too is against the law.

That's why I reported the woman to the police after she wandered off down the street going door-to-door, presumably asking my neighbors for money as well. If I didn't call the police how would they know that a panhandler was at large?

Oh sure, some of you might say panhandling is a victimless crime and that the only real victim is the poor homeless person. But how was I supposed to know if the woman was truly homeless and not some kind of scam artist?

I suppose I could have not done anything, but a number of my neighbors are senior in age. I could imagine them falling for some sympathetic spiel from the woman and getting taken for a lot more than a dollar. You hear about stuff like that all the time.

When I told my wife about the encounter, she said she was surprised that I didn't tell the woman that she could earn the dollar by finishing my weeding. At face value this would have been a good deal for me. The bed I was weeding is a nasty slope with some tough weeds that I have fought for years. Having someone else do the job would be nice for a change.

But then you get into all sorts of legal pitfalls by offering this woman a dollar for the service.

First of all, a dollar is not minimum wage. I worked another 30 minutes on the bed so if she had finished the job for me, I would have legally owed her about three dollars rather than a buck.

Of course, if I got her to fill out an IRS Form 1099 designating her as a contractor, I guess a dollar would have been OK. However, I'm kind of picky about my landscaping and I imagine she wouldn't have done the job up to my standards. So in the end, it was probably best not to give the woman anything at all.

I was not necessarily surprised that a homeless person materialized in my neighborhood. After all, the Reverend Rice was having his homeless hoedown at nearby Indian Park over the weekend. It wouldn't surprise me if part of the event included coaching his disciples into spreading out across the town to teach us unbelievers a lesson, to prove to all the doubters that there are homeless people in Cape.

And now, by golly, I know that there are homeless here in town. Thank you, Reverend Rice, for opening my eyes!

I have lived 15 years in a modest home in one of the older parts of Cape Girardeau, and this is the FIRST TIME I've ever been approached by a panhandler.

This little incident smacks of sanctimonious and poorly contrived theatrics.

Personally, it does nothing to make me more sympathetic to the plight of the homeless.

In fact, it does the exact opposite.