St. John of Northside

by Charles McGuigan 10.2023

Last December, when temperatures plummeted into the single digits, the City of Richmond utterly failed its citizens who have no permanent shelter. The City had said for many months that it would have four shelters in full operation before winter set in. But, of course, the City failed to meet this deadline, and as a result of this poor planning, numerous people suffered immeasurable pain. This piece with St. John of Northside was first published more than eight years ago. John still works his corner.

To prep for this article I spent two nights outside right after the cold weather set in a few weeks back. The first night I made a fire ring in the backyard with loose cobblestones, scavenged fallen limbs from the neighborhood, along the streets of Ginter Park and the median strip on Fauquier, cut the thicker ones with a chop saw and then a built a large fire that I fed throughout the night. I was secure in a sleeping bag but could never really get warm. When you’re that cold, you sleep little and then only in abbreviated dozes, stippled with dreams. The longest hours of the night are between two and four, and the coldest hour is right at sunrise. In the morning there was a glaze of frost on my forehead and my hair was stiff. Two nights later I slept in the shed, again in the sleeping bag, but the mercury had dropped off another ten degrees. I lasted until three in the morning at which time the temperature was twelve.  That’s when I realized I couldn’t prep for this piece: I have a safety net; I have a house. John doesn’t have this luxury. What he has is a twelve-by-twelve foot garage made of particle board so porous the cold filters through it. He sleeps on a mattress spread across plastic milk crates to keep him above the concrete floor which this time of year is like a sheet of glacial ice. 

Every day of the week John stands near the corner of Laburnum Avenue and Brook Road, holding a sign that reads: SMILE IT’S NOT THAT BAD. Just down the street, with its kickstand up in a mound of snow, stands John’s mountain bike, his sole means of transportation, one of his few real possessions, of which he says: “My bike is my horse. It’s my girlfriend. It’s my car. It’s my savior. Not to say it’s my God, but it’s saved me on more than one occasion.”

John has worked this corner for years now. He stands six-foot three and sports a gray beard. His dark brown irises bleed a bit into the surrounding sea of sclera, which is slightly yellowed like aged parchment.  John’s eyes never leave yours when you’re speaking with him, they move with your eyes, turret-mounted guns trained on a target.

“I’ve been homeless for a few years,” he says. “That’s part of life. Survival is a daily issue.”

It wasn’t always this way for John, but something happened about thirty years ago—a bad decision he made as a young man that would brand him for life.

Back in the 1970s John’s future gleamed bright. “I worked for a bookkeeping and tax firm, year round, and it was great,” he says.

After putting in eight years at the same company, John took an unauthorized loan with every intention of paying it back. “I was unable to repay the loan prior to the auditors catching up with me,” he says.  “It ruined everything.”

John served little time, but he carried a suspended sentence with him. “They gave me the installment plan,” he says. Any minor infraction would land John back in jail.  “Each time, they would say, ‘You’ve got to serve three months.’ Just long enough to lose your house, lose your car, lose your job.”

John rubs his forehead with a gloved hand.  He shakes his head. “Some small thing happens and your house is gone, your car is gone, your job is gone,” he says. “Again.  Again. Again . So hell, you don’t even try no more.”

But John didn’t give up. He relocated to another city, out of state, and built a career in traffic engineering. He reclaimed his life, owned a car, had a job he enjoyed. Then he was summoned back to Richmond to care for aging relatives, an aunt and uncle. He threw himself into it, became their live-in caretaker. He lived off his own savings. And then both his aunt and uncle passed. “Relatives came out of the woodwork, scraped up everything, left me on the side of the curb with two plastic bags in my hand. I was homeless.” 

John makes his way over to a minivan at the traffic light. His shoes crunch through the snow that is glazed with ice.  The woman on the passenger side rolls down her window and John thrusts his hand into the warmth, nodding his thanks, then folds two crisp dollar bills in half and thrusts them in the cargo pocket of the navy blue parka he wears.  

When he rejoins me, John says he had no idea that returning to Richmond years ago would end in homelessness.  “It was my downfall,” he says. 

Before John arrives at this corner each day, he’s generally already worked a job. “People will say come over here or come over there and take a look at the job,” he says. “I call it a looksee.” 

And he can do pretty much anything.  “I’m not above going on top of the house or under the house or painting, cleaning, fixing, or moving,” he says. “People look at me as very cheap labor.”  

Which is why John works this corner. If nothing more, he’ll be able to scrape together a few dollars for food and cigarettes. “I can stand here for two hours and get twenty dollars,” he says. “It just depends on the day and the generosity of the person and the flow of traffic.”

As a car pulls over to the curb, John goes to work and I leave him to his business. 

Three days later I pick up John, strap his bike to the back of my JEEP, and we drive over to Stir Crazy for lunch. As we sit down at the table in the conference room, John removes his coat, a large blue parka with a fur-lined collar. “Let me tell you what I wear every day when it’s so cold,” he says. “I wrap up my core. I have a T-shirt, a shirt, a crew-neck sweater, a lined hooded sweatshirt, a lined Levi jacket and this bear (parka). I have on three hats, a skull cap, an Alaskan dog-eared cap and then another skull cap on top of that to cut the wind. I have on two pairs of jeans and a pair of thermal underwear. I have on two pairs of socks and an old pair of toe warmers.”

When his meal arrives, John peels his gloves from his hands and invites me to take a close look at his fingers. The skin above his finger joints is the color of cream-lightened coffee, but the fingers are dark black.  “I’m approaching frost bite on my hands, on the fingers,” John says. “Cold is hardest on the extremities. I also worry about my toes.” 

He picks up his knife and fork and cuts a thin wedge off the meat and cheese filled wrap on the plate before him. He forks the food into his mouth and chews slowly. 

“A lot of people look at me like I’m crazy cause I’ve been out there for so long,” John says. “But I don’t have any options.”

He takes a few more bites of his wrap. He swallows, dabs his lips with a paper napkin. “There is a routine I have every day,” he says “I have to go get kerosene. I usually use a gallon to a gallon and a half per night just to stay warm.”

John doesn’t lie down on those brutally cruel nights. "You have to set up,” he says. “If it’s that cold you don’t go to sleep because you might die in your sleep.”

The winter nights are long, almost unending, and that’s when John is completely alone with himself. “Your depression kicks in, your pain kicks in, your anger and your dissatisfaction,” he says. 

And the main thing, after the long night, is coming back into the world. “The first thing you got to do is to get up out of bed and be functional,” John says. 

So in the icy morning John heats a can of water on top of the Kerosun and bathes himself with a washcloth.  “It’s painful,” he says. “Exposed skin will freeze below thirty-two if its wet.”

Once he’s finished washing himself, John bundles up and rides his bike over to a nearby McDonald’s. 

“During the winter you cry a lot,” he says. “When it’s really cold, that’s when you drink a four-hour cup of coffee at McDonald’s.”

After that, and perhaps a stint of day labor, he’s off to his corner at Brook and Laburnum. And it really is John’s corner. ”People have told me that they saw somebody else on my corner one day and they rode right by and didn’t give him anything,” he says. “They waited for me to return.” 

As we leave Stir Crazy, John stops just past the threshold and turns to me. “I was believing that that warmth inside would last forever,” he says. “I forgot all about winter.” 

There’s no trace of the sun, and the sky is gray and heavy. A few snowflakes fall, interspersed with a little sleet like pellets of Styrofoam, and then we’re in the JEEP headed over to Laburnum and then east. 

During that last interview with John I had been thinking about St. Francis of Assisi, the Fool of God. I considered the story of how he stripped out of his clothes on a cold winter’s evening and bedded down for the night in a drift of snow. I’ve heard different explanations as to why he did this and I never really bought any of them, but after getting to know John, I think I understand why Francis had done this. He wanted to know the elements and embrace them. He wanted to know what it was like to be without clothes, without shelter, wanted to know what it was like to be at the mercy of the elements, wanted to understand what even the smallest of animals must go through when the weather grows frigid.

Gusts of warm air from the dashboard pelt John and me as I pull over to the curb on North Avenue. I release the Velcro-tipped tethers that secure John’s bike to the rack on the back of the JEEP. I lift the bike and hand it over to him. That’s when he tells me the story of the birds he has come to know.

“The birds are pretty cool in my area and I feed them and they walk on my house,” he says. “At the first hint of daylight the birds come out and sing. That’s how it is in the summer and the spring and the fall. I’m kind of in touch with them now. I like the fact that there’re no intruders because the birds make noise even though they’re the lightest creature you’ve ever seen. They can walk on top of the snow; they can pretty much walk on water if they want. But they’ll make noise and shake tree limbs if they hear somebody coming. There are a couple cats around and I chase the cats away so that they don’t try to attack the birds. I don’t know if the birds recognize that I do this, but the cats know not to get too close when I’m around. It may sound crazy, but I talk to those birds.”

“And they listen,” says John.