Bubbles Always Pop, pg. 3.
Ed was also very opinionated, but instead of using simple conversation to convey his outspoken tendency, he used the "Letters to the Editor" section of the local paper to make his viewpoints known. There was hardly a week which went by that Ed wasn't expressing something in the local rag. And when one of his letters didn't get published, he would call the paper and inquire as to why. His writing style and desire to use the paper as an outlet for his ideas was about the only reason I ever bothered to buy it. He was really a pleasure to read because he would express his opinions so well.
His eccentricity reached far beyond his own desire to stand up for himself in court, or let his voice be heard via the news media. He was not, from what I learned through experience, a person to accept outright charity.
1992
There came a point in Ed's life where he finally decided to venture beyond his means and try to use his own initiative to have something which he could call his own. When I first heard of his plans, I just shook my head wondering what good could come of it. But had I remembered that Ed literally walked into the community in the bitter cold of winter with what he considered essential packed upon his back, the idea would not have been so unseemly given Ed's past history. Ed's life in the community began when a person owning a campground offered him shelter during a very cold part of the winter. As Ed told it, he was in fact on his way here having once visited and liked the idea of living here. How he managed to have gotten where he had was probably a story in itself, but I am not familiar with that part of Ed's history.
So Ed decides he has had enough of Jesse Haven. Ed had some friends which owned a piece of property and were trying to sell it. Ed talked them into letting him buy the property using the contract for deed method. Then he managed to find and purchase a school bus which he was going to turn into living quarters until he had accumulated enough money to build a small home. I thought the whole idea was risky and doubted, given his income level, he could pull it off. At one point, I had discussed with SJ the idea of inviting Ed to live with us for a fraction of what he was paying in rent so he could build up a stake with which to work and not be living under the burden of high debt. Besides, I also liked the idea of having someone at our home during the times we were at work.
But Ed wouldn't hear of it. In his quiet and unassuming manner, he politely declined the offer. He felt he had all of the angles worked out so that his dreams could finally become a reality. Once Ed had made a down payment on the property, and set the wheels in motion for renovating the bus to be inhabitable, the beginning of the end had begun.
Ed's experiences were far more wide ranging than I could have ever imagined. I would never have guessed he did a tour in Viet Nam until it happened to come up in conversation. He was a clerk working in some army installation in Saigon. I knew he was involved in the scouting program in town, but never would have guessed he also volunteered time to the scouting program while serving his tour of duty (he showed me pictures of the kids in their scouting uniforms). He liked children and I suspect wanted to have children at some point in his life, but never seemed to be able to make a romantic connection.
Ed was so staunchly self-determined. He related a story to me one time of living in a volkswagon van for a period of time. I guess he had just gotten out of the army and was looking for a job in the Houston, TX area. He got a job as a school bus driver. Not a job I would think a person could earn a descent living at, but maybe there was more to the job than I'm aware of. But he needed a place to stay. I think he must have been living in his van for a period of time while working as a school bus driver. "One day," Ed began, "I got to work early so I decided to look around a little. I happened to walk behind the bus barn and noticed there was a large, over grown lot directly behind the building." Ed decided he had found a place to park his van permanently, and he did just that.
Supposedly, Ed managed to live in the van for quite sometime completely unknown to those with whom he worked. But once he was discovered, his day of reckoning came. He was called into the office of the bus barn supervisor, and they had a little chat. As Ed told it, the guy had a sculpture of a brass bull with some very large testicles. The supervisor put his hand under the testicles, and said something to the effect of, "Guess where I've got you." I believe his employment didn't last much longer, not because he was fired, but because the supervisor now had something on Ed and was letting Ed know it.
So the idea of Ed living in such confined quarters as those of a bus for an undetermined amount of time wasn't completely absurd. He even lived in a pump house the first winter after leaving Jesse Haven, but before he had electricity hooked up to the school bus. The friends who had sold him the property would go south during the winter, and so they let him take up quarters in a pump house on their property. Again, we asked Ed if he would like to come stay with us. Again, he turned down the offer. The pump house was approximately four feet wide, eight feet long, and about six feet high. He managed to get a day bed, a chair, his computer and tv, and an electric space heater in such a confined space. His only income was an unemployment check. The motel where he worked was only open about eight months of the year. |
