The Perambulator

Jackson, Wyoming is a small town. This becomes apparent if you turn off the main through roads and visit the local, non-tourist oriented businesses. The paint store, the grocery, the library. Here you are likely to meet real Jacksonians uninsulated by wealth and pretense.

Speaking of wealth. If the town is so rich, why do their boardwalks have so many bent nails? It’s supposedly historical but whoever restored it last was terrible at driving nails. Twenty or thirty percent of them were driven only two thirds in and then bent over and beaten down. WTF? These were common nails too. Easy enough to turn the hammer around and pull it back out.

The facts are that the common nails were driven by common labor and common labor apparently is not worth very much in Jackson. If I were building a million dollar facade, I would pay well and expect perfection.

No quality control. I imagine the supervisor rationalizing, “the bent nails in the boardwalk won’t show up in the tourists’ photos and laborers are hard to find.” I asked the cute visitor information girl about it and she simply mumbled that it was historical while looking over my shoulder for someone with an answerable question.

I wasn’t looking for a job but I decided to check out a couple that were of interest. There was a store manager position available at the Habitat for Humanity Restore. Full time at twelve dollars an hour leaves me an affordable housing budget of $765. Try to find a one bedroom apartment in Jackson for that. Rare. Much less likely to find housing for a family of four on that income.

There is a great short term emergency shelter in Jackson, the Good Samaritan Mission. It is clean, operated with love and true charity, and is quite probably one of the “best” missions anywhere. There are 18 beds available for single men for up to seven nights a year. In addition, they have an earned-income program for longer stays with a donation fee of at least ten dollars a night for up to thirty days.

This is a gospel mission. Your stay will include a nightly church service and your hosts will attempt to persuade you that the only solution to any of your problems is to accept Jesus Christ. This will in most cases be communicated with love, compassion, and true fidelity to the best precepts of that faith.

Jesus is no impediment to transforming your life. However, among the homeless, salvation from destitution may come more easily to those who develop a concrete plan based on resource availability rather than through symbology that can easily be faked. I’m thinking of the old evil drunks I know that can quote the New Testament chapter and verse. They get hung up on that one message, that all who come fall short of the glory of God and that the Gospel is the only way out.

I met a man working at one of the Jackson grocery stores. He had stayed at the mission in between couch hopping but he didn’t last long there. He explained that as soon as he tried to participate in the religious discussions by sharing information he had about the Mormon religion, he was told that he was in a Christian mission and that he deserved to have his ass kicked out in the alley. He wasn’t too clear on whether it was staff or simply other clients who made the threat. Probably another homeless person. He left the shelter.

Jackson deserves a secular mission. Absolutely include spiritual pathways. Offer Tai Chi and Meditation and self-esteem training. Transmit some of the great small town values easily found in Jackson. Homeless people need the message that they are part of the Glory of God, not that they fall short of it.