The garage in this picture housed a homeless drug addict when we moved into the adjacent house on Oswego Avenue. The guy's dwelling consisted of an old door propped on cinder blocks which he used as his bed and an old TV powered by an extension cord that ran from our basement window across the lawn into the garage. The TV served as his only light source. His squat was nestled between a heap of junk which consisted of broken appliances, paint cans, miscellaneous garden tools and the boarded up car port door. He draped tar paper over the whole thing presumably offering some insulation in the dank chemical fumed storage space.
Weeks after the homeless man had purportedly vacated his tar paper shanty, our neighbors complained of a mysterious beeping coming inside the garage. At the time, we didn't have keys but rather relied on a rusty hand saw to jimmy the lock. We tried to slide the saw between the jam and the frame as we usually do, but it wouldn't budge the lock. I decided to crawl through the window to investigate the noise. I found myself alone in the dark with the beeping. The window let in just enough light for me to make out the vaguely reflective tar paper propped over the homeless man's former home. I couldn't see what was beeping. I couldn't see the locked door. Panic struck.
My first encounter with the homeless man was on our initial tour of the property. Our landlady ducked into a room showing us the lower level bedroom and there he was sleeping at three in the afternoon with his bed roll and TV. We learned that the landlord was paying him and letting him stay in the house and in exchange he helped her to fix the place up. When we moved in, we insisted that she change the locks.
I saw him a few times after that. He stopped by to stain the deck and take care of some loose ends and then he was gone. A week later, I found the extension cord running from our basement, under the deck, across the lawn and into the locked garage. We expressed concern to our landlady and she said he was living there. We were kind, said we didn't mind but were concerned for his health. She aired the place out and we agreed to give him a week to move on. And he did. Then he came back for his TV and bike, stayed a week, then he left again. Then the beeping started in the garage and I found myself in the dark, with the beeping, not knowing if I was alone.
bee-beep, bee-beep, bee-beep. My heart beating thum-thump, thum-thump.
A nascent fear of the dark crept up on me. Like as kid, when I'd shut the bathroom door without hitting the light switch. Light could not come soon enough. I feared the unknown. I plunged through the unknown, hitting my knee on a bucket and fumbling to unlock the deadbolt. Suddenly the daylight swept in and my friends stood there completely unaware of my ordeal.
"What's beeping?"
With the light from the door, we were able to trace the noise to a smoke detector submerged in a bucket of water.
On the day Jared left for Colorado, we all threw knives at the fence he and I built last winter, Denise gave him a flower and I took this picture. Then he drove off in his Yugo. Molly drove the bus. The warm comfy bus with hard wood floors and a wood stove. When he was about a mile away, I called him to tell him that he had forgotten to take his dog with him. He came back and got him. Then we said goodbye again.
Photography and words by: Oliver Ogden (USA)
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Copyright ©Oliver Ogden , All rights reserved. This photo is not to be used as free stock.
Use without written consent by the author (Oliver Ogden ) is illegal and punishable by law.
