Operation Nightwatch

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I did a volunteer night at Operation Nightwatch last night.

I called them a day or two after the birds bit, which had really focused me on wanting to do a shift to see what they were all about.

It turned out to be surprisingly difficult to get in. They are a Christian Organization, and people sign up to work in groups of five or six. Was I calling as part of a group? Was there any chance I had five friends that wanted to come in with me? Well, that obviously was a no and a no. You would never see me actively thrusting my volunteerism freakishness on anyone else.

So as to appear less of a freak, I explained to the woman on the phone that I volunteered for the Crisis Clinic, and so was very familiar with them as they were the only resource available evenings and weekends, and I was just interested to know more.

That was apparently the password, because she turned around and warmed right up to me. ?Oh yes, we often have individuals come in to help out. We call them ?Mavericks?. You could come in as a ?Maverick?. I?ve got days available on x and y and z and a and b. Interested in any of those??

?Um, yeah. Why don?t I come in on the 19th??

?Sure, that?d be great.? And she gives me details about the location and when and who to check in with. Easy as pie. We chat a bit about the huge crowds they are still getting (though reduced from peak, and no longer any threat of violence), and how things will hopefully get better, ironically, when the weather gets colder and the winter shelter opens up.

I drive up a bit early and listen to the song wind down and debate whether I am tempting fate too much by leaving the bike just hanging unlocked off the back of my car from nine to midnight, on a street just off Yesler, a block from the city?s biggest concentration of indigent homeless people.

But then I decide to heck with it. Why stereotype? Trust in people! Especially when doing otherwise might mean that I have to do work or expend effort of some sort.

I walk into Operation Nightwatch; two long rooms connected by a couple of double-doorways with no doors. A large raised desk by the door in the first room, a kitchen and serving counter at the back of the second room.

L~ at the desk gives me the rundown. People begin to queue at 9, they open the doors at 10, the people come in, get something to eat, and watch TV (her room with the desk has four tables, and all the tables have an old TV at the end). They give out the shelter beds they have, and are done by midnight at the latest.

I wander back to the kitchen area and offer to make myself useful, and K~ sets me to unwrapping pastries. Soup and leftover pastries are what we have to offer tonight. Often Dicks will donate a hundred some-odd burgers, or Briazz will come through with sandwiches, or some cool private soul will cook spaghetti for a hundred and fifty people. But tonight it is just soup and sugary bread. Everyone is a little embarrassed about this; they apparently pride themselves on offering the best food, but that?s not happening tonight.

Just before they open the doors, they call all the staff to the front for a prayer. I follow them up, not smirking. The five of us hold hands in a circle, someone asks who wants to make the prayer (do the prayer? Offer the prayer? Say the prayer. That sounds right. Say the prayer). I feel like a kid caught out in a pop quiz. Please don?t call on me, I pray. I would not even know the form of what to say.

Though in hindsight, doing a Hail Mary would have been funny, since the Christians probably wouldn?t know it. Happily, someone else got called, they thanked God for food, prayed for luck finding shelters, and so forth. Very utilitarian prayers. Oh, I thought, I could have done that.

And then the evening plays out exactly according to plan. The doors open, people start filing in and taking a bowl of soup, and I stand there with my plastic gloves on handing out cookies and pastries and rolls to whoever wants them.

The homeless people were so much like the picture you already have in your head, it is hardly worthwhile describing them. Predominately middle aged, moving into old, rather fewer teeth than their non-homeless peers, predominately male, predominately black, though all ages and races and both sexes are definitely represented. And they are not stinky. By and large, definitely not stinky.

Perhaps this is the difference between being homeless and being a bum. The stinky factor.

There are also some young kids, in their late teens and twenties. The young kids are generally sporting headphones, and even their homeless garb is more stylish than my wardrobe.

As they settle in and everyone has had first portions and are rolling back through for seconds (and serving food is not what I had in mind. Granted, I really had no expectations of what I would be doing ? maybe matching people with shelter beds? But really, I had no idea. I came in with a totally open mind. It was just that the idea of reverting back to an even less attractive version of my high school fast food job had never crossed my totally open mind), the front desk starts to call tickets for shelters.

The calling is remarkably like a bingo hall. They are calling names sometimes, and sometimes random combinations that I am sure they are making up. ?If you have a gold ticket with the number 3 or the letter A on it, come to the desk.? Is it a bed for the night or the end of a Sesame Street episode?

As they work through lists and color/letter/number/name combinations, the crowd thins down to a last dozen people who I guess are out of luck, bed-wise. We start cleaning the kitchen, washing bowls, putting stuff away, wiping everything down and sweeping.

We parsed through a few boxes of crappy donated food, almost none of which was good, and some of which included rotting stinking vegetables that made you want to retch. It was horrible; the worst part of the evening. It reminded me of my worst volunteer experience ever ? a Sunday morning at Northwest Harvest where they put us to work sorting pallets of fruit which had been donated because it was frostbitten and rotting. Disgusting, revolting, diseased work. Yuck and yuck and yuck.

We finally finished everything and took off around 11:30pm. Except for the fruit, it was not that bad an evening. Interesting to meet some of the people who might call us at the crisis line, and good to know more about what the Operation Nightwatch gig is. Even the praying bit was not that bad by virtue of being short and of my getting to hold the hand of the cute girl who maybe wasn?t the be-all, end-all of cute, but just seemed very accessible (though probably being a good Christian, she wasn?t, so I am likely wrong about that feeling). Interesting, but not compelling. I have got to believe there are better ways I can give of my time without getting back into the food service industry.