Light smoke was filtering from the second floor of the vacant apartment building in downtown Langley. The interior crew reported the fire was knocked down and they were walking a victim out. That message created the usual urgency until someone said, “It’s only Herman.” Then everyone relaxed.
In the ’70s and ’80s and before Herman Theissen was known locally as ‘Herman the German,’ he was Langley’s best known and only homeless person. He knew every lock that wasn’t locked, he could recite Robert W. Service and Shakespeare flawlessly, but usually was performing to an imaginary crowd with a bottle of red wine in his hand.
We pulled him from at least three smoking rooms, and late one night, when we attended the fully involved travel trailer he was squatting in, we thought it was all over for Herman.
Then from the adjacent railroad tracks we heard a deep baritone voice in the dark singing, “There goes my everything!”
One afternoon the brakes on his bike failed at Logan and 200th and he skidded into a moving coal train. A coal car clipped his bike sending him across the intersection. God looks out for people like Herman. He received only bumps and bruises and wanted to know who was going to pay for his bike.
He was a nuisance, but homeless and harmless, and it was convenient to have only one homeless person to keep track of.
Then, any first responder working back then will tell you, the government closed down Riverview /Essondale and the Lower Mainland communities changed overnight.
What’s the answer? Hide them behind the bushes on the floodplain? Give them shovels and put them to work? Send them to internment camps in the Interior, or look after them regionally as they originally planned in the 1980s? It’s time to get people talking.
If we had 200 homeless cats and dogs on the floodplain, somebody would have organized a fundraiser and a plan by now.
At least that’s what McGregor says.
Did You Read the News?
A City cat fell through a crack
And lodged between the walls;
For many days they tried different ways,
They volunteered, one and all;
They tried with food, they tried with love,
They kept a vigil through the night,
Then to a shout of joyful sounds
They brought it to the light!
Now the people hugged and the people cried
When they heard those thankful mews,
The press had gathered from around the world
And it made the front page news!
About 10 years ago, 10 blocks away
A City boy fell through the cracks;
He sits lodged between vacant walls, unseen,
Chasing veins along his tracks;
Who watches him all through the night?
Have they even looked his way?
Has anyone brought him food or love?
Will they cry for him today?
They say they covered up the cracks
Where all those kittens play,
I wonder if they’ll fill the holes
Our children fall through every day?
When it comes to rescuing God’s creatures
We all have different views;
Cats are cute, but homeless junkies,
They sure ain’t front page news!