by Chris Campbell
Laissez Faire Books
Reporting from Hazard, KY…
While living in Baltimore, I got to know quite a few of the homeless guys in my neighborhood. And, I’m sure, as any of my colleagues still in Baltimore can attest, there are plenty of them.
There were three of them, though — Brad, Sydney and Benny — that I became most familiar with.
Brad played piano and sang gospel at his church on the eastside every Sunday. Sydney was a vet who sometimes helped local businesses move boxes out of trucks and slept underneath a tree next to the highway. And Benny was a former sound engineer and electrician who helped out at a local bar when they let him and slept in a lighted parking lot on most nights because that’s the only place he’s never been jumped and robbed.