Things Fall Apart

What would you do if your life suddenly fell apart?   Right now, at least in Los Angeles where I live, one of the fastest growing segments of the homeless population is people who work, but don't make enough money to pay rent.  Most of us accumulate a certain amount of stuff.  If you suddenly found yourself living on the streets, which objects from your life would you try and save? 

I recently took a walk along the L.A. River after one of our periodic "clean-ups" a nice way of saying a force out of a local homeless encampment.   There, I found these two old football cards.  I have to wonder if some guy who had spent years on his sports card collection, making sure he had every card from 1990, was he carting them around in a box?  When the clean-up crews arrived,  with only a few minutes to gather up the few remaining bits from his old life, did he drop Mike Tomczak and Pete Mandley? 

Hobo of the Great Depression

This image is a perfect example of my love/hate relationship to old photo dealers. I was told that this photograph was taken from an album, and labeled "bum, Washington, D.C. 1934." Maybe that's true, or maybe it was just something the dealer told me to make a $2.00 sale. In any case, in an album, this image would have had historical context. It would be possible to see what the photographer was drawn to. It could have shown a much broader picture of the United States during the great depression. As a stand alone image, removed from the album, it's an interesting image, and nothing else.