"Craig Baugher" wrote in message
news35dc.215827$Cb.1890529@attbi_s51...
for them to eat. Most are there
because of booze and drugs, but once in a while you meet a few that just
happen to fall into hard times.

Not really fishing related, but I can relate to that. When I was about 21 I
worked one summer as a head hunter for a labor camp. I got paid per person
I could put in the field for the labor contractor. I'ld visit the missions,
food lines, hobo camps between the river and the railroad etc. (It was
kinda scary sometimes. I always carried gun back then.) Most were on hard
times because of drugs or alcohol. At that level it was mostly alcohol.
Quite a number could have been productive members of society if they could
have had some mental help. Some were just lazy and found it an easy
lifestyle to survive. A very few were just down on their luck with nobody
to turn to for help, or to proud to ask anybody for help. I remember one
cowboy I found who had run out of money. He had spent the last of the money
he got for selling his saddle, and he was standing in line for cheese
sandwiches. I recrutied him, and he was smart. He didn't let the labor
camp screw him out of all his money at the commissary. After a month or so
of taking every job that came up and busting his buns in the fields they
made him a crew boss. Later got his saddle out of hock and bought an old
car. That winter he got a job working in a cotton gin, and the following
spring he headed back to cattle country in upstate Nevada with money in his
pocket and gas in his tank.

I remember him because out of all the guys I recruited he was one of the few
who took the job and used it to get out of the hole, but especially because
he was the only one who came back and thanked me.

Totally amazed me. The labor camps were not a nice place.
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